Guild Wars 2

MANY SPOILERS ABOUT THE PLOT AND ENDING OF THE HEART OF THORNS PERSONAL STORYLINE.

So I just finished the HoT personal story today. Overall I’m pretty satisfied. The final encounter was (mechanistically at least) much more satisfying than the Zhaitan.
I was kind of thrown off by the lack of denouement though. The story feels like it’s missing a last instance to tie up loose ends.

We kill Mordremoth’s mind, deal with Trahaerne, get our big loot chest and then…we’re done? Where’s the last instance where we get back together with the team and decompress over our giant struggle? Why didn’t we meet back up with Kasmeer to find out how Zojja/Logan turned out? Did everything go alright for Taimi all alone in Rata Novum? Is the pale tree okay? Why didn’t we have an audience where the triumphant heroes limp back into the Oomphalos chamber to be graciously received by a now-recovered Pale Tree?

Dunno, I suppose a lot of this will be covered when Anet takes up the Living Story again in a few (or maybe more like 6?) months. It just seemed like the story ended rather abruptly.

I agree that it ended pretty abruptly, with a glaring cliffhanger… especially considering the way all the GW1 campaigns ended; with a special resolution/story instance that wrapped up loose character ends.

The whole thing gives off a strong “rushed to market” impression, leaving us with the promise of a Living Story Season 3 to conclude the actual plot of Heart of Thorns and resolve character threads.

Still, it was a good improvement over the original story and LS1. It greatly reduced the influence of the juvenile and clichéd Destiny’s Edge and “Biconics” subplots. The final boss fight impressed me, and it gave us the fanservice that we all wanted: the chance to
Strong Spoilerkill Trahearne. Not that he was really that obnoxious (especially compared to Destiny's Edge), but he was a thoroughly uninspiring roadblock to character development that inexplicably took up a great deal of real estate in the original story. He needed to go. The only problem is that we couldn't get rid of the rest of Destiny's Edge in the same stroke! The fact that Eir, the least obnoxious of the entire bunch, got killed rubbed me wrong. At least we got rid of Faolain, ending the insipid "Caithe's divided loyalties/ex-lover" melodrama.

The voice acting (especially Nolan North) was spot on, and the visuals were very impressive. I think ANet took a step in the right direction with the HoT storyline, it just ended up rushed and incomplete. What we need is more of this, just complete and polished before it goes live.

I’ll save the gripes about gameplay mechanics for another topic. The whole elite specialization fiasco left a sour taste in my mouth.