Guild Wars 2

Ok, So I’ve been playing the game sense the head start I got extra character slots, so I could experience every class with out being tied to a decision I’ve gone through at least 1 of each race’s stories. and went through each story line of the orders. to be honest I really do not see my self making another character to see the other parts of the story. It’s not that they are boring, my biggest issue is the choices are an illusion. the story line it self if you drew it out on paper would look like a tournament bracket. a LOT of potential start points but it all branches up to the same thing in the end. In main story plot points, regardless of race/Order they end up telling the same story, with the same ending. at this point I feel you should have stuck with what you did in guild wars 1. one strait story. few choices, but when you made a choice you were stuck with it and it meant some thing.

in Guild Wars: Factions, you choose between the Kurz and the Lux. and for the next few missions you’re playing in Kurz/Lux areas, of course it ends in the same place, but it makes it worth going back to check out the other side of the story because any thing that happened on the Kurz side, was completely different on the lux side.

in Guild Wars: Nightfall, at various plot points you are forced to choose a path, generally the out come of that choice is you’re stuck with a certain hero set until you beat the game. and it was always interesting to go back and check out the other side of the story.

in Guild Wars 2, the choices are many. but they nothing seems real permanent about them. which is a big issue for a game that advertises a game with a epic story with a lot of choices that have an affect on the world. the way I fee the story runs for gw2 (correct me if I’m wrong)

Act 1 You solve an issue related to your start game questions.

Act 2 You solve another issue related to you start game choices.
-No choices made in Act 1 had any sort of affect on your Act 2 Story

Act 3 You are deciding what order you want to join, regardless of what missions you choose to do, the only mission that matters is the final mission when you choose what order to join, none of your choices will be referenced later on, you can avoid doing any mission from any order and still join that order as long as it’s the last mission choice.

Act 4 you are in training with your mentor from the order you joined, until you go to claw island. no matter what choices you’ve made before this mission, there is going to be one out come spoiler:mentor all ways dies to save you

Act 5 you began forming “the pact” and prepare for your return to claw island, once again none of your previous story mentioned, really doesn’t matter either.

the story becomes pretty strait forward at this point. yes there are a lot of choices between doing this mission or that mission. but the outcome all leads to the same place with nothing changed regardless of the decision. off the top of my head, I remember a mission shortly after the pact was formed involving a certain Norn.
Spoiler:She get's captured by Krait while you're hunting for the orb, you have a choice to ambush them while they are transferring the orb or you can take the fight to them, in both cases the Norn girl is captured, in both cases you end up in a risen krait infested area fighting your way to the top of their wood island ship wreck thing just to find your norn friend dead and corrupted like the Krait. You "put her out of her misery" then go back to her home town to tell her tale.

things like this keep up until you are at the final mission in Orr no matter what race you picked in the beginning or what you picked for the starting questions, no matter what choices you made in the story, you end up here, I honestly didn’t feel much build up either seeing as my hero’s spot light was stolen by some passive Sylvari. But in the end none of my story was referenced or even mattered. I’m watching the same events and taking part in the same story and watching the same ending as every one else, and unless your party is close guildies who ran your story with you and your ran theirs there is no way of knowing any one’s story, in the final mission I might as well have been some random warrior who got off a ship at the right time for the big fight. that entire Epic journey added up to nothing. regardless of what story branch I picked. the people who were going to die in the story died. I can think of 2 points where your choices became relevant for a short time. 1 is when you picked a race to recruit 2 when returning to claw island you have to recruit some one/group to join the pact and help take the island. I think that sums it up.

I think it’s to late to “fix” this problem. in terms of what’s all ready made, but in the future from a story perspective I’d like to see choices matter. if I do the human story line about my lost sister, after finding my sister. I would like to see an option to recruit her into the pact, or some thing that has to do with her down the road. I think we need less choices and make those choices have more impact on the game. I think that’s what would make the story more replayable to the public. because I want to go back and see what this choice would do. or even give multiple endings based on your decisions. I want them to mean some thing. I want to see my impact on my personal world. and the ability to enter areas that represent my personal world and interact with them.