Guild Wars 2

Scarlet’s portrayal is one of her biggest crowd-splitters, some love the chaotic nature of this psychopathic Sylvari while others utterly detest her joker like slapstick behavior but if there’s one thing I would advise A-net it is this, make a better bad guy.

The problem with Scarlet is what is she tied to? the answer? Nothing, she is not tied to anything, we don’t know what her motive is and because its been too vague to truly understand that is the problem, there’s no “surprise twist” at the end, you kinda get the impression what ever scarlet attacks next “wont” be surprising because its scarlet, shes mad, she attacks everything, we get it.

Its time to move on, this char’s attempt to be portrayed has failed and its the fault of poor implementation into the game, not giving us enough clear-cut logic as to her behavior, stop treating people like they don’t “read” the web-site or go to the forum, people do both you know.

Now, anger aside, I don’t actually “hate” scarlet, I find the problem is I get why A LOT of people don’t like her.

Instead of proposing what is wrong with Scarlet I will instead offer my own feedback on what might be a better way to implement future antagonists be they a humanoid or monstrous individual.

Lets start with Dragons:

The Dragons in Guild Wars 2 were meant to be the central focus and we have slipped increasingly far from the tree, we have nothing to tell about dragons now because we are busy cleaning up the mess of scarlet briar and her collaboration of comical bandits from different aspects of the world, but they are little better than bandits and are portrayed as generally simple cultures, they are boring, simply put, and have no interesting diversity what so ever.

The Dragons corruption was the main antagonist during the launch and the personal story, the focus was on how the dragons influential powers tore the very world asunder and altered entire vast chunks of land, and that by defeating one, we have eliminated an entire chunk of that threat in one swoop.

But the build up to that plot focused not on the bad guys but the people we knew. The Pact story is a fantastic example of where things went down hill, up until we joined the pact a lot of the personal story revolves around a choice around a decision you make; yet in the end some of those decisions get irrelevant because of plot development.

This is the problem, you should not give people choice then take it away in favor of a narrow path, choices should be less about decisions and consequences and more the method in which you actually go by making a situation. It would make the “Personality” traits that you try to attain more important such as the difference between a dignified approach vs a brutal approach to a situation.

This is why in my opinion the story focus should be in this format from now on:

Focus less on having lots of choices and focus more on having choices that matter, maybe one or two major plot choices in an entire arc of the story that have a radically different approach to the same end but ultimately meet the same general direction, that way you at least feel like the choice is yours on how you proceed.

E.g:

In one situation with the Pact you could have a decision between maybe, sending an entire Vigil Army to deal with a servant of Jormag, vs sending a small team of Priory investigators to research the beast and locate where its hideout is.

This would achieve the same result either way but have a different approach as to how, equally it feels less like you have to suffer for the decision and more that you made a decision to do something, regardless of the morals.

Now regarding antagonists:

This is where Living Story could finally be interesting and finally make more valuable impacts on the game.

Personal story, should be where the humanoid antagonists go, the faces of Tyria that you deal with on a day to day basis, while Living Story focuses more about the ongoing struggle to take down a single overpowering enemy, such as a Dragon.

Personal Nemesis should feel personal, which is why a secondary villain should have a humanoid face while a primary one such as Jormag and the other dragons should just stampede down with a horde of dark forces utterly ravaging the land while you and your friends make a stand against it.

This is how to make living story effective, in my opinion and personal story too, by giving a personal villain you can say that the personal antagonist is someone you get to know, someone you meet regularly and finally fell as part of a build up to the living stories main drive.

This also means: Don’t be afraid to let heroes die, the entire value of a good bad guy is someone that hurts you on a personal level, trashing your player HQ would be a fine start since that would be a good example of loosing something very personal to you, another would be, killing a close friend who over the course of one of the story arcs you have got to know on a personal level.
Another example of a good antagonist is someone that literally does “something” evil, to you, which causes you to in some way or form be the cause of something much greater such as, stealing a part of your soul to summon and awaken Jormag, which would be more than enough incentive to say “that dragon has my soul, I want it back”.

There is also a classic example of bad guy vs good guy, the villains triumph is what empowers the hero to stop them. By the bad guy doing something they actually succeed in achieving, terrible results from, things that especially affect you on a personal level, that shows just how much of an impact you can give, and it has FAR more power than just having a typical villain laugh in your face while trashing your favorite city.

Its the sentimental value of that place, that place you helped build, now being blown to pieces in front of you by some scumbag that wants to hurt “you” personally for interrupting their malevolent plans, someone that has decided you must die, or suffer unspeakably.

There is also the corrupted hero approach, the approach where the real antagonist is actually someone you know personally, someone who has helped you in the past, continues to help you now, only for you to realize that their quest to ‘destroy the dragon orb’ that controls Jormag was actually a ploy to help them get close enough to take it for themselves, and betray you at the critical moment.

A good antagonist leaves scars, a great antagonist leaves scars that you want to inflict deeply into them, you want them to suffer before they die, or go out with an honorable final duel to the death in which the hero triumphantly defeats them in a heroic clash of epicosity. Or in their dying breaths they speak a philosophical view point that leaves you questioning your own ethics and weather you would have done the same in their place.

A good antagonist, leaves you feeling satisfied your chapter with that person reached its closure and now you can move onto a bigger threat like the Dragon itself, now out of control since you defeated the only person able to control it.

Then… there are the other aspects…., voice acting comes to mind.

Its not just having a voice actor, its having a POWERFUL voice actor, someone that can CARRY the charisma of a good antagonist, their voice filled with deviant ire, powerful authority, playful spite, but most importantly, evil.

They can come across as the hero that stands by your side, maybe a general of the pact that has come to help you all the way, even saved your life once, only for that critical moment to compel the actors personality to change like a brutal twist and suddenly your up against “the” big bad of this arc of your personal story, that’s a kitten harsh turn man, you just lost a friend and they nearly killed you doing it, with all that ire, and that voice acting.

It is very important to not just act the role but to be able to FEEL the role, the bad guy NEEDS to be compelling and NEEDS to have a certain charisma because a humanoid face needs to be someone you KNOW over time.

Take the Vizer from the first Guild Wars, he actually actively helps you achieve your goals and even protects you several times because he knows of your value and your use to him. That was a pretty interesting element of his char, you knew he was sinister in some way, but when he finally betrays you, it comes at the opportune moment for his personal gain.

He takes what is his and leaves you for dead, that’s exactly what a bad guy would do, and how they would do it. Even a sociopath psycho like Scarlet needs some directional plan in her chaotic absence of planning, she likely has an over-all goal, a final product of her actions, that’s whats missing.

We need those motives, that voice acting, the depth of character, from both heroes and bad guys to give us compelling reasons to care for them. We need to feel they care about us too and their actions reflect that, when we help them we truly feel important for it.

A lot of this is missing in Guild Wars 2, the first real sign of showing progress against evil is with the destruction of the tower which was an impressive cinematic and the general direction the living story should take, but I admit, it needs to focus more on monstrous antagonists for the living story.

Why?

Because monsters are easier to do for a story that focuses on multiple people at once, it emphasizes the threat is bigger than just one person alone can handle, its a threat everyone needs to take down.

Scarlet is not a threat, scarlet is an annoyance, scarlet is basically someone that has too many red buttons to touch simultaneously and that’s the problem, she needs to be stopped purely because shes a child with a firework in her hand.

Shes not a threat, shes just a bad pun.

We need a “threat” a “motive” to feel that “threat” needs to be stopped otherwise they will do THIS to our favorite personal city or whatever, things like that are important, very important.

Sometimes we need to mop up the remains of that threat, as we are doing, but what I view as essential either way, is having a reason, even a bad guy needs one.

So please A-net, take this to heart, from a person trying to love Gw2 for its story, id like to see depth, lots, of depth, and just that little bit more than a simple episodic storyline every 2 weeks.

Sorry for the extremely long post, but I felt this was important to convey the point across, I will try to give a TL:DR version but this is basically my over-all summary of suggestions on how to set the tone right and what to do in general that keeps people motivated and why in terms of story development, thank you for reading.