Guild Wars 2

There’s a lot of talk going around about Trahearne and some other characters which weren’t very likable, but I couldn’t seem to find a thread about favourite ones, besides the one discussing the death of some likeable ones.

Not to repeat what everyone else has, Tybalt and Sieran are indeed nice yes. Though another character whose mission I liked a lot (and her herself) is the Knight of Embers. Even though hostile, her character caught my attention. Besides her, I also found Kudu to be “entertaining”, to say the least

All the characters in this game are incredibly poorly written, like something out of a grade schoolers fanfiction.

That said the most realistic/ones that I enjoy are Countess Anise and Minister Caudecus. Sadly all the non humans are 90% tropes of their race and nothing else, which is a real shame.

Brahms(sic) might have a chance if he can get over being dumped by his vapid fleshbag of a girlfriend.

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If you were asking primarily about the personal story than I’d say they were all boring and trite(xD so random OMG APPLES of tybalt/sylvari lady/nornbrodude aside), with the vigil founder lady being slightly less (why does less and boring produce a filter, grow up whoevers in charge of these filters) boring and trite than the rest of them.

Kudu was a terrible cliche villain in my opinion. He even says “Tah!” as he twirls his mustache and vanishes.

But Guild Wars does tend to have a record of badly written villains. Both the Lich and Shiro were incredibly shallow back in GW1, until Nightfall pasted some extra backstory to them. Varesh was also incredibly cliche, with unclear motives, but at least she looked cool.

I’d say the only villains that I really like are Mad King Thorn and Palawa Joko. Especially the Halloween game where the two of them met, was incredibly entertaining.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Scarred_Psyche

Read some of the dialogues for a chuckle or two.

Tybalt was great, but I honestly can’t think of anyone else particularly memorable.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Kudu was a terrible cliche villain in my opinion. He even says “Tah!” as he twirls his mustache and vanishes.

But Guild Wars does tend to have a record of badly written villains. Both the Lich and Shiro were incredibly shallow back in GW1, until Nightfall pasted some extra backstory to them. Varesh was also incredibly cliche, with unclear motives, but at least she looked cool.

I’d say the only villains that I really like are Mad King Thorn and Palawa Joko. Especially the Halloween game where the two of them met, was incredibly entertaining.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Scarred_Psyche

Read some of the dialogues for a chuckle or two.

Kudu’s voice acting was a tiny bit lacking (was helping some people with SE story earlier), and altho he may be classical, i found him sort of compelling. Each to his own, i guess.

What I forgot to mention and saw it in your post, yes, the Mad King was nice. I do sincerely hope they bring him back this year too.

Starscream.6498:

What I forgot to mention and saw it in your post, yes, the Mad King was nice. I do sincerely hope they bring him back this year too.

Oh, you bet they will. They aren’t done with his plot yet. The Mad King is gradually trying to break all his seals, so he’ll be free to terrorize Tyria with his terrible pranks and jokes. I’m sure we’ll see a lot more of him this next Halloween.

The elephant in the room is obviously Tybalt – everyone I talked to was really fond of him. I was dreading the Claw Island battle because, for once, I was enjoying the company of an NPC.

I enjoyed Forgal’s company quite a bit. I’m not sure why – the character writing wasn’t too great. I guess I really did believe that he was dependable. Maybe the fact that his character was largely uninteresting was within character and consistent – you knew exactly what how far he would go and you got nothing more or nothing less.

Sieran had some serious consistency issues. Sacrificing herself at Claw Island was completely out of character and that didn’t bode well with me at all, which contrasts strongly with Forgal and Tybalt because I really do believe they would be type to do that and/or wouldn’t have mad that decision flippantly.

Gixx was enjoyable – he was very clearly Asuran but had some interesting personality ticks that had nothing to do with the Asuran status-quo (a good example is “The Ghost Rite” dialogue).

Zhaitan seemed like it had some interesting personality traits (e.g. some creative and psychotic evil during “Estate of Decay”), but you never really interacted with it – and 80% of it’s plans were extremely stereotypical, which is still better than 100%. Still there was some potential there (which was sadly never explored) and I felt I wanted to know more about that character.

The problem with nearly all the villains (sans any directly associated with the dragons) is that they are all incredibly naive and cutesy – they all have explanations for their actions and thought they were doing no overall harm. Misguided good intentions are the type of villains I expect from stories you tell your 6 year old child at bed time.

Tyria needs a psychopath who is doing bad things because they are genuinely want to do bad things, really hurt people and ruin lives in unpredictable and inhumane ways – so that we really feel like we achieved something when we put them down: no “I just want to play” (Scarlet Briar), no “I’m just getting revenge” (Canach) and no “it’s my purpose” (Zhaitan) – someone us players would continue to feel uneasy about when we stop playing and go to bed.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Kudu was a terrible cliche villain in my opinion. He even says “Tah!” as he twirls his mustache and vanishes.

But Guild Wars does tend to have a record of badly written villains. Both the Lich and Shiro were incredibly shallow back in GW1, until Nightfall pasted some extra backstory to them. Varesh was also incredibly cliche, with unclear motives, but at least she looked cool.

I’d say the only villains that I really like are Mad King Thorn and Palawa Joko. Especially the Halloween game where the two of them met, was incredibly entertaining.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Scarred_Psyche

Read some of the dialogues for a chuckle or two.

You thought that dialogue was funny?

Why are “misguided good intentions” for six year olds? I would disagree and say that “evil for the sake of evil” is more for six year olds. That’s like every fairy tale/Cartoon villain ever. Misguided good intentions are more realistic, that’s almost the only kind of evil in the real world.

Kirschwasser.3972:

Why are “misguided good intentions” for six year olds? I would disagree and say that “evil for the sake of evil” is more for six year olds. That’s like every fairy tale/Cartoon villain ever. Misguided good intentions are more realistic, that’s almost the only kind of evil in the real world.

Real world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy
Cartoon heroes: have a purpose. Riches, fame, power, renown: just look at pretty-much any comic.

The reason I say it’s for six year olds is because it’s trying to justify their actions and make everything in the world alright again – the reality is that there are a lot of things wrong in the world. Stories don’t seem real when they blatantly ignore that fact (which is, sadly, very much the case in the GW2 lore). It’s why we hate Trahearne so much: he is just to valiant to be true – perfection upsets us. Every great story has has a flaw in the hero, all the way back to Achilles and his heel.

The reason that, say, Dr. House or Dexter are such beloved characters is because they embody many of our darker traits that we would prefer to ignore (but are there), therefore we can associate with them and we don’t like that, therefore we have a deep hatred for them which intrigues us: drawing us into the story and encouraging emotional involvement in that story. Hence the term “love hate”.

The best characters are more of a psychological exploration than “justified in a twisted way” or actually just bad (yeah, I am contradicting myself, I explained it poorly first time round). What ANet would do well to explore is “what if you had a psychopath or sociopath in a magical world.” They need to drop the Sylvari LS arcs because it seems as though they do not have the capability to be psychopaths – Sylvari are incredibly boring from a human story telling perspective.