The dark truth about the personal Story:
To poot it simply… it’s unexciting… and boring! (with the worst offender being the Norn one) …and almost all released game reviews verified that!
I find it imposible to get immersed to these emotionless characters, and the imminent threat of the elder dragons, and it certenly convinced me to avoid buying any of the GW novels. Whenever there is one of those dialogue cutscenes there are always two unexciting characters looking at eachother, exchanging woodeng pieces of dialogue, with no bmg to make the mood, unless it’s left over from the area you were just in.
Other MMO’s have also put little effort in their story delivery, but I believe that GW2 hit the dreadded uncanny valley on that aspect. With that I mean that it has enough effort to be taken seriously as a future of the game and not as just a dressing, yet not enough to be good despite being classified as a game future.
To make the story more engaging:
The first step is to put some emotion to the main characters, There is a basic rule in the movie buisness, and that is “Show! Don’t tell!” that Arena-net failed miserably to follow when it come to character emotions. There is a simmilar rule in video games saying “Play! don’t Show!” but since we are dealing with the game’s primarry storytelling mode here, this one is meant to be ingored here.
The goal is to as said to put some emotion into the main characters, but since the talking cutscenes don’t allow for that, I suggest adding some sort videos or in-game cutscene that are fully motion captured in a few key character introductory moments. Such moments (with examples) are:…
- One right after the prologue (ex. As a Human wake up in the inn and go downstairs, or as a Sylvari awaken from your the dream to the real world) to get to know and get attached your own character.
- At least one to get a hint of the problems of each members of Destiny’s Edge at some point in the early 10 levels (ex. Finding Captain Logan staring at a hidden picture suggesting Q. Jennah and hiding it away as he sees you aproaching).
- One upon meating the 3 Order representatives for the first time as they argue with each other to make the player feel the imminent important decision.
- One upon meating your mentor of your sellected order doing something that defines his character (ex. Finding Forgal beating a new recruit in training only to help him get up moments later and sending him to patch him self).
- One more where your character gets beaten by his fears.
- ect…
That makes that makes 5*3=15 videos for the pre lvl30 story, about 3*2=6 videos for the 3 orders story, and 3 more videos for the “facing your fears” story, and lets say 1 more when facing Orr That’s 24 video cut-scenes, and if you take into account that they don’t have to be anything big full motion epic with moving artwork and stuff (just an in-game cutscene would be enough) I think it would be possible.
Step 2:
The current talking cutscenes are not working very well… at all! ..and I don’t mean the technical point of vew. I suggest improving them by having more than 2 character appearing on the cut-scene (at least 4) and then have a set number of camera angles for each exchange of dialogue. Here it is done by a small unknown (at the time) polish developer in 2008 using biowares Aurora Engine. If you noticed, there were about 4-6 camera angles in total and they were changing each time someone was allowing someone alse to speak (in the sequel it’s improved so in some or most camera angles, more characters are visible). Once changed, the engine would still be extreamly customisable for future content addition as the camera angles might as well be changing in random.
Some new and more complex poses other than standing scratching your kitten or being fallen down would be apreciated (some that could take advantage of the camera angles) like walking around for example.
Final Step:
Scratch/remake the entire Trahearne and most Norn dialogues make them more enjoyable and give them more emotion. Pehaps also give Trahearne a re-designe, like paint him into a brighter collor, have him wear an non-sylvary armour and a backpack with goodies suggesting that he is well traveled, and have him later exchange it for an epic metalic noticable armor once he become leader of the pact.
After these changes, I belive that the story will become decent. A-net could make each cutscene whatchable from the log for the players who have already passed that point, and/or put an option in the options to return the story to the original simpler mode for the few lunatics who liked it.