Greetings!
Back as an early teen, I picked up the first Guild Wars. The awesome thrill ride the main story offered was really awesome to me, despite the cheesy dialogue. When Guild Wars 2 was announced, my friends and I were as hyped as any no-income highschooler could be. Shortly after, Guild Wars featured a paid content expansion that let you travel back in time to visit some landmark events in the GW lore. These new short stories featured polished cinematics and involved some great storytelling. I remember reading an article somewhere where an Anet rep was saying it was just a glimpse of how the Guild Wars 2 cinematics might look, evolving beyond the hurky-jerky one-shot camera moves from Guild Wars 1.
Flash forward to the Guild Wars 2 beta. The cinematics all take place in front of a stagnant (albeit beautiful) backdrop with the character, limited to two-at-a-time, standing in profile talking at each-other with lines of dialogue being spat out systematically. “Fear not! Its just the beta! See that ‘Work in Progress’ Stamp? They’re saving those juicy cinematics for a later release!” I said to myself.
So what is the core problem?
Personally, I think the core problem is either a lack of vision or a lack of successful translation from vision to reality. The story is there. Sure, it may suffer from some awkward writing at times and a lot of high fantasy tropes, but so do a lot of movies and games , but we tend to skim over them because we are so immersed at the time.
How do we fix it?
Without re-writing the entire story, re-recording the dialogue, or any other extremely expensive bit of production, how do we improve the Personal Story to make players feel more invested and interested? If the developers included personal story when they said they want to polish the core game as much as they can before expanding, I have two proposals and I’ll start with the less plausible of the two.
Option A – A Return To Traditional Cinematics
I’m talking about what we saw earlier from the Guild Wars 1 Bonus pack. Emotions and actions being as important as words . Traditional cinematics are not a walk in the park. I have never developed a game, so I can only speak from my personal experience in film and motion graphics. Storyboards need to be written out; cameras need to be animated and tweaked; characters and objects within the scene need to be animated; polish is a long and monotonous process. Option A is less plausible simply because of all this work. Think of all the cinematic sequences in GW2 and think about how long that would take (And, of course, time is money).
Despite the time and costs, this would certainly take the story you have and make it one of the best stories you could find on the MMO market, hands down. You just need some good animators and a director with enough vision to take on the job (COUGH.[Just Kidding{No, really}]).
Option B – Theatrical Cinematics
“But Mr. Keegan”, you ask, “aren’t the Guild Wars 2 cinematics already theatrical?” Yes and no. If your definition of a theatrical performance is some people on a stage saying things, then it is. However, anyone who has been involved with theater knows that theatrical storytelling is all about movement and expression and showing your words, rather than saying your words.
A theatrical cinematic style would enhance the current format by keeping a static camera and the lovely backdrops that the art-gods of Arenanet have crafted. The addition of props, facial & body expressions, and more characters on-screen would adhere to the format in-place, while greatly enhancing the visual storytelling which, to be honest, is just as important as the verbal storytelling.
In Colclusion,
The potential for storytelling in the Guild Wars universe is something I have always been awe-struck by. Having done some Guild Wars 2 storytelling of my own, I decided that the lore was too rich and the story was too epic to suffer the state it is currently in. To recap:
- A film-style cinematic approach would cost a lot of time and resources, but would ultimately be the most conducive to the story and to the player’s experience
- A theatrical-style cinematic approach would be easier technically, if less immersive. However, this approach would still produce a better story experience for the player.
I’ll see you all in-game and look forward to your feedback!
-Keegan