Guild Wars 2

There are good and bad things about GW2, but one thing that’s consistently impressed me is the attention to detail with character animations. I first realized it with my charr ranger: every time she flicks her bow, her tail flicks too. Twang, twang, twang. I adore this.

My asura’s ears stand straight up when I’m ready for battle with my staff.

My human engineer flips her pistol around when she’s waiting for me to tell her who to shoot.

These things give my characters so much… well character, and I love it. Especially that tail flick. Twang.

I think the best things about Guild Wars 2 are the small things.

When an engineer drinks an elixir, he/she will throw the flask away after drinking it, and we hear the sound of the flask crashing on the ground. If you move to a different kind of terrain, the sound changes, as the flask is crashing on a different kind of surface.

I love the way some professions will begin playing with their weapons, like throwing them up, when they have been iddle for a while.

And the thing I like the most in the game are the little in world dialogues we get here and there. They are very well written, usually very well acted, and often funny and/or interesting. Same with many dialogues from dynamic events.

Ahh, I forgot about the elixir sound… I love that too.

And the remarks a necro makes when a minion dies. “Good thing I didn’t name that one…”

Too bad running animations suck (whilst weapons are drawn, specifically swords and axes). My character runs around with his 1H sword out and it keeps poking him in the eye with every step he takes.

I love going bald every time we put on our headgear. That’s one of the best little treats.

One of the greatest and most surprising moments I had was when the game had been out for just a week or two. I was on my new charr and I had just come through the gate from Lion’s Arch to The Grove. While looking around and admiring the view, I suddenly heard a nearby NPC sneeze and say, “Ugh, there must be a cat nearby.” That was such a great moment, that it actually seemed that the NPC detected that I was a charr and that it reacted to my being there!

…but then I made a sylvari…

Not only did that same NPC also sneeze at me and say the same “cat nearby” statement, but there are at least a half a dozen NPCs in The Grove that say that exact same thing regardless of what species my character is. I even looked around for any NPC charr that this NPC was reacting to in a premade NPC interaction…nope, no charr anywhere. Just a random sneeze being blamed on a cat. Perfectly missed opportunity to show that the NPCs/world around you would react to your presence. A few lines of code was all it would have taken to make that experience genuine and leave an incredible impression on the player (me) and they didn’t even bother with doing that.

It’s the little things like that which disappoint me. There are plenty of good little things, but that particular ‘little thing’ really set the tone for me early on in the game.

the best thing is that the underside of my Sylvari’s boots glow like footprints
it does this on my ranger as well

I love how every single medium armor in this game is a trenchcoat. Golly, I can’t get enough of ‘em! It’s the small things that count, man.

In Queensdale, there are a lot of tiny little details to notice that make me love the game even more. There’s a bear standing at a picnic basket with a woman hiding and cowering behind a tree; kill the bear, and she’ll come out and resume her picnic. There’s an event where you have to kill/catch (I don’t remember which) rabbits in a watermelon garden; succeed, and the watermelon vendor will now stock lucky rabbit feet. The Shaemoor graveyard is massive, and has a number of amusing tombstones, plus a hidden event if you look carefully.

Absolutely agree, idle animations as well as many others in the game are fantastic! I love the individuality of all the races. And seriously, each race design is just awesome! For eg: I love the wonderment in in the eyes and body language of my Sylvari chars as they stand around or my Asura scratching her head or stretching her fingers. truly wonderful stuff.

Morrigan.2809:

the best thing is that the underside of my Sylvari’s boots glow like footprints
it does this on my ranger as well

That’s because the bottom of their feet are bare (some of the ‘boots’ just cover the ankles/shin), and the leaf skin has glowy toes and heels.

Sylv.5324:

Morrigan.2809:

the best thing is that the underside of my Sylvari’s boots glow like footprints
it does this on my ranger as well

That’s because the bottom of their feet are bare (some of the ‘boots’ just cover the ankles/shin), and the leaf skin has glowy toes and heels.

Sure on the light armors yes because those are mostly not shoes as such.
Ranger’s boots are pretty solid- at least it looks like it has soles
And glowy footprints

makes me wonder if this only happens on Sylvari armor or if they have glow soles in regular boots

Corporal Lebeau in Harathi Hinterlands had me cracking up for a long time. I still love whoever did that.