This is something that has kinda bugged me from the get-go. The tone and style of Guild Wars 1 was fairly dark, post-searing… The dialogue was fairly serious, people talked about serious things. Even though the storyline was kinda disjointed, it still had an air of legitimacy. As the series “matured”, we saw a little bit more levity and comedy in the game – such as Kilroy Stoneskin – or the quest NPC in Factions who implies, more or less, that he needs you to help him get viagra to make his wife happy.
Guild Wars 2 seems to take everything a bit far. The entire game feels like one running gag after the next. The dialogue feels like parody more than something to be taken seriously. The asura, for god’s sake, are an entire race devoted to parody – everything they say is in the context of something outlandish, goofy, or absurd. It reminds me of when you clicked units in Warcraft too many times, and they said funny out-of-character things – well the entire game of GW2 feels like one big reel of out-of-character one-liners, inside jokes, and running gags.
The character of Tybalt, for example, is one running gag after the next. One mission involves him disguising himself, (via magic of course) as a woman and … talking like a woman… and just acting like a complete and total kitten I’m sure the GW2 writers thought all this was terribly clever, but I found it to be a bit tiresome. What I’m really saying is that I would have been much more receptive to some mature writing that actually treats the audience like they’ve got an above-average IQ.
The whole game feels like that guy who thinks he’s a whole lot funnier than he really is. He’s always elbowing you, making wisecracks at everything…. eh eh eh eh eh – It’s like for the love of god TAKE SOMETHING SERIOUSLY. Not everything is a gag, A-net. Not everything has to be some goofy inside joke. Can we get some actual writers to do some serious storylines for Guild Wars? You’ve got an enormous amount of lore in the Guild Wars universe and it feels like you haven’t tapped into any of it.
We get it, A-net … you can make a joke. But can you actually tell a compelling fantasy story? I guess we’ll see.