Warning This post will contain very detailed spoilers. If you have not finished your Personal Story line or completed the final dungeon do not continue reading if you wish to be suprised
So I finished the final dungeon in story mode. Killed Zhitan and then completed the victory celebration. I have done all dungeons story mode, completed all dynamic events and completed all personal story chapters. I began playing on August 25th at midnight and have clocked > 200 hours in game, here is what I would change regarding story in future expansions.
- Better story – Kid gloves off, you need better writers. You might hate me for that, but here’s the harsh truth guys, when I watched characters die in this game I had no emotional attachment. I did not care. I’m the kind of personal who usually does care a great deal and I came into GW2 biased in a good way, I loved GW1 so when I say I think the writing in general could use some work I’m saying that with positive fan boy blinders on. I do however love a lot of the dialog between characters, again it’s overall large concepts that fail for me.
- Better editing and better scripting. The final boss battle was uneventful and honestly just a giant mess. It wasn’t even difficult.
- GW2 has a lot going for it in terms of UI, graphics, action combat, etc… but the game itself feels very unfinished. The first GW series of games had a story I was engaged in and cared a great deal about. This one feels more grandiose but has much less depth. Honestly it’s pretty weak. My priory mentor died and I still felt like we had just met. There wasn’t enough content and dialog between when I met him and when he died that I would give a care.
It seems some very basic elements of plot are missing here. I suppose you could say the game plays out through a series of smaller story archs, like a book of short stories about the players character that leads up to a final confrontation. After playing it I imagine that’s how it must have been originally envisioned I also feel strongly it fails because the smaller story archs aren’t long enough and again I just don’t care when the darkest hour of those archs occurs. The game needed a monolithic story arch through personal story and needed cooperative missions sprinkled in between personal story chapter levels. That’s a system that would work.
How do you implement cooperative missions in GW2? From a UI perspective they would work like personal story instances but should be repayable and not bound to character at all. These are for every player. Special icon for the map would indicate where they are located in the world, party runs up to zone and is prompted to. They should be repayable and their should be a hardmode option for those at level 80.
If you’re wondering what kind of things I would have liked to have seen? Well, in general just better story telling I guess. Something bigger to fight for. For example
I was envisioning perhaps The Grove being destroyed by Zhitan and the Pale Tree (Sylvari god) stepping in and transforming herself into a giant creature to assist in the final battle. As the cannons are going off she’s up the air fighting too. Zhitan overpowers her dragon form and ultimately she sacrifices herself for the party…. Along those lines…
(edited by SamTheGuardian.2938)