Guild Wars 2

That’s why i don’t know a single sane person who enjoyed the campaign. I skipped every single cutsceen because dialogue made my ears bleed, voice acting made my brain explode and cutsceens themselves were eye exploding. ‘kiddy’ is the category i’d class gw2’s story. A young kid may enjoy it or an old person who’s tired of everything and actually want the stupid goofiness but not your average gamer who bought this game to play it daily.

Nuka Cola.8520:

That’s why i don’t know a single sane person who enjoyed the campaign. I skipped every single cutsceen because dialogue made my ears bleed, voice acting made my brain explode and cutsceens themselves were eye exploding. ‘kiddy’ is the category i’d class gw2’s story. A young kid may enjoy it or an old person who’s tired of everything and actually want the stupid goofiness but not your average gamer who bought this game to play it daily.

Well, actually there is one exception to the campaign being horrible, and that would be the Sylvari White Stag arc. Not to spoil too much more about it, but it provides an interesting variance within the usual ranks of the Nightmare Court and is where Caithe shows a little bit more of her darker qualities, to the protests of the player. That one, and the Asuran storyline where one lover gets trapped in a golem and then other lover chooses to also be trapped inside a golem to be with her forever. Aside from those two exceptions (and tiny moments here and there), I agree with you.

when master Togo died in guild wars 1, my heart lurched a little. when Rurik came back as undead slave, i was kitten ed off. nightfall was meh, because of what happened near the end with kormir. and the final expansion with Jora was pretty awesome, because of how the story was written.

Honestly, the flipflopping I would see as a good thing…If as you said, they actually provided some decent background for it aside from thinking the player will think in terms of semi-objective neutral perspective that doesn’t immediately assume they’re just bad guys. I remember reading the blog posts pre-release, and there was some decentish background to many that you encounter (I can’t recall if centaurs were in this mix and I’m pretty sure that bandits definitely weren’t), but as you said, that’s supposed to be visible in the world, not in walls of text that, now, are only inconveniently accessible.

However, the biggest mess is by far the personal story. As I’ve discussed with my guildmates very shortly after release, probably the biggest issue is the pacing. They too quickly go from one story arc to the next to the point that you barely make any real connections to any of the characters you encounter and when you finally hit a story arc that might seem to slow down and let that happen, like say the Orders arc (which as you demonstrate, is kind of qualitatively messy in its own right), they whaat?kill off your partner in crime for practically no good reason.

It’s even worse when considering certain early choices lead to deeper or shallower stories, making a player almost regret their choice, which should be avoided as much as possible when making multiple choices for a story.

I’ve been around the lore for years now, so I continue to trudge through it regardless, but I can easily see the ugly parts for what they are. I just try to make up for it by having fun smashing and blasting stuff while occasionally speculating on the areas that they (for good or bad) haven’t elaborated on.

This is common in the MMO genre.

The story telling is terrible. Characters have no emotion, no personality and no history. Therefore players don’t care about them. Stories are told through characters. If the audience doesn’t care about the characters then they won’t care about the story.

Calae.1738:

This is common in the MMO genre.

The story telling is terrible. Characters have no emotion, no personality and no history. Therefore players don’t care about them. Stories are told through characters. If the audience doesn’t care about the characters then they won’t care about the story.

Pretty much this and only thing. MMO standards when it comes to story are as low as it gets in the gaming industry.

The story in GW2 is HORRENDOUS, as I said many time before. The cutscene of two persons standing around and talk is just… lazy. However, cutscene can be forgiven, but the story is JUNK material

Tai Kratos, I wish you didn’t stop. There are many players who succumb to eye-rolls and skipping scenes, if not abandoning the story altogether (like me), but I’ve never seen such an incredibly well written post(s) explaining why the story is so unappealing. I see truth in every comment you made regarding silliness and maturity, and I share your disappointment at how it all comes out in the game. Maybe my hopes were raised by the fact they had novels, giving the indication that the writing was going to be good, but I did not get that impression from the actual game content. The writing is eh. Like you, I also find it incredibly undermining when it comes to dealing with factions or lesser races like Skritt. No explanations are given, its just “Go kill X of [creature type]” without any dialog. Sure they’re saving us from having to read walls of text, but I don’t think their alternative is any better.

Again, very well-written, and thank you.

for MMO Standarts Guild Wars 2 is actually pretty good. Some MMO’s may have a really cool Story, like Guild Wars does, but nearly all of them suck at bringing it to the Player.

I’m used to much bad Storytelling, so the Personal Story of Guild Wars 2 wasn’t that bad for me, even if the Voice Acting awful in certain parts, no MMO ever had everything 100% Voice Acted before.

Justdeifyme.9387:

for MMO Standarts Guild Wars 2 is actually pretty good. Some MMO’s may have a really cool Story, like Guild Wars does, but nearly all of them suck at bringing it to the Player.

I’m used to much bad Storytelling, so the Personal Story of Guild Wars 2 wasn’t that bad for me, even if the Voice Acting awful in certain parts, no MMO ever had everything 100% Voice Acted before.

To be fair, GW2 doesn’t have everything voiced. That award goes to The Old Republic.

And I am aware that story telling is difficult to do in an MMO space, I’m not discounting that. But I feel that they were able to do better in GW1, so it is disappointing to me to see a step backwards in quality for them as a company.

I’m also used to bad story telling in MMOs. (Take Aion for example… that was really bad.) But just because we’re used to it, doesn’t mean it’s impossible to tell a story well or that Anet isn’t capable of it.

And I appreciate the comment, arjeidi.

Anet is capable of Telling a Story, The little Storymode Dungeon Story I liked. They just screwed up with the Personal Story.

I honestly and sincerely think the voice-acting makes things harder to take seriously, not necessarily because I believe it’s bad (not that I believe it’s good, either), but giving voices to things sometimes just strips something from it.

My two cents an’ all.

Tai Kratos.3247:

Claw Island wasn’t bad I guess

It was for me….
I’m pretty convinced it was Anet’s most Elaborate trolling since April1 2007

If there is any aspect of Guild Wars 2 that feels like it needs a complete rework, overhaul, worthy of starting a new character to experience the improvement level of change, it’s the writing in the main story.

I always anticipate the writing being bad in a game. Take Battlefield 3 for instance. The story mode for that reads like an episode of 24, but it’s still TV series quality. Guild Wars 2… it’s difficult to see how it was approved for live release.

Trahearne, the entire story after your personal story, is so universally stomach churning that like others, I had to skip the dialog to be willing to continue. Cutscenes I couldn’t cancel were a punishment.

My first thought was… Maybe I’ve outgrown the market they’re targeting with these games. Maybe they know that their best customer is under the age of 12 and is looking for something more in line with their Saturday morning favorites (I say this not to be tongue in cheek insulting, but seriously wondered) than anything subtle.

Spoilers Ahead.

Things that are so “oh… please.. must..hold…down…lunch..”:

- Eir telling you how much you taught her about being a hero (priory companion also thanks you for teaching them so much about self sacrifice…) when, in the case of the brawler story line, you spent most of your time beating up hapless combatants using your full ability set only to in the end, beat the “great champion” who fought you with their fists while you -wasted them with grenades-.

- The need to call you “The Slayer” or “The Valiant” hundreds of times.

- Nearly everything about Trahearne’s story. From the line at Claw Island, “You’re a scholar, not a general, why should we trust you?!” to “You’ll find with unity that many impossible things can be accomplished” to his acting like a middle school child sending you out to ask for candid reactions from his generals so he can see if they “Like/Not Like” him. His lines. His motivation. His “stirring” speeches (which, by the way, for whatever reason the NPCs feel compelled to tell him were stirring speeches.).

- Tybalt. Just… wow. I thought maybe there would be a more serious story with a group like the OoW, espionage, politics and assassinations you must coordinate and take part of. Instead, you’re thrown into the worst B movie level spy humor imaginable with him. When you infiltrate the pirate camp, and he’s just free-styling pseudo-pirate talk… and that boyish “I get to be a real spy now Trahearne, like, asking questions and everything!”.

- Self sacrifice at claw island. Because gates only close from the inside and there is no way after being punished with their companionship for several missions I won’t be relieved that they chose to add another corpse to the mound.

- Completely disjointed story line involving the mesmer pretending to be a vigil soldier. She tries to make you look bad. Ok, I got that. She wants to discredit me. Makes sense, I am doing all the work after all and anyone with any sense can see all Trahearne does is fight a single low health NPC for 9 minutes of every 10 in a mission. Then… you report it to Trahearne. He’s you know, “not really sure”.

Then they ambush the camp. He then makes some comment about how discrediting you was really to get at him…. What? The camp ambush and fake soldier rescue though, that wasn’t enough to make the problem obvious.

Instead, you next seem him chiding other soldiers about the gates being broken “perhaps sabotaged?” Who are there? None other than more fake Vigil soldiers. You finally go with him to slowly confront the mesmer. What’s the most out of place series of lines in the entire chain? Something like, “You seem to smart to be a typical zombie.” Response: “My will is Zhaitans”.

Uhm.. ok

It’s essentially hours worth of telling instead of showing, over emphasis on just how unique and special a snowflake you are while making sure you know that the real special and unique snowflake is Trahearne. Petty squabbles and cluelessness from nearly every other NPC you meet until they become wise enough to submit to a whining Sylvari.

Contrast this to some of the conversation you come across between NPCs in the world, in cities. Some of it is clever, cute. It can make you smile when you hear it for the first time as it’s a little unexpected.

Sorry for the long rant, but like the OP, if I hadn’t found the gameplay as fun as I did initially, I would have quit over the story. It’s bad enough that it severely detracts from the game.

Kirschwasser.3972:

I honestly and sincerely think the voice-acting makes things harder to take seriously, not necessarily because I believe it’s bad (not that I believe it’s good, either), but giving voices to things sometimes just strips something from it.

My two cents an’ all.

It would be difficult, as a voice actor, to take the lines I was given seriously. How this affected the performances is impossible to know, but had to be a factor.

I agree 100% Tai, and the snoozefest of a fight with Zhaitan at the end is the frosting on the grumblecake.

ilr.9675:

Tai Kratos.3247:

Claw Island wasn’t bad I guess

It was for me….
I’m pretty convinced it was Anet’s most Elaborate trolling since April1 2007

Haha, yeah… I see your point. I agree with that part, but I meant “it wasn’t bad” in that it actually built some atmosphere. To me, it actually felt, to a degree, that claw island was under a severe and important assault, so the moment actually had some gravity to it. Where Claw Island fell short for me was in a few key areas:

- The cheesy, overly confident commander who denies that there is any danger but realizes his mistake in the end. But did his pride cost our heroes to much time? Can they light the beacons of Gondor… I mean, the beacons of Claw Island before it’s too late?!?

- Your partner in crime biting the dust for no apparent reason aside from destroying continuity between story arcs for the sake of ease.

- The break between halves of the mission. Claw island gets attacked, it’s overwhelmed… and then suddenly the mission is over because you need to get back up, so suddenly the sky is bright and sunny, the island is undead-free, and the risen army will patiently wait for me to finish all of my MMO chores before continuing their assault on the Island. Splitting Claw Island into two missions was a big mistake, in my opinion, because of that break in continuity.

I’m a fan of the good ol’ days of voiceless RPGs. Something about voice-acting tends to take me out of the experience more often than pull me in. It just never seems right to me in an RPG.

I guess part of it is the fact that they have to jump through so many hoops to make sure they don’t say your name and/or to make sure you don’t say anything. (Y’know, wh at with every PC-line being 10x as expensive as anybody else’s lines.)

Kirschwasser.3972:

I honestly and sincerely think the voice-acting makes things harder to take seriously, not necessarily because I believe it’s bad (not that I believe it’s good, either), but giving voices to things sometimes just strips something from it.

My two cents an’ all.

Honestly, with a MMO, with how much they already cost to make, they’d do much better to avoid investing in it. I feel like they feel they have to simply because people are so much more accustomed to it now, and/or want to play more than they want to read, so they went with it.

Then they must have realized how much that hurt their ability to tell a decent story, maybe, but it’s hard to say. The move to cyclical quests to keep the world interesting, which admittedly is pretty genius since it means the play-content doesn’t ever actually run out as is the case with the old quest model (finished all the quests? sorry, there’s…really nothing else out here for you…Uh…Raid? PvP? Will that work?), incidentally also cut their ability to tell some interesting stories.

Personally, I think that’s more prone to the fact that this is one of the first times it’s ever been done on such a large scale with a game, and as such, they were having some difficulty in balancing the show vs. tell factors of them. If you ask me, they may have leaned too heavily into the show aspect of it, basically resulting in the opposite of the personal story where they do so much telling.

Oh, as to games with good stories, besides TOR, there’s also The Secret World. It has its own issues, but some of the questlines are pretty fun and tell a good story simultaneously. The dialogue is also pretty enjoyable, all things considering with a MMO, and again, it’s spotty in places, but that seems to be the norm with games of this scale.

do’t forget that every single quest from malchor’s leap to cursed shore as a npc introduced and killed in the same chapter.
do you care about gretchen (the only name i can remember) or the scout lady when beating the mouth of zhaithan? or the guy with the dog that sacrifice his life in order to save a poor girl even if you ware face rolling the boss that tried to kill her?
i felt a little sorry for tegwen (at least we have her for 3 missions) and the asura bomber which name i forgot.

also i hated that the pale tree asked me what was my worst fear only so that can become true… you kitten!
although none of those choices reflected my worst fear, i mean, why my character should fear those things to begin with??

my first mission in the order of whispers was a drinking pirate death match, my boss a clown.

although the sylvari personal story arc was really interesting and new to me, very nice story telling, i was suddenly intrigued by the wyld hunt and all the fairy like concept around the life of a sylvari and caithe and trehaerne weren’t that bad there. it was like to be introduces in a community, every single npc i was caring of.

but than the orders happened and even worse trehaerne forgot about me… (than had caledbolg even if i retrieved it)…

and destiny’s edge? do we want to talk about their verbal abuse to each other in the grand plaza of lion’s arch? i was embarassed for them, it was like watching a really bad episode of gossip girl

+1(x3)

I agree in about 97%.

I’m all for jokes and light-hearted conent from time to time, but not the way Anet does it – throwing this into your face. This whole game feels like a one big Uldum from wow.

I kinda get the feeling that story is only enjoyable for hardcore lore-diggers (people who buy all books, read every blogspot or interview about lore, talk to every npc etc.).

So far living story only proved to be as bad, but maybe queen’s speech will change something.

Tai Kratos.3247:

(…) and that they did not want the players to have to read a “wall of text” to understand the context. (…)

Really? Then they failed badly… story via emails and out-of-game walls of texts.

i can take the queen too serious… she created and army of naked fembots in high heels…

Just to toss this out here… Guild wars was released in 2005 when the NAAL’s last statistical testing put the American public at a 8-9th grade reading comprehension level.

Since then we have seen numbers as low as (stupid censoring) 5th grade level, most analysis NAAL included putting us at 6-7th grade level. that is a huge difference. Perhaps its not laziness on Anet’s part?

It is possible the writing in video games is getting worse just like the reading level of recent best selling books have been going down, and for the same reasons. Just catering to the public.

Amadan.9451:

i can take the queen too serious… she created and army of naked fembots in high heels…

Eventually Logan will figure things out and Caithe will come around.

I don’t find the writing childish. The books I read for my daughter are childish so maybe we just have different take on that. Shallow definitely. It really needs more guts.

As for Trahearne – I’ve always imagined how the voice acting went was like this. The actor went into the studio and asked the director, or whoever, what the motivation was so he could get it all just right. The director had a hangover and just wanted the whole thing over with so he could go home (or out again) and said " The guy is a tree! Take it from there!"

Amadan.9451:

and destiny’s edge? do we want to talk about their verbal abuse to each other in the grand plaza of lion’s arch? i was embarassed for them, it was like watching a really bad episode of gossip girl

I think we’re supposed to be embarrassed for them. Except for Caithe, and maybe a lesser extent Eir, they all needed their heads knocked together. Showing how the mighty aren’t beyond the perils of behaving like squabbling idiots. Same with the Orders for that matter. They all rise up again beyond that to get the job done.

My take on that anyway.

hahahaahah thanks for the laugh… i wish we could at least have this kind of humor in the game^^

edit: sorry the confusion, the laugh was for Leo G post.
@zenleto i guess you have a point

Unleashed.6195:

My first thought was… Maybe I’ve outgrown the market they’re targeting with these games. Maybe they know that their best customer is under the age of 12 and is looking for something more in line with their Saturday morning favorites.

This is what I think… The target audience is clearly under 16 years old, no other explanation makes sense to me. I really can’t wrap my head around the horrible storytelling.

maybe we are just spoiled by bioware… there is no turning back from mass effect storytelling for me… (almost to the end).
if you play a game like fable after playing a game like mass effect you realize it’s not only an mmo issue the story telling in the games

I actually did feel sorry for the guy with the dog.

And really? Bioware? … That’s your standard for storytelling?

Maybe back when they had the people from Obsidian.

Lokki.1092:

Just to toss this out here… Guild wars was released in 2005 when the NAAL’s last statistical testing put the American public at a 8-9th grade reading comprehension level.

To be fair, even they admit that the lower scores have over representation by certain groups that are increasing in population % (ESL). I somehow doubt the game’s writing is any less ridiculous in languages other than English.

As for the decline in the quality of the writing between GW1 and GW2, I really don’t know how to explain it. They have set the bar so low, at least there is little chance of it getting worse. So long as they continue to allow cut scene skipping, I can at least enjoy the rest of the game and pretend the text doesn’t exist.

Amadan.9451:

hahahaahah thanks for the laugh… i wish we could at least have this kind of humor in the game^^

edit: sorry the confusion, the laugh was for Leo G post.
@zenleto i guess you have a point

No worries. If I’d taken as long as I usually do to make a post like this then there would have been no confusion

deSade.9437:

Unleashed.6195:

My first thought was… Maybe I’ve outgrown the market they’re targeting with these games. Maybe they know that their best customer is under the age of 12 and is looking for something more in line with their Saturday morning favorites.

This is what I think… The target audience is clearly under 16 years old, no other explanation makes sense to me. I really can’t wrap my head around the horrible storytelling.

If that’s true, then it’s sad for another reason. We need to expect more from our children. That any child old enough to participate in GW2 would find that level of story telling acceptable is a sad commentary on what literature they’ve been exposed to.

Reminds me of a show my daughter enjoys (she’s not even two yet, so I cut her some slack). Some small issue comes up, “I made a mess of my brother’s room”. Next thing you know, “Wow Super Readers, I made a mess of my brother’s room and don’t know what to do. This is a super big problem.”

No, it’s not. No, you don’t need to go on an adventure with a pig who thinks spelling is a super power to figure out what to do. Clean the room.

The same with GW2’s story. I don’t need to be called “The Slayer” every minute. I don’t need someone who is supposedly a super heroine in the game’s lore to tell me how much I’ve taught her after she goes off throwing a fit over petty problems. I don’t believe that 40+ ships that can overwhelm a fortress brimming with elite soldiers, stone walls and war machines, by launching near endless waves of undead somehow can’t stomp all over Lion’s Arch because we found the power of friendship.

Kirschwasser.3972:

I actually did feel sorry for the guy with the dog.

And really? Bioware? … That’s your standard for storytelling?

Maybe back when they had the people from Obsidian.

as far as games go yes, also for quality story telling like side quests, romance, character development and npc development.
all the other console games or even mmo i played were trash in comparison until dragon age origin came to life… and again was a bioware title…
even bethesda, as much as i love the immense lore and background they are able to create in all of their games it is lack luster in character depth and even more in npc depth.

mmo wise the only other mmo with interesting story telling was lotro… but as you can immagine it’s not developers merit since it’s all about a world previosuly created by a genius

Amadan.9451:

as far as games go yes, also for quality story telling like side quests, romance, character development and npc development.

Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2, 2 especially… So very good. Mass Effect… good, not great, but good. When the pretty started becoming more and more important (at the time of BG1/2, hardware acceleration was still a big deal :P), the stories got worse.

I’m going to respectfully disagree that Bioware has had stellar examples of storytelling since Baldur’s Gate 2. I see a lot of predictable plotlines that are surrounded by a lot of excellent production value that makes the story seem greater than it really is.

In the case of Dragon Age, it didn’t even really have that and it came off as a little too pandering to the Joss Whedon crowd. Though when one considers that Alistair was literally based on Xander, that explains that feeling.

Er… but yeah, the storytelling in GW2 isn’t exactly stellar, but I’ve never played MMOs with the expectation that the story would be amazing moreso than the lore and setting will be interesting.

Kirschwasser.3972:

Er… but yeah, the storytelling in GW2 isn’t exactly stellar, but I’ve never played MMOs with the expectation that the story would be amazing moreso than the lore and setting will be interesting.

It’s not that it just doesn’t quite live up to being amazing. It’s that it takes a nose dive off a cliff, pockets lined with lead, and swims full force down to some abyss at times.

Shagaz.6209:

I kinda get the feeling that story is only enjoyable for hardcore lore-diggers (people who buy all books, read every blogspot or interview about lore, talk to every npc etc.).

So far living story only proved to be as bad, but maybe queen’s speech will change something.

Tai Kratos.3247:

(…) and that they did not want the players to have to read a “wall of text” to understand the context. (…)

Really? Then they failed badly… story via emails and out-of-game walls of texts.

I’m one of those hardcore lore-digger types, and trust me, it’s not any better for us. At least, from those I’ve spoken with about it both early on and even now. If anything, it’s even more frustrating for us than for those who only want a passable story, not something that even makes them groan. If you’re groaning, you can imagine those invested in the lore are just tossing their hands up going, I’m done. That’s it. There’s nothing more that can redeem this story.

I left to play some other games for several months (not to mention other RL stuff) after they basically nuked my original area of interest in the game with the worst line ever from the Orrian King’s ghost, “Seek the source,” which was icing on the cake to the fact that the only character I might have any interest in was ditched. >_>

And an absolute yeaaah, on the last part. That’s what partially inspired the suggestion in my signature.

Lokki.1092:

It is possible the writing in video games is getting worse just like the reading level of recent best selling books have been going down, and for the same reasons. Just catering to the public.

…No. Just no. If we can have games like Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite, The Last of Us, The Walking Dead, Thomas Was Alone, and so on, we can’t cave to the idea that it’s getting worse. Yes, they are few (that come to my mind, I’m sure there are more yet still few relative to the volume of games being released), but that’s because video-games are still a young medium, and developers are still working out the best ways to tell a story.

We can have good writing in games, some of the backstories in GW even show this to a limited degree, but we need to maintain an expectation of it if we want to see it come around.

Unleashed.6195:

Lokki.1092:

Just to toss this out here… Guild wars was released in 2005 when the NAAL’s last statistical testing put the American public at a 8-9th grade reading comprehension level.

To be fair, even they admit that the lower scores have over representation by certain groups that are increasing in population % (ESL). I somehow doubt the game’s writing is any less ridiculous in languages other than English.

As for the decline in the quality of the writing between GW1 and GW2, I really don’t know how to explain it. They have set the bar so low, at least there is little chance of it getting worse. So long as they continue to allow cut scene skipping, I can at least enjoy the rest of the game and pretend the text doesn’t exist.

To be fair, even GW1’s campaign stories weren’t exactly the best. You could find way more interesting stuff from some of the quests. We almost have that in GW2, the events just need more polish and something to log their encounter to provide more depth to the event, so when you replay them you can have a better connection to what you’re doing. Not the best way of handling it, sure, but better than what we have now, I’d say.

Gmr Leon.1846:

To be fair, even GW1’s campaign stories weren’t exactly the best. You could find way more interesting stuff from some of the quests. We almost have that in GW2, the events just need more polish and something to log their encounter to provide more depth to the event, so when you replay them you can have a better connection to what you’re doing. Not the best way of handling it, sure, but better than what we have now, I’d say.

No, but far fewer of them made me groan and wonder how they ever made it live. I never remember feeling like they detracted from the game (there is only one series I remember feeling that “oh come on”, had something to do with a necromancer boss in a jungle… I forget now).

A lot of the storytelling in this game needs work. I particularly dislike the way the story of destiny’s edge is told. I agree with quite a lot of what the OP says. Not all of it, but quite a lot if it.

Don’t soldiers need discipline? Have you ever lived with soldiers? Many of them are extremely undisciplined. Outwardly there is discipline but you know…there’s a lot of not discipline too.

Scholars don’t argue? Really? You must know different scholars than I do. The scholars I know can’t agree on anything.

But aside from minor quibbles, the personal story does have some issues. Not to say it’s all bad, but as I’ve said before, it’s definitely uneven.

And after Claw Island it does tend to be more serious (though no more heartfelt).

However, that’s not all the writing in the game and some of the writing, around events, ambient dialogue and that sort of thing isn’t bad at all. Also as pointed out, some of the storylines are better than others. I liked some of the charr stories, at least one (maybe two of the Sylvari stories). The Asuran stories are pure silliness, but I think they’re meant to be and that’s okay. I’m not sure I’d equate silliness with childish though. You can be silly without being childish.

The thing I like the least about the story though is the telling of destiny’s edge’s story through dungeons. This is far too haphazard a way of telling their story.

First, not everyone does dungeons and most people don’t do them in order. That story should have been part of the personal story, as a separate thread, which would have added some much needed complexity.

The reason why the story seemed better in Guild Wars 1 (and the story wasn’t, but your attachment to characters was) has less to do with the writing and more to do with game design. Everything in Guild Wars 1 was instanced, so what you were doing around a story was directly related to the missions For example, while you were in Ascalon, you have four missions fighting the charr, but everything in the world was pretty much about the charr too. The world matched the story.

Here, you have different starting zones and different people doing different things at different times. It’s a lot harder for the world to match the story. The world isn’t instanced. What your story is and what someone else’s is might be completely different, but you’re in the same zone.

This is why stuff like War in Kryta was interesting. There was a pre Wik and a post WiK version of several instances. Winds of Change too. The conversations you heard in passing on the docks or in the streets pertained to where you were personally in the story. It’s harder to do that without instancing.

Some of the ambient dialogue, I find very good, though. Why? Because ambient dialogue isn’t slave to game play. They don’t need to tie this dialogue to a specific mission, so it’s not just about giving players something to do.

But in comparing the writing in Guild Wars 1 to Guild Wars 2, for the most part, it’s not really much better. There’s some pretty bad examples of writing from both games.

Anet needs to redo their entire story in my opinion. Literally, a 12 year old could’ve written that story. I find more joy poking a rock with a stick for 10 hours than actually following the GW2 story for 5 minutes. It’s like the writers of the story took all of the dialogue, dropped it off of the tallest building in the world into the depths of hell and decided not to redo it.

Lokki.1092:

Just to toss this out here… Guild wars was released in 2005 when the NAAL’s last statistical testing put the American public at a 8-9th grade reading comprehension level.

Since then we have seen numbers as low as (stupid censoring) 5th grade level, most analysis NAAL included putting us at 6-7th grade level. that is a huge difference. Perhaps its not laziness on Anet’s part?

It is possible the writing in video games is getting worse just like the reading level of recent best selling books have been going down, and for the same reasons. Just catering to the public.

Very interesting. I did not know about these studies….this solves a lot of the mysteries when you try to have an argument with a lot of forum goers here and other places.

Back to topic. I really don’t think OP needed to give that many reasons as to why the story in GW2 is horrible. In general, its just terrible. No single redeeming quality. Not worth the time. Its so horrible that trying to pick it apart is a headache.

Its also pitiful how Anet actually tried to sell us that the main story was one of its features. Whomever wrote the story should be fired, and whomever approved such an abomination should be ashamed.

I think this is something we can all agree about: GW2 story telling is lacking. But since it’s clear that everyone agrees with the basic premise of the original post, I think it would be more interesting to now discuss what Anet could do to improve. Because it’s easy to point out examples of poor story telling, but I think it would make this topic much more beneficial to maybe suggest ways in which their story telling could be improved.

So you could cite specific examples of what could be different, or just generalizations.

I think the base problem, above anything else, is an issue of tone. It seems like the game is caught in the awkward compromise of wanting to have this sort of witty self-awareness while maintaining a serious, meaningful tone, and it’s really hard to keep that balanced well. It ends up wobbling awkwardly between the two, giving us nothing really great on either end.

So I think if they just kept a consistently serious tone – and dabbled in some light humorous undertones here and there – it would make the story instantly better. Some people would say this is a bad thing and that the game is unique with its, dare I say, “quirky” tone. But what I’m advocating is that the humor be used in a “quality over quantity” way, and that the quality humor be placed tastefully and carefully, with a little bit more self awareness.

The problem isn’t the writing, it’s the way that the writing is implemented.

For those of you have had to write on spec or ghost write anything, it’s extremely easy to blame the writer, when in fact the problem is not often the writer at all. It’s the person who asks for the writing who insists on certain things.

For example, the writing in personal stories in this game is based on a game instance that is universal across all professions. We have to have this finished up in exactly 1 more story so we can move onto the next one. It has to contain this element and that element. It has to be over in this amount of time.

In other words, the writing is slave to the game elements, rather than the game elements being written around the writing. Which is why ambient dialogue in this game is often better than personal story dialogue. There’s less restriction of the writer.

A specific, example.

Write something where the main character has to choose between an orphanage and a hospital being destroyed by bandits. These are your characters. This is where the OP needs to end up. One of these things has to happen.

I’m not so sure the writers are at fault here.

Eh, I never gave it much thought, but then that in and of itself says something I suppose about how uninspiring the story has been.

But, I didn’t buy GW2 for the deep story telling or single-player game stuff, there’s far better games for that if that’s what I want in a video game. However, I do appreciate good lore and what it does for the sense of environment in the world.

Vayne.8563:

A specific, example.

Write something where the main character has to choose between an orphanage and a hospital being destroyed by bandits. These are your characters. This is where the OP needs to end up. One of these things has to happen.

I’m not so sure the writers are at fault here.

Wouldn’t it have been the writers choice for it to be an orphanage and hospital? I would think that the game world in the personal story would be created around what the writers… write.

I mean, the writers are the ones that chose “These are your characters. This is where the OP needs to end up. One of these things has to happen”, right?

Fernling.1729:

Vayne.8563:

A specific, example.

Write something where the main character has to choose between an orphanage and a hospital being destroyed by bandits. These are your characters. This is where the OP needs to end up. One of these things has to happen.

I’m not so sure the writers are at fault here.

Wouldn’t it have been the writers choice for it to be an orphanage and hospital? I would think that the game world in the personal story would be created around what the writers… write.

I mean, the writers are the ones that chose “These are your characters. This is where the OP needs to end up. One of these things has to happen”, right?

It really wouldn’t be. If you look at the personal stories, each of them has to have specific gameplay requirements. I’m relatively sure writers didn’t design the personal stories, but game makers did, and the writers were asked to fill in the middle.

It may be that writers came up with some ideas for the personal story but it’s complete clear to me that gameplay trumps writing in the personal story. It’s constrained by what has to happen and when it has to end.

Caramel Ham.4891:

Whomever wrote the story should be fired, and whomever approved such an abomination should be ashamed.

I’m obviously vocal about the writing being beyond terrible, but calling for someone to be fired is just wrong. People have families, mortgages. You don’t know the reason why it’s awful, just that it is. You don’t know that this person doesn’t have another valuable skillset to offer. Remember it’s a person you’re talking about. Someone’s relative. Someone’s friend. Someone’s Co-Worker that they like and eat lunch with.