Guild Wars 2

Greetings users of the Guild Wars 2 Lore sub-forum.
You are about to read my discourse on darkness and fear in the world of Tyria.
I would like to provide you with a disclaimer in advance:

• It will consist of arguments and commentary and is in its entirety subjective.
• Spoilers will be given yet I will attempt to use the following mouse-over formatting to prevent these as much as possible:
  Spoiler regarding the story of ... :the contents of the spoiler
• I will use Guild Wars (1) as a comparative example often due to it sharing the same universe.

An Introduction:

The “RPG” in “MMORPG”

Guild Wars 2 is a game with a great emphasis on the story of Tyria and storytelling isn’t easy. We are given the Personal Story, Living World and active-events with cinematics, in-game dialogues, written-dialogues, in-game texts, flavour texts and much, much more.

Still the story is somewhat lacking in my personal opinion.
We have seen character development, we have seen plots being revealed and there are many theories and loose threads to continue to spark our interest.
Yet at times I feel like the story misses a certain “impact”, it doesn’t always grab you by the collar and drag you into the Tyrian universe for some much needed immersion.

I have read multiple arguments for this being caused by:

• A flowing storyline which keeps you on the edge of your seat, craving for new information.
• In-game encounters that feel insignificant. Meaning both NPC- and story-encounters feel fleeting and/or are easily missed.
  Illustration:
  Guild Wars (1) for example was heavily story-gated. If you desired to attain the “elite” armours you’d have to pass through a selection of quests and missions in order to be allowed entrance to the area in which you could obtain the armours. This would force you to experience the story and although it sounds negative it sparked the lore-interests of many players. Guild Wars 2 compartively has a very open-world experience. A lot goes on for many players and you may even choose to not partake in the Personal Story at all. In-fact this is what many players end up doing because of multiple reasons:
  1. The Personal Story has lacking rewards (both experience-wise and currency/equipment-wise)
  2. Players aren’t story-gated and because of this do not have to complete a certain requirement to gain anything major.
  3. NPC’s you meet often end up as unimportant.
  4. Players are simply not interested in the story.

Reason “1” is mostly called upon because players start a story, get into the story and desire to continue but can’t. The story-missions follow one another in rapid succession and spark the desire of a continuation, yet the experience gained simply doesn’t allow for this. Players are expected to complete various tasks outside of the Personal Story which would end up granting them the required experience for the next selection of Personal Story missions.
Yet when players meet that temporary story-content block, created by their lack of experience, they aren’t forced to continue their story. (Reason “2”)
Players begin to complete events and tasks, they start gathering materials and ask veteran players for advice on how to “level quickly”. This advice is often along the lines of: Complete your daily or play in PvP for Tomes of Knowledge, join a train in the Edge of the Mists, etc.
While this on its own is no problem, it does not support the storytelling aspect of the game. Players get distracted by this new content, get themselves stuck in the “efficiency-threadmill” and lose interest in the story.

The last two reasons (“3” & “4”) are very important.

Reason “3.” “NPC’s you meet often end up as unimportant.”
…Is a major issue.

You don’t end up strengthening a lot of bonds with long-lasting characters in your character’s story.

Reason “4.” “Players are simply not interested in the story.”
Will be the main topic of my discourse.
And as such I’ll end this introduction and grant you my position for this discourse:

I believe the story of Guild Wars 2 can be improved upon by using “darkness” and “fear” as means of creating depth and immersion.

Why “darkness” and “fear”?

As mentioned in my introduction my fourth reason was “Players are simply not interested in the story.”, I have mentioned to have experienced a lack of “impact” in Guild Wars 2’s story, the factor that drags you into the universe by your collar and forces you to immerse yourself into the beautiful lore which Tyria has to provide.
I consider “darkness” and “fear” to be fitting elements to provide this immersion and will try my best to illustrate this opinion to all whom are reading this.

Guild Wars (1):
Guild Wars, or “Prophecies” as it later became known as, will always have a special place within my heart. The story truly swept me up, be it because of my youth at the time or not.

Nightfall is another campaign of Guild Wars that truly spoke to me on this level. It was filled with Pain, Despair, War and, believe it or not, worse…

But listing only examples of Guild Wars (1) won’t have any effect on my discourse regarding the story of Guild Wars 2.

Guild Wars 2:
A new threat has come to the attention of Tyria, the Elder Dragons, creatures thriving upon the consumption of magic and who don’t shy away from creating disasters, corrupting or enslaving other races and the environment. These are beings, in a way, more powerful than the Human Gods and they are at the doorstep of 5 major races. The Humans, Charr, Norn, Asura and Sylvari. These races all have their own problems and come to realize they can’t fight the Elder Dragons alone, they must bundle their forces and work together to achieve the superior goal of their collective survival.

An amazing set-up for a story with great potential. The story has internal struggle between the races, combined with an even greater menace!
This is a story that can thrill everyone who wishes to experience it.

Let’s take the humans as an example again:
It’s roughly 250 years after the events of Guild Wars (1).
Tyria has changed a lot in these years. The once proud human nation that stretched across all of Tyria has been driven back to only a few settlements. Most of the humans now live within the massive city of Divinity’s Reach. But what drove the humans back?
Among others it was the great war with the Centaurs. Centaurs are trampling Kryta underneath their hooves and are enslaving humans for their own manual labour. The Tamini-Centaurs lay siege upon human settlements and the war is said to have brought many humans despair.

But has it?

Within Divinity’s Reach reigns a certain calmth, the citizens know there’s a war outside yet they do not seem too troubled by it largely due to them feeling safe within the walls of Divinity’s Reach. Go outside however to Shaemoor and you won’t notice a great difference. Humans seem to go about their lives relatively peacefully and even places such as the Shaemoor Garrison don’t feel too dangerous after the initial assault during the attack of Shaemoor.
Note that this is a war going on. It is hard to find a trace of fear or despair in Queensdale and even the Gendarran Fields which are directly south of the Harathi Hinterlands and has settlements which are actively under siege and assault does not seem to have a lot of fear going on.

These are centaurs that capture humans, centaurs which consider humans as inferior and will without a doubt enslave or even kill you. Where do these humans get their courage to live on? Even the humans enslaved by the centaurs don’t seem to show their anguish. Sure they cry but that is all.

This constant war with the tamini, or any war within Tyria wouldn’t do so much as making you cry. It would deprave you enough of your morale to send you towards madness!

But humans are known for being a proud, valiant and stalwart race.

Let’s head over to the Norn.
The Norn have been driven back out of the Far Shiverpeaks by the Elder Dragon Jormag. They have lost many of their Animals of the wilds and are in essence refugees.
Alike humans, and likely even more so, the Norn are a Proud, Valiant and especially stalwart race.

Yet they’ve lost their homes, Jormag moves ever more south although slowly not unlike a glacier. The Norn are under constant attack by the Icebrood, the Dredge and the Son of Svanir. (the Norn who have chosen to accept Jormag within their lives and even praise it.)

Now these Sons of Svanir are interesting. They praise that which they fear they cannot overcome. Multiple reports in-game indicate however that the Son of Svanir mostly think of Jormag as the strongest animal of the wilds and praise it for its strength.

It isn’t fear that lead the Sons of Svanir to the dragon, it is greed. The hunger for power instead of the fear of eradication.

Now comes the Sylvari,
The Sylvari are a relatively new, yet highly sapient race within Tyria.
They “sprout” from the Pale Tree and resemble humans in appearance.
Before they are “born” they learn from the “Dream”.
The Sylvari are ever-curious, eager to learn and immune to Elder Dragon Corruption.

Personally I could never stand their optimism.
Their optimism is in a way largely caused by their endless curiosity but this optimism makes the Sylvari appear shallow to me, regardless of how rich their lore is.

Heart of Thorns was refreshing to me:

Conclusion
(Will contain Spoilers which I simply can’t filter properly.)

That which happened to the Sylvari on a grand scale is what I fear for all races on a lesser scale.
There is an abundance of optimism in Guild Wars 2’s Tyria which results in a harder to achieve immersion.

I would like to see less comic-relief such as Lord Faren in Verdant Brink, which at times even felt distasteful to me.
A more serious approach to the story of Guild Wars 2 allows for a lot of players to be more involved with the story.
And Guild Wars 2 is truly a game which can afford more “risque” approaches.
Unlike many other massive games Guild Wars 2 openly shows and support gay-love which is absolutely amazing. If we can see content such as this, which is in many countries considered as taboo, I’m sure we can see more darkness, fear, pain, anguish and hear some lamenting cries in the future.

I am not looking for senseless violence or any violation of human rights merely for the sake of entertainment. It is not gore I desire.

I merely believe that the essence of beauty is found within fragility.

The abundant optimism in Guild Wars 2’s Tyria does not indicate this fragility is there.
No matter what happens, there’s always the comic-relief at the end of the day.

My apologies, I wished for this to be a lot more fleshed out but I simply do not have the time to write it all, including proper arguments. I hope to continue this as a project on the GW2-forums with the help and support of any who support my point of view.

-Nero, not as evil as you might think I am.

I like what they did with the raid lore. It’s dark and also a bit disgusting how many people have been sacrificed to the bloodstone. On the other hand I also like the silly things such as Lord Faren going all Tarzan in the jungle. IMO diversity is good and there is plenty of room for the darker and happier lore in the game.

alil comic relief keeps things interesting to me. especially if its in side quest/detraction
(its why nightfall still my fav GW1 campaign)
(also nightfall had the most sillyness of the main 3 games xD)

What would the battle for Helm’s Deep be without Legolas asking Gimli if he should describe it for him or find him a box, or their kill count competition. He problem is finding out a good equilibrium between he comic and the dark.

Helm’s Deep is an excellent example for comic relief… done horribly wrong.
If you check the source material, the scenes are very, very different. PJackson has an evident love kitten for Elves/Orlando Bloom: Gimli actually is the one that ends up winning the “who kills the most orcs” wager. Dwarves are quite pic characters, but Gimli was reduced entirely to a “fat character”.

This is not to say that things have to be dark, gritty and moody to be “epic”. Batman vs Superman failed because of this. No relief to their mishaps.

It has to be done right, and so far, GW2 tips the balance towards the silliness.

I would disagree with you. Not that the movie is vastly different from the book, it definitely is, though in the end in both scenarios Gimli won the kill count contest, if you watch the extended edition. But on the idea that it was comic relief done bad. Lord of the rings definitely didn’t reach a level of outright silliness in that scene, and it was merely a sense of jest between two characters slowly becoming friends.

Sadly, this is not the point of this conversation. I personally feel that Heart of Thorns was vastly darker than the core game, and I’m not sure that I want them going a huge amount darker, and the only real level of crazy silliness that I recall in the zones is Faren. I don’t know what over silliness that people want taken out.

Our points of view do not differ that much. I’ll stay on topic, but a quick note: Gimli running in Rohan, asking to be tossed in Helm’s Deep and the “not the beard!” scene that followed made me /facepalm hard.

HoT was a big step in the right direction. In fact, Speedo Farren did not rub me the wrong way (Ok, that sounded better in my head).

The core game and Season 1 had many lighthearted moments that in my opinion took away from serious matters. Scarlet was so over the top, it undermined the deep impact her actions could have had. Stuff like the Ho-Ho/Ho-Bo Tron are fun, but at the same time, distract you from the fact that, holy cr*p guys, huge ancient beings are trying to wipe all races off the face of the planet.

One might argue, humor is a great way of maintaining morale, and to have the population focus on something different, other than the dark prospect of ending as a dragon minion; also that it offers a break in pacing. That’s fine, even desirable.
However, in my opinion, Core game narrative overdid this.

I like my worlds darker, though.

I do want to point out that Not the Beard was in Moria not Helm’s Deep, but anyways…

I agree that we are close in perspective. Core Tyria was definitely too happy-go-lucky. Minus the death of the mentor, very few of the deaths caused any sort of sadness or surprise, and many of the people that died in stories in Orr had absolutely nothing to do with my specific character and thus had no effect on me. The thing is, core Tyria is never going to change, at least not the personal story. So criticizing the original story isn’t going to help greatly, but instead letting them know your thoughts of where they went with HoT and what was a good or bad change will. I just hope they don’t go entirely dark. Hopeless scenarios can only last for so long before depressing me to the point hat I have to quit.

Oh yeeeh… Moria. Sorry. It’s been 15 years >.<

You’re right, hopefully they take this as constructive criticism. If we take the time to actually come here and comment on issues like this, is because we care about the game and world they’ve managed to build so far.