Guild Wars 2

Could I be the only one who preferred it over the current voice-over-gameplay-or-whatever-you-wanna-call-it system? One of the good things about it was that it was skippable but I’m a sucker for lore, so I mostly let it play out. The main advantage of that system for me was that you pretty much had to see what NPCs look like up close. During gameplay, I keep the camera as far as possible at all times, so I have very little idea of what all the new NPCs look like unless they’re shown close up in cutscenes.

Meh. I don’t know where I was going with that. All I’m saying is, I liked it. I guess not everyone did, or they wouldn’t have changed it.

While I like the actual in-game story dialogue system, I do miss the old one. I liked to see the faces more clear and easy.

It had it’s merits, but I prefer the newer system myself. The skippable part is nice, to be sure, but I personally find it flows better when it doesn’t cut to a talking close up. I like seeing where everyone is during a conversation, and how they move about while they talk rather than just the 2 people on the screen at once limitation.

I’m mixed, I like them both, and, I guess we still ‘have’ both, depending on what part of the story you are playing. If you never make a new character again and play through the story, you won’t get to see it moving forward, I suppose. I do like the old side-by-side. It had a neat style about it.

My only struggle with the new ‘in game’ cut scenes is the dialog volume. There’s something about how my Realtek 5.1 audio works with this particular game, or perhaps how they chose to do their dialog, that makes it hard for me to hear them unless I keep turning to face each of them. Don’t really have anyone to help me figure out if there are settings I can change to make that work different. Most games that have 5.1, if I’m not facing someone, it’ll just come out loud from one of the other speakers. This game doesn’t work like that. It moves spatially, but then the volume drops off quite a bit.

I definitely like them both. I don’t want to get rid of hte new system, as its much nicer. But I am sad that the old system doesn’t appear at all in newer content. I liked the closeup of the characters

I like both systems. The older style was nice for extended dialog during a break in the action, when the focus should be on what’s being said rather than what’s happening (and allow the option to skip through it). The new system is more immersive, and allows for dialog during the action — fighting and talking at the same time, or “hey look at that” type comments while moving through the environment.

I think they both have their uses, and I’d like to see the older system still used when we have longer narratives.

I like both. The old one was a nice way to have a little break in the action while having some part of the story told to you. The new one keeps you engaged and actually shows your character interacting with the characters directly, rather than just semi-facing one other NPC.

I have mixed feelings on it but overall I think I prefer the old system.

I think the big benefit of the new system is that it allows for better integration of dialogue and actions. You can see what a character is doing and what’s happening around them while they’re speaking so when they react to something you actually see it. Whereas under the old system all you saw was two people standing against a generic backdrop talking calmly to each other. Sometimes that just didn’t make sense – a character would say something like “Oh no! What’s that?!” and I’d have no clue what they were talking about because all I saw was them standing there. But it also interfered with my immersion – because I was looking at two people calmly exchanging lines I found that when I had the sound on it was impossible to forget I was listening to actors in a studio calmly reading their lines and it made any issues with the dialogue glaringly obvious.

But the problems I have with the new system are worse. I often have to play with the sound off because my PC is in the main room of the house and it’s often too noisy to hear (and most of the time I can’t wear headphones because I can’t be cut off from what’s going on). Which means if someone is behind me, too far in front or otherwise off camera when they’re speaking the first I know of it is when I notice the chat box is moving and it’s not guild chat. Even worse I read quiet slowly, so it’s highly unlikely I’ll get through an entire dialogue box in the time it’s on-screen.

Between the two I basically have to wait until a ‘scene’ has finished and I’m done fighting (if necessary) then stop everything while I scroll the chat box back up and re-read the conversation. Then I can resume playing. It’s even more of a break in the action for me than the old cut scenes.

In some games that problem is solved by adding the option that conversations (and the associated action) will pause until you press a button to say you’re ready to proceed to the next bit, but I don’t think that’s practical in a multiplayer game.

What I’d prefer is a mix of the two – full action cut scenes where we see the characters moving around, stuff happening etc. but it’s a cut scene, the camera is always in the right position to hear/see what people are saying and what’s going on and you’re not having to move and fight while you listen to it. But my understanding is those have to be unskippable because otherwise it causes weird bugs with characters not being in the right places. I suspect the number of people who want to skip all dialogue outnumber people who find the new dialogue impossible to follow so it’s pretty unlikely to change.

I really liked the old system because I liked seeing my characters close up and I feel it set GW2 apart from other mmos.

I like the old system better but wish Anet would have gone with a mass effect style cinematic for these story dialogues.

I just miss the ability to skip all these boring dialogs that I’ve heard way too many times already.

I like the newer system better, but then as a GW1 player it is more to what I was used to. The cinematic system always bugged out weird, showing bald characters and stuff.

The cinematic system had style, but it was also awkward and lacked appropriate atmosphere and weight to the dialogue. The new method is much better, ofc with the downside of being unskippable.

I prefer the old system, because it was skippable. -_-
Not that I spite the story overly much (though it is kinda groan-worthy), but I refuse to put up with it for the purpose of retrying achievements. With the old system, it was easier to program those skip points because it’s built into the scene to get all the little dolls in place before triggering the action.

If I hear the dialogue for the first two instances in LS3 one more time …

I loved the old system too. It was nice to see the character up close. I just wish it had better animations to show emotions than just stand there…