I suppose this is more of an opinion than a question, but I’ll still attempt to phrase it like one:
Why has Guild Wars moved away from setting-driven plot and toward character-driven plot?
One of the initial draws for me was how rich the world was. Recently, that’s been very shunned. Even from the onset of GW2, I find the characters are often overloaded. Everyone has something special that makes them stand out as being above the player character and the rest of the world. For example:
*Rytlock isn’t just a member of Destiny’s Edge, he’s also a Tribune and the wielder of Sohothin.
*Logan isn’t just the heir to Gwen and Kieran, he’s also the captain of the Seraph and in love with the Queen.
*Trehearne isn’t just a Firstborn, he’s also the Marshal of the pact and the wielder of Caladbolg.
*Braham isn’t just an important Norn, he’s also Eir’s son.
*Scarlet isn’t just…well, Scarlet is pretty much everything. It’s kind of ridiculous.
My point is that even among the characters I like (I like Braham and Rtylock) they feel so far above and removed from the world. In Guild Wars, Prince Rurik was simply the prince of Ascalon, and his part in the story was very small, but he’s so memorable. Master Togo was a simple headmaster of the Shing Jea monastery. But he felt so humble and grounded that he was my favorite character in GW1. The same goes for the heroes of Tyria – Cynn, Mhenlo, Koss, Dunkoro, Captain Morghan, the Acolytes Jin and Sousuke, etc etc. They all felt real and never had anything outstanding about them. They were integral to the story and even had relationships of their own, but they never became the centerpiece. They were human, and I miss that. (Even if I am a Charr player now).
Instead I find that characters are being put in place of setting. Nearly every mission in Guild Wars had some kind of important lore piece: Stormcaller and Horn Hill, the Bloodstones, the Ascension Towers of the Margonites. The Kirin of Zen Daijun, The Spear of Archemorus and Urn of St. Viktor. The first city of Elona, the waterwork of Menkhelon, and the Great Junundu. There are dozens more. These things enriched the world and gave life to everything going on.
The world felt vast and the characters small. In Guild Wars 2 the characters feel huge and the world feels tiny. And when some characters and plots fail to hold up (like Scarlet) it feels like you’ve sacrificed the richness of the world for so little gain. This is one of the reasons I loved the Zephyr Sanctum so much, beyond it being a fun update gameplay-wise. It enriched the world instead of focusing on the characters. Many of the other updates have felt like a vehicle for the characters, instead of the characters enhancing the plot.
For example, in Guild Wars 2 it often feels like we’re being specifically told a narrative about a certain characters. We’re constantly handed this idea that Marjory and Kasmeer are in a relationship. We’re constantly handed this idea that Rox is trying to get into a Warband. The characters are being defined by their own personal motivations and biases, and not by the way they interact with the player. In Guild Wars 1, one of my favorite examples is Dunkoro. He serves as a trusted Sunspear council and you can feel both his wisdom and his hesitation, but the story is never about him. He grows on you simply by the way he interacts with you as a player character. Then, near the end of Nightfall, you find out that he sent his son to the Tomb of Primeval Kings and lost him. He faces his son in the Domain of Anguish and you can almost feel his regret. We’re not hearing a story about Dunkoro, we’re being given depth and context to someone we already care about simply because they support us in our quest. And that’s where I feel GW1 hit the mark and GW2 is missing.
So, all that in mind, why the focus on the characters instead of the world, and why the emphasis on providing a narrative of a character before we’re really given a chance to make our own assumptions and preferences about them?
