Guild Wars 2

Yesterday I was doing my personal story mission and Demolitionist Tonn’s story with Ceera was so sad! I was kinda amazed that GW2 would have this kind of storyline, just not on our main character….

The story is like this: I was going on a bomb task and Tonn was killed there, Tonn is married (but no kids, we all know that in gw2 settings, living beings are created in a different way) so I delivered the bad news to his beloved wife: Ceera. She cried, and screamed, and ran away to die in a cave, saying Tonn promised her that they would be together forever, and he just left her alone, she cannot live without him.. etc. I don’t remember the actual things she said, but quite sad!

Anyway, after that I went and read some other posts from before, many people ask if GW2 would have romance added. I wonder if GW2 will ever have romantic expansion and even have these NPC fighting on your team in dungeons/storyline/maps etc. that would be quite unique.

Believe it or not many people complain that too many of the storylines focus on NPC’s romantic relationships.

Especially Caithe and Faolain, (which ties into the dungeon story modes and the personal story), Marjory and Kasmeer (both of whom are in your team for Season 2 of the living story and the Heart of Thorns story) and Logan and Queen Jennah, which seems a bit more one-sided but still affects the story at various points.

I think the idea here is a romance between an NPC and the player character, not more intra-NPC romance, because we have plenty of that going on already. In all honesty, the game could use a few more interactive options like that, allowing you to bond more closely (or not) with some of your party members. As things stand, the player character is a pretty static person- in charge and revered, possibly liked on some levels, but with followers more than friends.

Even just the option to build more of a friendship with some characters would help to increase story immersion.

Danikat.8537:

Believe it or not many people complain that too many of the storylines focus on NPC’s romantic relationships.

Especially Caithe and Faolain, (which ties into the dungeon story modes and the personal story), Marjory and Kasmeer (both of whom are in your team for Season 2 of the living story and the Heart of Thorns story) and Logan and Queen Jennah, which seems a bit more one-sided but still affects the story at various points.

I can’t say that I’ve ever seen this type of complaint. I’ve seen complaints that Marjory and Kasmeer were some badly and the dialogue getting in the way of progression, but not romance as a whole. If anything, Caithe and Faolin’s relationship was the plot in its respective place, not a bad thing at all.

Ah, love. The source of emotions most powerful, of greatest joy and deepest sorrow. It bothers artists since ancient times and it won’t stop for the foreseeable future… if ever.

That being said… no. I hope they will never try to involve me as the player of the protagonist of the story. I do enjoy a good romantic story, but apart from GW2 doing a terrible job at storytelling anyway, most video games just cannot handle this properly, with the Witcher trilogy being one of the very few exceptions.

Most video game romances are either cringeworthy, slapdash side quests or both. Let’s hear the preachment of our lord and saviour Jim Sterling on this topic:

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Side quest completed, achievement unlocked, back to business. Thanks, but no thanks. I would never expect ANet to go all-out on that and trying to tell a really good interactive romance for the protagonist, but that’s pretty much what they would have to do in order to get it right.
Give Jennah some character beyond “young fairy-tale queen with plot convenient mesmer powers” to get on with Logan’s romance, give Marjory and Kasmeer some screen time, all fine with me. But please don’t open the “player romance” can of worms. Please!?

This reminds me of watching the trailers for a bad movie – all the best moments distilled into a single minute to make you think it might be a good movie.

It’s relatively easy to write single, powerful moments in a relationship between two characters, particularly when it leaves the readers to fill in all the gaps with their imagination. That stops being true once you throw the player into the mix, because every choice ultimately winds up feeling shallow or forced if it doesn’t live up to the player’s expectations; worse yet, having a terrible buildup ruins those moments that were intended to be the highlights.

Alicornus.7095:

I do enjoy a good romantic story, but apart from GW2 doing a terrible job at storytelling anyway, most video games just cannot handle this properly, with the Witcher trilogy being one of the very few exceptions.

That’s interesting. I’ve always considered romance to be one of the series’s weakest and rather disgusting points. You know, the requisite and largely unavoidable legion of hot and powerful (optionally monster) girls, all willing and ready to sleep with the protagonist after you complete their respective quest chains. The first game even offered you cards for each such encounter which you could collect – I’m not sure how can you possibly trivialize romance any more than that.
At the same time, the single most meaningful romantic relationship in Geralt’s life, i.e. his relatioship with Yennefer, was barely hinted at until the third and last game, and then you could simply walk away from it.

Mickey Chi.3178:

Yesterday I was doing my personal story mission and Demolitionist Tonn’s story with Ceera was so sad! I was kinda amazed that GW2 would have this kind of storyline, just not on our main character….

OP, if you have not yet, you should spend a little bit of time at the camp at the beginning of Auric Basin.

Alicornus.7095:

Give Jennah some character beyond “young fairy-tale queen with plot convenient mesmer powers” to get on with Logan’s romance

She’s a young, inexperienced, naive, overly trusting queen whose realm is plagued by bandits and pirates. I don’t think you’ve done the Caudecus’ Manor storyline, the human personal story, or any renown hearts in Kryta.

My problem with the idea of offering romance options for our characters is I can’t think of any NPC my main character would consider a relationship with.

Not that she has fantastic taste or anything, her most successful relationship was with Alistair in Dragon Age Origins and that ended badly. I mean it worked out well for Thedas but not so much for them. She also had a thing for Koss in GW1 which never went anywhere because of his feelings for Melonni and somehow Kvothe from the King Killer Chronicles even though they’ve never been in the same world and she’s not supposed to be in my head when I’m reading.

But I honestly can’t think of any GW2 characters where I could see it working, especially not ones you spend enough time with to actually develop feelings for them.

The only one of my characters where there is an obvious choice is my charr. I think he’d like Rox, but the charr don’t really do romance.

KestrelGirl.9267:

She’s a young, inexperienced, naive, overly trusting queen whose realm is plagued by bandits and pirates. I don’t think you’ve done the Caudecus’ Manor storyline, the human personal story, or any renown hearts in Kryta.

Well… thinking is a crapshot by times, isn’t#it? I’ve done it all, and no, I can’t really find most of this traits. The way she handles Caudecus himself is actually a clever move. Ever heard of “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”? Not trying to hang him and achieving nothing but losing the image of a kind and benevolent ruler and waiting for him to “hang himself” instead while giving the Shining Blade a better shot at unraveling the whole conspiracy is neither naive nor inexperienced nor overly trusting.

No, the way she handles the daily business in times that can hardly be described as a Golden Age of peace or prosperity, is not that bad unless the treshold is “solve every problem immediately and as if you wouldn’t have limited time and ressources”. That’s not how the whole “being in charge” thing usually works.

Nothing of that defines her as a character, though, and that was the point. Yes, she might be a clever politician or she may have good advisors or both, or she might not be as you see it, it doesn’t tell us much about who she is as a person. That’s not enough to build a romance upon or to continue one in a way that’s not just annoyingly superficial. And yes, I have ideas who it could be done propery, but I don’t think that it would be a very compelling story for kids – and you can’t ignore them since they’re part of the intended playerbase of the game. But they could do a little bit more for sure.

Hashar.6082:

That’s interesting. I’ve always considered romance to be one of the series’s weakest and rather disgusting points. You know, the requisite and largely unavoidable legion of hot and powerful (optionally monster) girls, all willing and ready to sleep with the protagonist after you complete their respective quest chains. The first game even offered you cards for each such encounter which you could collect – I’m not sure how can you possibly trivialize romance any more than that.
At the same time, the single most meaningful romantic relationship in Geralt’s life, i.e. his relatioship with Yennefer, was barely hinted at until the third and last game, and then you could simply walk away from it.

Yes, the card collection “mechanic” of the first game was cringeworthy, no doubt about that. But most of that doesn’t exactly try to be romance, it is about sex and Geralt taking advantage of being sterile.
The romance part depends on your choices, though, and whether you’ve read the books or not. In short: The trilogy doesn’t build the actual romance on lust. No matter who you choose, it’s not that hard to spend the night with the potential love interests, but even though that’s a part of Geralt’s way of life, it’s way harder to build up and maintaining relationships, which is rather close to real life.

The foundation of the romance ark of the whole story are two questions: Who is Geralt deep inside and who does he want to become? Geralt is up and foremost an aging monster hunter. He is good at what he does and being a witcher has defined him for most of his life, but the result of him being part of a game of thrones wheter he wants it or not, fatigues him. After decades of living on the edge he is tired and a part of him wants to move on with his life.

How you as the player experience that depends largely on the choices you make. The path I’ve found to be the most interesting one is to build up a relationship with Triss at least for the first two games. While not being an especially likeable character in the books but rather a great manipulator, the games do something interesting with her. Even though she doesn’t stop taking advantage of him by times, if you build up this relationship it becomes aparent that she genuinely cares about Geralt.

Being one of the few persons in the world to understand his plights and his fatigue, the relationship with her offers a way to “move on”. At the beginning of the second game, all Geralt wants from Foltest is Triss being free from her duties so he can start a new life with her far away from courts and kings. As usual, the world enjoys ruining his day, though, and what starts out promising ends up with Foltest being murdered and the kingdoms sinking into total chaos.

The romance ark culminates in the third game with the return of Yennefer. While Triss would allow him to move on and represents his more peaceful and caring traits, thus helping him to develop a new perspective in life, Yennefer represents his wild and violent side, the life he knows and has always lived to the fullest. Yennefer once was his one true love and he remembers that, but depending on how you played and experienced the first two games, things may be a lot more complicated now.

Geralt eventually ends up between two women he loves and cares about. Both represent parts of his personality, both know and understand him, both care about him. The choice he makes eventually defines what he wants his future to be and who he wants to become. There is no “right” or “wrong”, there is no better or worse option. It’s a painful decision because he has to sacrifice the relationship to one person that means a lot to him. He can even choose to abandon both, but one way or the other, it will leave a mark on him.

As I wrote before, experience may differ depending on how much you know about the characters and more importantly how you’ve played the games. The downside of interactive stories is that not all paths you can choose from might be particularly moving and interesting. Nevertheless, I’m impressed by the result, it is a royal pain in the * to write a story with that many different options and outcomes and as far as I’m concerned, they did it well.

Right now I think the storyline has about the perfect amount of romance in it. Enough to add interest…but not enough to be over saccharine.

As for the idea of the player character involved in romance of any sort…an emphatic no. Each individual has very unique and personal ideas of a suitable partner, and to impose one set of characteristics isn’t particularly fair.