Guild Wars 2

Hello. Maybe its just me but i feel like the characters in GW2 and the overall theme is super friendly, without real intrigues and things like that.

I expected at some point that Rytlock kills Logan while they assault a Dragon and Rytlocks Warbands assault Divinitys Reach and burn it down at the same time.
Or the other way around. Nothing like this happened so far.

On top of that all human characters and most of the other races as well look like they were 16 years old. No old, no ill, no suffering characters.
Maybe the game is for a younger generation (i’m 25) but i really miss evil characters in the game. The game does really well when it comes to the cute and good characters but at the moment i cant stand more of them.
And the destruction caused by those elder dragons usually did just happen to the landscape. There are no starving people or dead bodys in the game.

I wish the game had a little bit more Game of Thrones feeling, where nobody is safe and a lot of the powerful characters are evil. I expected that at least from the charr but they´re just as friendly as every other race. When theres some trouble between the races its just talking. Nobody ever acts :/ If somebody is just a little bit evil enough, the Player kills him asap. I really wish i could ally as a charr with rytlock against the humans fighting players who picked human. Picking a race would be so much more meaningfull.

Btw nice new map. The JP was fun and a pretty good challenge. Sometimes i felt like the Maguuma Jungle Sountrack did not really fit the map but apart from that i had a lot of fun

Please consider my wish for evil Characters. GW1 had those as well. (im thinking of Shiro= old, scarred, evil character). When everybody is good and handsome, things get boring pretty fast x)

I agree – that’s how it’s been for a long time.
Nothing feels threatening to me – none of the NPCs seem serious and there’s really no drama or sorrow even when they try to add it. It feels cheap and artificial.

GW1 wasn’t exactly full-blown dark either BUT it had a much stronger sense of seriousness about it. It wasn’t laughs and gags every 5 minutes.

Faction/race based PvP will never be a thing, it goes against the philosophy of the game. Not to mention we’ve had quite a few evil/not-good characters, Scarlet, Aerin, Phlunt, Caudecus, the various race-specific enemy factions such as the Flame Legion, White Mantle, Sons of Svanir, Nightmare Court and the Inquest…

Flowerpower.6795:

I wish the game had a little bit more Game of Thrones feeling, where nobody is safe and a lot of the powerful characters are evil.

No offense, but there’s WoW for that. (If you’re Horde, at least…)

MMOs generate a legion of inconsistencies if they kill/alter prominent characters, and it sets a terrible narrative atmosphere. With the way that Destiny’s Edge is slowly getting fridged for the sake of making room for Dragon’s Watch, it already makes visiting some locations in the world pretty awkward.

Oddly enough I have the opposite take on the age thing – I’m 31 and I tend to feel like people younger than me are more inclined to want dark plots with lots of sinister characters and anti-heroes and people my age and older are more likely to prefer a straight-forward story with clearly defined good and bad guys where they know the good guys will win. (Or awful romantic “comedies” where everyone is a bloody idiot and good and evil don’t even come into it.)

In general I think I fit in better with the first group – I really like morally ambiguous characters. For example my favourite comic book is The Darkness where the ‘hero’ is literally the embodiment of pure evil and really not a good person even before that happened, but somehow still better than the forces of good, who are the bad guys.

I also like Bioware games where even when you’re trying to be the hero you often end up doing harm by accident or simply find yourself in situations where there is no good choice. (And when you’re trying to be evil I can find myself in situations where I’m thinking “I know it’s a game and it doesn’t mean anything, I know I decided this character was evil but I really don’t want to choose this option.”)

But Guild Wars 2 isn’t that sort of story. There are evil (and ugly) characters like Shiro, but like Shiro they’re the villains of the story, not the good guys. Look at the Nightmare Court, Sons of Svanir, Flame Legion, Minister Cadecus (and by extension a lot of the Ministry), the bandit gangs from the human personal story and so on.

You’ve even got a bit of the charr/human war you want – there are dissidents on both sides who are continuing to fight (mainly in Fields of Ruins), it just doesn’t involve Logan and Rytlock.

I’m not sure what you mean about the dragon’s corruption only affecting the landscape though. Are you aware that the Branded, Risen, Icebrood and Mordrem Guard are all people who were corrupted by the dragons? They weren’t created that way, they used to be normal humans, norn, charr etc. and then they were turned into monsters (in the case of the risen after they were killed).

Do you know how the Vigil came about? Almorra Soulkeeper was patrolling Lowland Burns when Kralkattorik flew over. She saw her entire warband (FYI warbands are like a charr’s family) turned into Branded in front of her eyes and then had to kill every single one of them when they turned on her. After that she vowed to destroy the dragons.

Are you aware that the norn, asura, quaggan, krait and many other races lost their original homelands to the dragons? (And others lost theirs to other things, like the tengu who were driven out of Cantha by a xenophobic human government.)

Have you been to the Weeping Isle where the Soundless are under constant attack by the Nightmare court? Did you know Lion’s Arch used to look completely different until Scarlet attacked it, killing huge numbers of people and destroying the city so it had to be completely rebuilt (this is what the memorial on the west side is for). have you talked to the norn homesteaders in Snowden Drifts who are under constant attack from Icebrood and thinking they may have to give up their homes to save their families? Have you played the Heart of Thorns storyline where a lot of people die to Mordremoth’s attacks?

I think GW2 has plenty of death, violence etc. It’s difficult to find an area outside of the cities where someone isn’t under attack by something (although that’s to be expected in a combat orientated game). It just doesn’t have cruel or violent anti-heroes turning on their allies for personal gain. At least not without being corrupted by dragons.

Yes i play the game since launch and know about lions arch and so on.

Danikat.8537:

It just doesn’t have cruel or violent anti-heroes turning on their allies for personal gain.

I think that is exactly what i am asking for. I dont like this good/evil and nothing between stuff. I want those evil characters that turn on their allies and actually i want to do so myself if possible :P

Flowerpower.6795:

Yes i play the game since launch and know about lions arch and so on.

Danikat.8537:

It just doesn’t have cruel or violent anti-heroes turning on their allies for personal gain.

I think that is exactly what i am asking for. I dont like this good/evil and nothing between stuff. I want those evil characters that turn on their allies and actually i want to do so myself if possible :P

Wait for Lazurus, you can see that one from a mile away.

I’m 56 and while I don’t want or expect things to be gloom and doom serious all the time, I would appreciate a more down to earth, so to speak, approach to the game world at large. When you have NPCs like, for example, Mad Mardine ‘cattlepulting’ live cows (and player characters) across the landscape it tends to make the game world feel (to me, anyway) like something one might find in a bad children’s book. Our characters should be bringing that wackjob to justice, not defending him from harpies or betting on cow launching distances or taking a joyride on his catapult.

It’s troublesome when the stories/plots hinge on the NPCs (and PCs) doing ridiculous things — or worse, not doing logical, sensible, or strategically sound things.

I just have to say it – kinda ironic post coming from your name OP. :P

Flowerpower.6795:

Yes i play the game since launch and know about lions arch and so on.

Danikat.8537:

It just doesn’t have cruel or violent anti-heroes turning on their allies for personal gain.

I think that is exactly what i am asking for. I dont like this good/evil and nothing between stuff. I want those evil characters that turn on their allies and actually i want to do so myself if possible :P

We have Lazarus(Maybe), Caudecus, and Phlunt. That said – The evil characters that try to turn on their allies are seen a mile away from the protagonists (because they’re not all dumb), and have none of that bullkitten.

Frankly, I find “Evil people who betray their allies” to be completely insane. Your “I want Rytlock to be a bad guy” is “I’m wanna be an edgelord for the sake of being an edgelord, screw logic and consistency”

Sadly the characters feel like the Teen Titans GO cartoon. An abomination of the original because it has faaaar too much focus on comical dialogue.

I prefer what we have with the Tyrian powers banding together to defeat a world-wide indiscriminate threat…. for me it’s much better than the Tyrian powers bickering and fighting among themselves.

Tachenon.5270:

It’s troublesome when the stories/plots hinge on the NPCs (and PCs) doing ridiculous things — or worse, not doing logical, sensible, or strategically sound things.

Yup, those Asura certainly are a troublesome lot.

~EW

Flowerpower.6795:

Hello. Maybe its just me but i feel like the characters in GW2 and the overall theme is super friendly, without real intrigues and things like that.

I expected at some point that Rytlock kills Logan while they assault a Dragon and Rytlocks Warbands assault Divinitys Reach and burn it down at the same time.
Or the other way around. Nothing like this happened so far.

On top of that all human characters and most of the other races as well look like they were 16 years old. No old, no ill, no suffering characters.
Maybe the game is for a younger generation (i’m 25) but i really miss evil characters in the game. The game does really well when it comes to the cute and good characters but at the moment i cant stand more of them.
And the destruction caused by those elder dragons usually did just happen to the landscape. There are no starving people or dead bodys in the game.

I wish the game had a little bit more Game of Thrones feeling, where nobody is safe and a lot of the powerful characters are evil. I expected that at least from the charr but they´re just as friendly as every other race. When theres some trouble between the races its just talking. Nobody ever acts :/ If somebody is just a little bit evil enough, the Player kills him asap. I really wish i could ally as a charr with rytlock against the humans fighting players who picked human. Picking a race would be so much more meaningfull.

Please consider my wish for evil Characters. GW1 had those as well. (im thinking of Shiro= old, scarred, evil character). When everybody is good and handsome, things get boring pretty fast x)

I completely disagree, I like the feel of GW2 as it is.

And old / ill characters are not going to survive what our characters have survived.

Dude… the world is ending. Tyria is dying, and the Dragons are the biggest, latest, and most pressing symptom.

The age of Humans is long since over. Besieged and held back by the most pathetic of Humanity’s enemies, the Centaur, Humans turn against and devour themselves in paltry political power-struggles.

The Norn are scattered and (though they’d never admit it) frightened. They never had a true home and, thanks to Jormag and Mordremoth, they likely never will. Their stories, their legend, their legacy, is scattered to the winds and all but forgotten.

The Asura have lost the vast majority of their knowledge and power when they fled Primordus, desperately seeking both to reclaim and reinvent what was lost decades ago. They can use their existing knowledge to study Tyria, but ultimately, all they can do with it is fully comprehend how kittened Tyria truly is.

The proud Charr were soundly defeated by the Humans’ gods time and time again, in life and in death, and forced into an humiliating stalemate with the Humans. Worse than that, the mighty Charr must admit they are not strong enough to fight the end on their own and, of all things, call for help. They are all but begging, desperately searching for someone as strong as they to help them fight. The Charr know, deep down, that their search is futile, for who could be as strong and resourceful as the Charr?

The Sylvari are infantile, newborns, and have just recently lost contact with the only being they could rely upon for serenity, knowledge, and wisdom: the Pale Tree. To put into context, imagine you are a toddler and your parents, whom you’ve never been away from, never known a day without, just died in front of you. Even worse for the Sylvari, they can still see the Pale Tree and know that she’s alive. She’s standing right there, still birthing new Sylvari from the Dream and shielding them all from Mordremoth as best she can, but they can’t reach her; can’t sense her.

I’d say Tyria is plenty “dark” without people being kittens to each other. I’ll re-iterate: the world is ending. Every life, every blade, every soul could mean the difference between survival and extinction. We now know that, through unity, we can fight and kill the Dragons. We do not know that killing them will stop, or even slow, the end of Tyria. We don’t know the full effects of a dragon’s death on the world, only that it’s just as bad as, if not worse than, the dragon itself. You can betray your allies, of course, but you know that every one you betray is another set of eyes not watching your back, another blade not fighting alongside you, another soul not battling against the end. It’s simple really: band together or die.

“When faced with extinction, […] every alternative is preferable.” – Dr. Leonard Church, Director of The Freelancer Project, Red vs. Blue.

Now, excuse the kitten out of me for wanting to face the end with a gods-kittened smile on my face.

Trise.2865:

Dude… the world is ending. Tyria is dying, and the Dragons are the biggest, latest, and most pressing symptom.

….

There is no doubt that the overall plot and themes of the game are ‘threatening’, devestating, and mature orientated.

What I believe is the problem that i think the OP was trying to articulate is that the characters, NPCs, dialogue and narrative that drive these along don’t capitalise on their potential.
Some examples (HOT spoilers ahead!!)

- We just went to battle with and survived an elder dragon, where are the repercussions? Post traumatic stress is a real disorder amongst soldiers coming back from war – the game could have dabbled in these issues. You would think that Taimi, a young war-inexperienced NPC who was involved in the battles against scarlett and mordremoth would be somehow affected, but no, she is still the annoying chirpy NPC she has always been.

- Mordremoth was never a threat in HOT and it never felt personal. Anet could have created instances as we progress throught HOT maps, where he appears to the character and his allies and taunts them. Reminds them of their failings, e.g. “u failed to save Eir”. This could have unnerved Braham and opened the door to a stronger subplot of Brahams disobedience and a rift with the commander, and a rift amongst all the NPCs taking sides (e.g. rox and kasmeer siding on Brahams side, rytlock and Marjory on the commanders).

- Canach and caithe resisted Mordremoths influence and i never felt threatened by them. By the time it came to picking my team for the final fight i picked both with no hesitation or worry of betrayal. And surprise surprise, they never did.

I could go on, but u get my point. OP is spot on, people are too nice and gentle. Comic relief is ok, but when the whole narrative is comical amongst a serious backdrop its even more contrasting.
Everything has a happy ending and everyone is more or less fine. Unless your dead (e.g. Eir), your good to go. There is no middle ground, no shades of grey, no negative consequences due to a noble cause etc.