Guild Wars 2

If anyone has ever noticed what wildy popular books and tv shows had in common, its that characters generally arent plainly good and evil. breaking bad for example, almost every single character is morally ambiguous. Pretty much the same thing with game of thrones.

they have good sides and bad sides.

however in gw2 i feel the characters might be lacking this kind of depth. this character here is completely evil, you can always expect evil things from it. however this other character is completely good, he will never do an evil thing in his life.

Like after we get to know trahearne for awhile, hes just a simple good guy. we wont expect a bad thing from him, ever. what if he had a dark past? or if he lost his way later on in a living story, maybe by falling for geed, lust, or envy, etc. just an example of how you could make these characters exponentially more interesting.

I feel gw2 could use some depth to its characters.

Is Scarlet 100% evil?
Are the Dragons?
Are DE 100% good?

None of those are (as far as we know, Scarlet is still a bit unexplained) 100% one way or another.

What did Zhaitan do that was good for the world? As far as I saw, it doesn’t even have a personality. I don’t recall ever conversing with Zhaitan.

What did DE do that was bad? They have minor character flaws but they aren’t bad people, just flawed people.

Compare Logan (who is probably the best argument for DE being less than 100% good) to Anton from GW1. Logan abandoned his allies to save the Queen. Eir thought the plan could work without him, it was within reasonable belief that Logan wasn’t needed to take down Kralkatorrik and his reason for leaving was noble – to save the Queen.

Anton betrayed his allies. In attempt to protect his friends and family (still a noble cause) he gave the enemy information, consciously sacrificing the lives of strangers (and undermining the human defence against the charr) to save the lives of people he cared about. Betrayal is much worse than abandonment.

Eir’s big flaw is that she’s a “deadbeat mother”. Within norn culture it doesn’t seem that strange (she is a norn with great potential and she went off chasing her legend) and Braham seems to have had a father that raised him well. What were the consequences of her decision? That Braham was raised happily and well by a loving and caring man? Sure he’s not a fan of his mother, but her actions aren’t exactly in a moral grey area.

Caithe is tempted by Nightmare simply because she loves Faolain. Even then, she doesn’t do anything the typical Nightmare Courtier would do. Far from it – she’s an active force for good in Tyria like the rest of DE.

I find it confusing you bring up DE as an example of not being 100% good when the OP is talking about characters like Walter White – a protagonist who is a drug dealer, murderer, a father, a husband, a school teacher and many other dimensions.

Then you compare GW2 to a TV show like The Wire where the protagonist is a drink driving cop, who uses his kids to help trail a drug king pin (unsupervised), brings a drug addict to their soccer games and leaves them unsupervised in a Police Station after picking up a known murderer and gang member in the middle of a school night (with the kids in the same car). This guy is one of the main protagonists of the show and he demonstrates many admirable qualities and is often portrayed as a hero but at other times his actions are downright reprehensible. The reverse is true of the drug dealers and gang members – they are portrayed as people and not as moustache twirling villains.

I think the OP will be disappointed. It is commonly implied in several interviews that Tyria has a kind of moral dichotomy. The players are the heroes, they are supposed to be heroic. If a character does something that is to be disapproved of (a recent example I saw was homophobia in Tyria) they would generally be portrayed as villains.

The closest thing we have now is Evon Gnashblade and his plot seems to be on track for becoming a future villain (he’s certainly not being portrayed in a sympathetic light). Canach was walking the line but in recent updates he almost seems like a brainwashed newborn sylvari plucked right from beneath Ventari’s Tablet.

The moral duality in WoW is made possible by having two different factions that player’s can play. The plots and lore of that world is able to be morally complex because every conflict that deals with one side has a mirrored presentation for players on the other side. Neither side is the “good” side (although at times – like Garrosh’s reign – one side will be partially portrayed as right or wrong) and this is one of the game’s greatest strengths, something that has resulted in rich world building. Because all the playable races in GW2 are of the same side, this kind of story simply isn’t possible.