Guild Wars 2

One of the things I prized in GuildWars 1 was the story. It was excellently written to the point where I dead struck when Prince Rurik, the prince of Ascalon dies to save you and his country men. Then you have to fight him and kill him when The Lich revives him.

In Guild Wars 2 there really isn’t much of a plot. Dragons are taking over the world. Okay thats fine, but since this plot is so cliche you have to be very careful but that to me breakes it.

A few issues I had were that the story felt boring, uninspired. Dry. Dead. You didn’t care about the charactors heck some were so annoying cough Trahearne cough that you wanted them to die. Deaths didn’t shock, they felt emotionless. Part of this could be due to the lack of proper cutceans (the wall that seperates the characters) to voice acting that is okay at best but mostly shameful.

I personally would have perfered NO choice rather then just one path, but a very well scripted path that makes me care for the other characters. This one was boring.

In GuildWars 1 I didn’t mind redueing the storymode missions because they were well written in GuildWars 2 I feel no reason to at all. Rather I choose not to because the story is so bland.

This game at its core hence the title GuildWars 2 could have been about the ‘second’ large scale guildwars fault since the battle with Kryta vs Ascalon. An invading armor of a sort.

What do you all think?

In Guild Wars 1 you had 25 missions in Prophecies, some of which were better than others. You also had Factions and Nightfall, since GW1 didn’t consist of Prophecies alone. I found much of the GW 1 story completely predictable. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t awesome either, though the undead Rurik but was good. On the other hand, probably has many people hated Rurik when he was alive, as those who hate Tranhearne. He was a pain.

The Nightfall storyline, by contrast, was relatively cliche, simple and rather annoying. There was plenty wrong with it.

The story missions in Guild Wars 2 are variable, depending on a lot of things including race and there are far, far more of them. I find the human stories to be weaker than many of the others, but that’s just my opinion. I think the Asuran stories are a lot of fun and I like the Sylvari stories and the charr stories a lot.

The stories here are still better than some of the oh-so-amazing stories in SWTOR.

You think some of the stuff here is dry? Go play a Consular, I dare you. Go ahead, it’s free anyway.

I think it depends hugely on what choices you make and therefore what story you get.

For example most people seem to like Tybalt but you only get to meet him if you join the Order of Whispers. In general I’ve found the sylvari and charr storylines to be pretty good but I wasn’t so keen on the human one.

Also my only issue with Trahearne is the voice acting. He has absolutely no inflection in his voice at all, he says things like “If we don’t stop that huge beast everyone will die” in the same way he’d say “Hmm..it seems to have stopped raining”. (It also sounds like the actor was putting that voice on, so my guess would be he couldn’t do both at the same time.)

When I have the sound off (which is a lot of the time due to other stuff going on) I don’t mind him because I imagine his lines being said properly.

MMO’s are multiplayer games, thats the story. The rest is wasted development time.

skips to end

I don’t think the story is all that bad. It could be better, yes (why the kitten is Trahearne the hero?), but I think it’s actually the terrible voice acting that makes it seem worse than it is…a lot of the actors seriously sound like they’re reading a script from an office cubicle, and have no idea what the context is…

Its better than prophecies and factions, which were horribly disjointed and badly written with story holes all over the place. As a fitst storyline, this is ok, it just needs a bit more lore and world building – the old campaigns at least sent u everywhere on the map – but that will improve as more story is added

Danikat.8537:

I think it depends hugely on what choices you make and therefore what story you get.

For example most people seem to like Tybalt but you only get to meet him if you join the Order of Whispers. In general I’ve found the sylvari and charr storylines to be pretty good but I wasn’t so keen on the human one.

Also my only issue with Trahearne is the voice acting. He has absolutely no inflection in his voice at all, he says things like “If we don’t stop that huge beast everyone will die” in the same way he’d say “Hmm..it seems to have stopped raining”. (It also sounds like the actor was putting that voice on, so my guess would be he couldn’t do both at the same time.)

When I have the sound off (which is a lot of the time due to other stuff going on) I don’t mind him because I imagine his lines being said properly.

Another issue with Trahearne is that he doesn’t go through much, if any, emotional growth. You can meet an npc that evolves more in one segment than he does in the whole game. The priory girl goes from glib & pretty much flakey to serious & changed. I know he’s supposed to go from ‘humble scholar’ to ‘Commander!’ but it mostly comes off as boring guy to arrogant guy standing there warning me about POISON, from a safe distance. The last straw was when I had to console him, after killing the dragon without his oh so helpful assistance, because his Wyld Hunt is over & he doesn’t know what to do with himself. All these people – many you actually do care about – have died or lost someone dear to them, & he’s whining about his stupid Hunt. He has no emotional wake up moment (such as, oh say, obsessing about his Wyld Hunt to realizing someone he loves has died, or that HIS decision has killed someone – since he’s the bright bulb who locks out his own people! Grrr… Trahearne.)

That said, I love the Asura stories & all to do with them. Some of the Sylvari stuff is great (the shield/night ones are my favorites) Some voice acting is inspired (for me, Asura male & Sylvari male especially) and some is flat (Tra…) Some dialogue is witty or poignant, & some is cliched and/or dull. The human stories don’t go anywhere, really – the sister one is the weirdest thud. “Hi, I thought you were dead.” “I’m not.” “See you around!”

And there’s the, "people I met before don’t remember me – I feel used!’ portion of the story. And ’didn’t Trahearne cleanse Orr, & didn’t I kill the dragon, so why are undead still popping up? I expected a garden!’ (Trahearne obviously failed, or more likely, was behind the whole thing all along & has been resurrecting dragons left & right. Probably in league with Jennah, who is fine in a dull way, but who needs to be turned evil and/or married to Minister C – just so Logan will pipe down.

Arimahn.3568:

The stories here are still better than some of the oh-so-amazing stories in SWTOR.

You think some of the stuff here is dry? Go play a Consular, I dare you. Go ahead, it’s free anyway.

Even the Consular story is better than what GW2 offers.

Huh am I the only one who thought the GW1 original story was kinda weak?

First your fighting the charr and your about to turn the tide of this war against these beast who burned ascalon before your very eyes and… wait we’re leaving to the stone summit now? I guess we’ll come back to this story right…. right? (spoiler alert we don’t). Ok now we’re fighting the stone summit with the dwarves and I guess Rurik had to make a heroic sacrifice… for some reason. Ok now we evacuated to Kryta and we join the white mantle. Guess we have to get the chosen and O NOES the white mantle are bad guys and killing the chosen guess we have to join the shining blade! Bah bah bah. Then we do the flame-seeker prophecies because destiny says so and then we beat the lich because also destiny says so.

It felt like the developers created a bunch of areas and THEN decided what the story should be. Which I bet actually happened. It got a bit better in nightfall.

Not that I’m defending GW2’s later half of the story (a.k.a. when Trahearne steals the personal story) but the first couple stories you experience (your personal choices and the order stories) are pretty good.

However Guild wars always struck me as a game with good lore but the main story is always weak in many aspects and Anet’s writing is very hit or miss. Sometimes they make also characters like Tybalt or the other order leaders…. and sometimes they write hearts of the north….

To b e honest, if I want to play a good story I will load up Skyrim. I play the MMORPG for the MMO part

Hantu.2815:

To b e honest, if I want to play a good story I will load up Skyrim. I play the MMORPG for the MMO part

What, a good story in Skyrim?!?

Ok….

Sorry that was just too funny :P

The story might not have been much, but what about that EPIC ZHAITAN FIGHT?

Am I right?

GW2 gad to spend much more time on the exposition of the 5 races, which is why the later part kind of falls flat when it comes to interesting twists and turns. There’s still things hidden here and there for you to theorize on just like in GW1, although there hasn’t been any big reveal ala “Abaddon was behind it all” yet.

I hope they will come up with some crazy explanation for why ecto containing items drop in the mortal realm. Inb4 Tyria is part of the underworld and we all are spirits.

Arimahn.3568:

The stories here are still better than some of the oh-so-amazing stories in SWTOR.

You think some of the stuff here is dry? Go play a Consular, I dare you. Go ahead, it’s free anyway.

What? Even the lamest story in SWTOR was vastly better than the best story you got here in GW2…. The stories there are actually personal as you actually build your characters personality to your liking where in GW2 your character already has a personality you just make some dumb choices that have nothing to do with your personality. Points in the story where you could have made a real difference and been a true hero are just left off to the side to rot.. I had so much hope for this story.

But yes please play SWTOR to see what a good personal story looks like.

Hantu.2815:

To b e honest, if I want to play a good story I will load up Skyrim. I play the MMORPG for the MMO part

I would of said The Witcher series, Naught dog games, or a game with an actual well written an interesting story as the elder scrolls games always fall short on this aspect as well as their wiffle bat combat.

The Issue with the Personal Story is their is nothing personal about a story in an mmo were everyone is experiencing the same story. It should of been more open to party play and you should of been more of a solider working towards commander instead of hey im a commander out of nowhere in the beginning. Also Tybalt was the only memorable character but i felt like he was done the completely opposite of how he should of been done. He should of been the one promoted not the player he was their for months/years before the player and we show up and get a promoting in with days of work while tybalt is left behind. It should of been the other way around him getting promoted and instead of us getting left behind we should of been his friend/comrade helping him with his missions across tyria until of course that faithful moment were he passes the torch onto the player thus giving us a promotion and sacrificing himself so we may continue with the story.

Living story is better in this aspect but falls short in actual meaningful content that feels like your pushing a force away or helping refugees get somewhere. It all just feels like a stall or a repeat doing the same stuff over and over with no actual sign of any sort of push forward or backwards. We don’t have anything to move towards or away from and as players we have no idea what the threat truly is and how to stop it from the source. It is also taking to long and their is no sense of advancement threw each month.

DandySlayer.7019:

Arimahn.3568:

The stories here are still better than some of the oh-so-amazing stories in SWTOR.

You think some of the stuff here is dry? Go play a Consular, I dare you. Go ahead, it’s free anyway.

What? Even the lamest story in SWTOR was vastly better than the best story you got here in GW2…. The stories there are actually personal as you actually build your characters personality to your liking where in GW2 your character already has a personality you just make some dumb choices that have nothing to do with your personality. Points in the story where you could have made a real difference and been a true hero are just left off to the side to rot.. I had so much hope for this story.

But yes please play SWTOR to see what a good personal story looks like.

Except it suffered from the classic bioware syndrome your choices feel like they matter in the moment but in reality they never actually did it was just their so a choice could be made and the player felt like their was an advancement. It also tried to make it personal when your were in an mmo environment which doesn’t work at all in my book. If it was kotor 3 it would of been a lot better but it was an mmo and the story felt like a singleplayer experience. It was well voiced and had some good writing but you can’t really have something to personal unless you make 1000s of ways for a story to branch when it comes to mmos.

I was angry when i found out about the Elder Dragons. So cliché…one of the most overused things in fantasy…sigh

I like everything else about the story tho. No annoying dwarves. Still, the Dragon cliché sucks :p

Arimahn.3568:

The stories here are still better than some of the oh-so-amazing stories in SWTOR.

You think some of the stuff here is dry? Go play a Consular, I dare you. Go ahead, it’s free anyway.

I have played a Consular. The SWTOR stories were better by far. However, the game play was not. Boy howdy, was it not.

I think a lot of what hurts the GW2 story is the presentation: the characters don’t even look at each other as they stand there reciting their lines like they’re auditioning for a play about characters from Napoleon Dynamite auditioning for a play. Maybe with a few emotes thrown in here and there against something besides that abstract water-color backdrop, things might at least look a little more interesting.

Emmet.2943:

Also Tybalt was the only memorable character but i felt like he was done the completely opposite of how he should of been done. He should of been the one promoted not the player he was their for months/years before the player and we show up and get a promoting in with days of work while tybalt is left behind.

Tybalt was already a Lightbringer when you first met him. That’s the highest rank the Order of Whispers has below the Preceptors, and there can only be 3 of them.

Emmet.2943:

Except it suffered from the classic bioware syndrome your choices feel like they matter in the moment but in reality they never actually did it was just their so a choice could be made and the player felt like their was an advancement. It also tried to make it personal when your were in an mmo environment which doesn’t work at all in my book. If it was kotor 3 it would of been a lot better but it was an mmo and the story felt like a singleplayer experience. It was well voiced and had some good writing but you can’t really have something to personal unless you make 1000s of ways for a story to branch when it comes to mmos.

WHOA WHOA WHOA. The only Bioware game that was like that was ME3 as every other Bioware game your choices matter all the way through. Its why people like me raged so hard about the ending in ME3 as it was a total 180 from just about every game they made up until ME3.

And making the story personal in SWTOR was the only reason I stuck around and it was amazing in fact I think I’ll go log some hours in SWTOR today. Oh and the fact that you or your party member’s had a say in group dialogue was pretty awesome. The choices you make in SWTOR truly change your game one step at a time up until the end like a classic Bioware game.

The only problem with SWTOR is that unlike GW2 you have to do the story quests to move foward BUT it was fun to do so! I’m so glad that story stuff is optional within GW2 as its terrible anyways and had it been mandatory it would have been change a few day later with a patch that would have fixed that and broke other things :/

And yes I agree SWTOR should have been KOTOR3.

A. Your grammatical capabilities seem to have improved dramatically. I guess your time at “university” has been as least partially productive.
B. While I find the plot to be very poorly written, I didn’t think the writing in Guild Wars was any better.

DandySlayer.7019:

Arimahn.3568:

The stories here are still better than some of the oh-so-amazing stories in SWTOR.

You think some of the stuff here is dry? Go play a Consular, I dare you. Go ahead, it’s free anyway.

What? Even the lamest story in SWTOR was vastly better than the best story you got here in GW2…. The stories there are actually personal as you actually build your characters personality to your liking where in GW2 your character already has a personality you just make some dumb choices that have nothing to do with your personality. Points in the story where you could have made a real difference and been a true hero are just left off to the side to rot.. I had so much hope for this story.

But yes please play SWTOR to see what a good personal story looks like.

I’ve heard SWTOR has a fantastic story. This story is just pitiful at times, okay at best. Gw1 might have followed some cliches but it didn’t let the cliches ruin it. Rurik wasn’t annoying, rather he was quite a strong character.

the story in this game is all over the place, first you deal with the queen, then you deal with centaurs, then bandits and then undead – IT DOESN’T WEAVE. it doesn’t come together properly.

Tyria is part of the underworld and we are all spirits

I think the reason the story in GW1 was much stronger than in GW2 because of the replayable missions that were lengthy and the countless of quests that added to the lore. Also the certain tasks in the missions were memorable and most of the missions took place in areas that were inaccessible in any other way.

this game is a pure and simple joke in the story department.

Revolution.6301:

I’ve heard SWTOR has a fantastic story. This story is just pitiful at times, okay at best. Gw1 might have followed some cliches but it didn’t let the cliches ruin it. Rurik wasn’t annoying, rather he was quite a strong character.

The Story is amazing in SWTOR! It completely spoiled me as now when I play an MMORPG the story needs to be on par or better than SWTOR. GW2 is far below par unfortunately in the story department especially the “personal” aspect of it…. And the Living Story is just terrible as well….

Salacious.7358:

the story in this game is all over the place, first you deal with the queen, then you deal with centaurs, then bandits and then undead – IT DOESN’T WEAVE. it doesn’t come together properly.

You make a good point, thats what I found confusing. All they had all they had to do was make 1 path for all the characters but make it well written and designed.
Really this 3 paths per character was a bad idea since they clearly didn’t have a good story for all 3 and in the end no matter if you choose any of them the ending was the same. So imo it was a waste to create them.

There’s some good stories in the game, but not all are good lol.

Like for me, certain norn story paths + the order of whispers story was great. Stories after that were a hit and miss though.

I haven’t gotten a human past level 20 though :P… I didn’t like the story path I chose for that character.

I think some polish and revamps to the current stories would be great though.