Guild Wars 2

I’ll probably catch a lot of flak for this post because it’s a pretty broad request and involves universes that have many rabid fans but… I would love to see the story writing in guild wars 2 take on a tone similar to that of the game of thrones universe. I, like every nerd who enjoys mid evil western fantasy am really digging the tale of a song a ice and fire. The entertainment value of the story seems to come from how uncompromising it is to the reader (or viewer). I think guild wars 2 has the framework for these story elements. I want to see main characters dying or being maimed and some true misfortune befall the residents of Tyria. I almost feel bad asking for it but the truth is as much as I enjoyed some of the living and vanilla story it still has that “the hero will always in the in the end” feel to it. Personally I found the most compelling part of the story to be when SpoilerYour vigil, priory, OoW mentor dies defending claw island. The best was Tybalt because I was truly sad due to him being a great character. Even in the attack on Lion’s Arch it seems like the only real losses were collateral ones. People died but not anyone you were connected to through the main story. I do look forward to living story 2 and what the writers have planned. Keep up the good work arenanet!

-Cheers

I think, given the original plan to kill Marjory, the writers are currently aiming for a more “real” feel for the game. From what I hear, GW1 could get what would be called “dark”, which I’d like a bit more of in GW2, but don’t expect it in zeal.

I disagree with you OP. Especially about what you call the most compelling part, one of the npc’s dying. You see, there’s a big difference between deaths in Game of Thrones, and deaths in GW2. When a character dies in Game of Thrones, it is usually the result of a long series of bad decisions. There’s always a good reason why a character dies.

In Guild Wars 2 this is not the case. Most characters die just because the writer felt that someone had to die in order to get a reaction from the players. But it didn’t fit into the story at all, and those characters did not need to die. In many cases, they simply stayed behind so that they could die.

Now I would like to see the story take a darker turn, but what I would like to see most of all is twists. As any Game of Thrones reader or viewer knows, in neither the show or the books does anything ever go as planned. A character on a journey to a particular city or other character generally has something happen to them that sends them off in an entirely different direction at the last second. And when you think a character is definitely going to win, that is when he dies. GW2’s writing team could draw some inspiration from this. Not by having characters die left and right, but by countering expectations.

Also, I would really like them to tone down the way Asura technology is an answer to everything. I know this is a world filled with magic, but the Asura have become a tiresome plot device.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Also, I would really like them to tone down the way Asura technology is an answer to everything. I know this is a world filled with magic, but the Asura have become a tiresome plot device.

I second this. I hadn’t thought about it, really, but nearly every important weapon in the game is from the asura. It would be nice to see some variety in the solutions. This may require some creativity, as lasers a quite a straightforward thing. Perhaps the resistance to such magi-tech might prove to be a good twist?

Dondagora.9645:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Also, I would really like them to tone down the way Asura technology is an answer to everything. I know this is a world filled with magic, but the Asura have become a tiresome plot device.

I second this. I hadn’t thought about it, really, but nearly every important weapon in the game is from the asura. It would be nice to see some variety in the solutions. This may require some creativity, as lasers a quite a straightforward thing. Perhaps the resistance to such magi-tech might prove to be a good twist?

I’d settle for a plot that doesn’t have something that needs to be blasted. I get that this is an MMO, but for kitten’s sake, bigger guns shouldn’t be the answer for every problem.

But yeah, I think between the plot device airship in Arah and pretty much everything Scarlet pulled, we’re overdue for a lot more magi and a lot less tech.

Killing off characters for the sake of killing off characters is not really all that entertaining. As Malafide said, Game of Thrones does it in a unique way – it isn’t just “killing off characters” its “killing off characters for a reason”. Storywise, I cannot say much because I don’t watch the show as I want to read the books (first) and haven’t gotten to them. But I do know from the author’s perspective he does it because he feels it would be most impactful to kill off certain characters at certain times.

The latter personal story trivialized NPC death by having it happen all around us for no real reason, and predictably too! In all honesty, out of the dozen+ NPCs we knew/got to know somewhat that died, only 3 cases beyond the mentors really mattered (to me, at least), and one because it was unpredictable, the second because it was a character that if you did the paths right, you could end up seeing far more than any other returning character (I speak of Tegwen and Carys, whom can show up for almost a fifth of the game if you play a sylvari priory character and make the right paths), and the third because you abandoned and then killed her (Apatia). The others? Meh.

Tonn? Predictable.
Fergen? Who?
Kekt? Meh.
Grechen? Meh.
Beirn? Who?
And the dozens others. We either never get the chance to know – thus care – about the NPCs (which Game of Thrones always does – you get to know them, get to love them, start thinking “well maybe they’ll survive, they’ve been around this long!” and then… they die).

If they start killing NPCs off right, then I’m all for it. But if it is just a return to the latter PS’s killing off every other named NPC you meet… why bother? It isn’t impactful. And that’s not dark. That’s not grim. That’s just silly.

The game’s backstory is dark, and gives plenty of chances for non-killing-off-everyone-you-know “dark” in the story, and Ghosts of Ascalon and Sea of Sorrows takes advantage of these things. But the personal story? Living story? It’s all too light-hearted.

Dondagora.9645:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Also, I would really like them to tone down the way Asura technology is an answer to everything. I know this is a world filled with magic, but the Asura have become a tiresome plot device.

I second this. I hadn’t thought about it, really, but nearly every important weapon in the game is from the asura. It would be nice to see some variety in the solutions. This may require some creativity, as lasers a quite a straightforward thing. Perhaps the resistance to such magi-tech might prove to be a good twist?

To be honest, we’ve seen enough of Asura flashy tech, Sylvari and Humans.

It’s said that Charrs have the most deadly, military-focused technology. It’s not pretty and flashy, but raw power of steel, cruelty and efficiency. Charrs have tanks, scorpions, alpha-version of helicopters, bombs and much more.

Maybe next time when it comes to tech, instead of that “magical lasers” and other kid stuff, pull out long-forgotten Charr non-magical machinery ?

OP: I agree. The game’s lore can be shown as a really interesting story, but it suffers due to execution. When playing for the first time, I never felt like Zhaitan is a big deal. Yea, sure, some random dragon.

There was no feel of despair, terror, doom. We could deal with everything, nobody was dying, only some random NPCs (apart from Tybalt- it was an excellent character).

Part of that disaster was audio side, for sure. Audio can really make an atmosphere out of nowhere. Now I’m not blaming the existing soundtrack, really, but audio didn’t fit in almost 3/4 of cases for me. Some tracks, especially battle ones, are just so widepy used and have no flavour.

Another thing is video side. This game has PEGI 12+. It means that children who should not see blood or hear “mild language” won’t see/hear it. But in the entire game, where’s any blood? Any “mild language”?
Seriously, this is not Rayman Adventures. When we fight someone, it should be a war, sound like war, look like war and feel like war. Occassional change of atmosphere is good, because it takes away monotony, I never felt like any hero, because there was no war, no danger, no atmosphere of it. Especially with Scarlet and Zhaitan Tbh, the only case when it felt like a important thing going on was the early start of Living Story with terrified refugees.

Whatever you say about Rayman games, second and especially third part were pretty dark. Heck, Rayman 3 had more innuendos in tutorial than whole Guild Wars 2 :P

Rym.1469:

It’s said that Charrs have the most deadly, military-focused technology. It’s not pretty and flashy, but raw power of steel, cruelty and efficiency. Charrs have tanks, scorpions, alpha-version of helicopters, bombs and much more.

Maybe next time when it comes to tech, instead of that “magical lasers” and other kid stuff, pull out long-forgotten Charr non-magical machinery ?

Oh as a charr fan I would love this, being able to actually see the charr military at work (which we don’t actually see in game, all we see is small warbands at work). With the homogeneous groups (Packs, Orders, LA etc.) we get to see so little of the cultural personality (well except Asura, but they’re a bit cliche mad scientists most of the time just being wedge in to do mad scientist stuff). We perhaps get a bit of flavor text here and there but I’d personally like to see Charr interacting with Charr fighting a Charr-style battle.

I would generally prefer a step back from homogenization towards racial flavoured story, less Pact solving everyone’s problems and more “Race X does stuff and invites other races to participate” i.e. Charr clearing the Brand with their military, players of other races sent to “help in the name of maintaining positive relations with charr” or something along these lines.

Pact and other monolithic structures without character are quite uninteresting and kill the potential for interracial play, politics, grudges and so on.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The latter personal story trivialized NPC death by having it happen all around us for no real reason, and predictably too!

I didn’t see it that way. I saw it as the story communicating that is a high stakes war and the danger is real. The lore prior to PS depicts the Elder Dragons as winning the war. Their champions were incredibly difficult to defeat and the dragons themselves were believed to be unkillable.

A military campaign against them would be like an episode of G.I. Joe if no-one died fighting them, it would be absurd. Characters needed to die. Named ones, unnamed ones, major ones, minor ones. Not because the writers are trying to reinforce the emotional impact of their deaths but because death is a common part of the story they were telling (and it should be).

Death should be a trivially common thing in a campaign against an Elder Dragon, it looks weird to players because the NPCs constantly treat it like it’s not (which is in tone with world).

I recently finished playing Season One of Telltale’s “The Walking Dead” and there were a lot of character deaths in that game (the % of total protagonists that died was high). I cared about a lot of them. I would only spend a few scenes with some characters that would die soon after and that would impact me and many other players felt the same, to me that busts the myth that a character needs to be around a long time to have emotional investment.

I think the PS gets a bad rep for this issue because of Apatia specifically. We spend little time getting to know her (made worse because her story is divided into different branching options) and the major source for why we should feel bad she died is because we had agency (the choice you make in A Light in the Darkness) in her death. This was quickly followed by the unusual moment where you mourn her death, travel to Hoelbrak and speak of her legend (not a problem on it’s own, but juxtapose that with how you deal with Foral’s death). She likely wasn’t special to most players yet her death was treated as special (I don’t think we ever specifically mourn our Order mentor, someone most players were more invested in, one of which is also a norn). That came across as poorly trying to create investment in a character that was created simply to die. The problem isn’t that Apatia dies, it’s that her death is written to be more significant to the PC than it was to the player.

One of the sources for why the story isn’t as dark as it could be would be the Biconics. They are written like characters from a pamphlet about diversity, prejudice and inclusion,without any of the real world issues or conflicts that come with those plots which happen to be some of the most powerful story tools. Tyrion in GoT is a rewarding character because he faced prejudice all his life, most of all from the people who should love him most, his family. Simply because he’s a “dwarf”. Oberyn in the show was so easy to rally behind and invest in because he was surrounded by people who looked down on kittens or people of low birth, who treated women poorly. All he had to to was not be those things and be a champion for his sister and her children (and Tyrion) and he became one of the most popular characters in the show (he was also handsome, charismatic and convincingly heroic). The Biconics fail to shine because the world around them is already very bright. Game of Thrones, the Walking Dead – these are dark worlds full of injustice and horror.

Rox is supposed to be a gladium, one of the lowest people in charr society but we first meet her when she has the ear of the most prominent charr in Tyria (quick, name an Imperator, side point – name Jennah’s cat – human bias much?). Nothing we see about her life communicates that she has it bad. She regularly reports to Rytlock, she’s a freaking delegate at a royal birthday party, she has more agency than most charr and she gets heralded as a hero and is introduced to important leaders like the Master of Peace. People take her seriously, they judge her on her accomplishments instead of her social status (something the lore says should matter but it doesn’t) and her gladium status (arguably even her race as a consequence) comes across as a token badge for diversity as opposed to a real story that is being told. Kasmeer is similar, she’s supposed to face prejudice due to losing her status (something most human’s don’t have to begin with), yet she constantly looks better than most of us will on our wedding day (lol mesmer illusion lol), she has agency and was still respected by Logan and Faren. We never see her face any prejudice or difficulty, we are merely told about it. We are told the Biconics are outcasts, but we see the Biconics get treated more seriously than most other people in the story.

I’m ok with darker writing, but not Game of Thrones type of writing where every interesting character dies.

Darker writing is basically the norm nowadays. I’m quite uneasy about this trend as it does reflect just how grim and dire our entire civilization’s becoming (not that it was nice in, say, the past 5,000 years, not at all, but it would be about kitten time our species got its kitten together and started behaving, guided by the meaning of the adjective that is derived from its very name: humane — as in the lexical, moral, ethical, intellectual, and emotional sense… but I digress) either with little hope of things turning for the better for once.

And in fiction (be it literature, films, games, TV series) I kind of get the vibe that if the IP does not contain enough grit, the audience will tend to gravitate away from it, deeming it childish/naive/dreamy/unrealistic. That’s a huge mistake, in my opinion, but I also cannot help but notice that in quite a few cases dark and good quality will most likely go hand in hand.

However, let’s not run ahead of ourselves. In the case of this game that dares call itself sequel to Guild Wars, decent, compelling, and gripping writing would be needed first and foremost. So before the story gets plunged into gritty, dark marshes y’all are so keen on exploring, filled with the decomposing shells of likeable characters and scores of innocents, the quality of writing should first match the level of Guild Wars (which was kind of gritty, too, if you think about it) or better (* cough * SW:ToR * cough *). If the above criterion was met, I’d be perfectly content and happy. I don’t see a point in making the game overly dark just for the sake of it if the story’s good. I mean, I’d personally go play Witcher if I wanted grim, dark, and neat, but that’s just me.

Unfortunately, currently the game whose name I so eloquently deciphered in my signature is doing it wrong; pouring spicy dressing (dark/gritty) on an awful meal (story) will not make it great. Either they think if they go Game of Thrones blood and gore-wise it will automatically make the writing as good as R. R. Martin’s, or they have a thing for random deaths (PS post-Claw® Island) and senseless massacres by an inconceivably flawed and overpowered villain. Just today, they had to go out of their way and show off how they’ll blow up one of the scarce decent elements of their writing, killing who-knows-how-many innocent and peaceful Zephyrites…

Funnily, this picture from the Story Journal reveal page (I know it’s a placeholder, demo thingy but it cracked me up.) is a spot-on summary of their storytelling to date. Paraphrased: “Something evil this way comes… OH NOES! IT GOT TO THE FOLKS YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT/SAVE SOONER! NOW THEY’RE ALL DEAD! GO ON AND AVENGE THEM!”

That’s not only depressing but outrageously stupid, too.

I mulled this over, and isn’t there already a some darkness in the story? More recently there was the battle of LA which pretty much was a genocide. The flame legion do have those breeding camp. The nightmare court routinely torture for fun, the inquest aren’t much better.
The problem is not the need for a darker narrative (plenty of that already), it’s the depiction of it in game. But we have the rating issue…

Thalador.4218:

Darker writing is basically the norm nowadays. I’m quite uneasy about this trend as it does reflect just how grim and dire our entire civilization’s becoming

Oh nothing so dreary. It’s basically appealing to teenage boys and people that think dark and edgy is cool and mature. Kids entertainment is usually characterized by joy, bright colors, and singing and dancing. When people reach that age where they try to distance themselves from ‘childish-things’ they go a complete 180. Eventually levels out when they have to start paying the morgues. I went through that phase too, wore a lot black, listened to a lot of heavy metal. I guess I still do those things, but I’m not really of the opinion that darker is necessarily better.

Shiren.9532:

The Biconics fail to shine because the world around them is already very bright. Game of Thrones, the Walking Dead – these are dark worlds full of injustice and horror.

It’s not the dark world, its the characters that inhabit it.
Any story will always have some sort of conflict (it would be very very boring otherwise) and it’s how characters act and react that the entertainment value comes from.
A dark world can produce these sorts of conflicts but stranding someone on top of a mountain and forcing them to make the hard choices (as one does in Walking Dead) can produce the same conflict and in such a case I wouldn’t say the work is necessarily dark. The situation is dark and it gives rise to conflicts. But how about a happy person living a happy life that gets cancer, the lightness of the world thus acts to emphasis the conflict the person has to deal with and might act to emphasis some aspects of the story.

Walking dead also had the advantage of interactivity, it’s you that make those choices and has to live with the consequences (or the illusion of consequences, since the choices don’t really matter).
Currently the living story has us following the biconics around and passively viewing the narrative. This is problematic because video games are interactive. Series like Game of Thrones are passive narrative as well, but Game of Thrones also has like 30 minutes of dialogue in the average episodes (sometimes the entire episode is people talking) to characterize and make us care about the characters and thus care about how they deal with the central conflict. For example Tyrion is an interesting character not because he’s short, but because of how he reacts to it, because of how other’s react and he interacts with them.
Unfortunately since we have limited interaction and limited control over events we have a limited investment, and because practically it’s impossible to give us the necessary amount of passive dialogue (and undesirable, see peoples reactions to Metal Gear Solid) we also don’t care too much about the characters (necessarily).

So my thinking is, either more characterization (which might be possible with the new LW format which separates story instances) or more meaningful choices (but since this is a MMO with static world… unlikely).

Well, they just killed/shot down the Zephyrites. Dark enough? I’d say yes, for now that’s enough death to satisfy the beginning of the arc.

One thing I’d wish the writers would do, is focus more on one particular race. It seems that when ever something happens in the story, the writers feel compelled to involve every single race in it. And that’s absolutely not necessary. The players them selves already cover the wide spectrum of races. It is okay to have the npc’s all be of the same race. So when something happens in Rata Sum, it’s okay if all the npc’s in the story are all Asura.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

One thing I’d wish the writers would do, is focus more on one particular race. It seems that when ever something happens in the story, the writers feel compelled to involve every single race in it. And that’s absolutely not necessary. The players them selves already cover the wide spectrum of races. It is okay to have the npc’s all be of the same race. So when something happens in Rata Sum, it’s okay if all the npc’s in the story are all Asura.

I seem to recall people complaining like mad about how the Personal Story focused too much on a single race (Sylvari) though.

The rating is not a problem, really. Same rating, World of Warcraft.

Just go into Karazhan Crypts/Forsaken lands and you’ll see plenty of bodies with their legs/heads/arms cut off hanging on the trees/chains. Or venture into Naxxramas when one of the bosses is told to be “crafted” from skins of dead innocent people + you can hear them screaming.
Piles of bones, flesh – Gore as people name it.

As for language – during one of the fully-voiced quests, Garrosh calls Sylvanas a b**tch.

Yes, that and much more in a PEGI 12 game.
I’m not saying I want all of these things.

But PEGI is not a problem if you want, it seems like.

CureForLiving.5360:

I mulled this over, and isn’t there already a some darkness in the story? More recently there was the battle of LA which pretty much was a genocide. The flame legion do have those breeding camp. The nightmare court routinely torture for fun, the inquest aren’t much better.
The problem is not the need for a darker narrative (plenty of that already), it’s the depiction of it in game. But we have the rating issue…

There is darkness in the setting! not the plot itself.

People being kidnapped to test weapons on is grim. Losing your home and becoming a refugee is grim. The circumstances around the Tower of Nightmare (the screams of krait slaves during its construction and the effects caused by the tower itself) are dark. And all of LA’s arc was dark as well.

But all of this dark stuff is happening in the background. The plot in the foreground is shallow and lighthearted and doesn’t fall in line with the style of the background. That’s the issue.

My 2 cents, the plot (both LS and PS) doesn’t need to be all “omg so edgy!!! and dark kill off ppl” to become better. Forced edginess either trivializes content or in the worst case falls flat and makes it look ridiculously juvenile. (Or even worse than worst case, both)

It just needs uhhh… way more exposition, twists, less pop culture references, less shoehorning of characters with feeble excuses just to keep them around. [cough] Also obviously, less circumventing lore with deus-ex-machinas resulting in plot holes… [/cough]

My two cents.

I think the issue isn’t that ANet keeps everything upbeat, but that whenever they try to go dark, they hamstring themselves with either the gameplay (especially in the personal story) or the story (prominent in the living world). That isn’t touching and/or distressing, which people here seem to be building into their definition of dark- it’s just frustrating. Citing the two examples that stand out to me for each:

It’s the climax for Season 1. The Living Story has finally picked up to an engaging pace, and we know something very big is coming up. We go to the Captain’s Council with dire warnings that the rogue supervillain is coming their way… and they do nothing. Now, it’s a bit beyond the scope of this topic to address why it was written that way, but the important thing is they did nothing, for no reason. The razing of Lion’s Arch, the horrible deaths of countless innocents, the implied (which is an issue in its own right) mass graves, all of that had to be hung against the backdrop that the Captain’s Council, the savvy, conniving pirates who rose the ranks of the most cutthroat government on Tyria, chose this moment to become drooling, incompetent idiots. That undercut just about any emotional impact that might otherwise have hit me, but it’s also been gone over extensively and recently, so I’ll move right along.

The personal story undercut itself largely because of the revival mechanism. Over and over again, we saw characters get perma-killed by the same type of risen that they had been beaten down by over and over again in prior quests, only to be perfectly fine once I got around to them. There was one point where a champ killed all of my companions with the exact same attack, but only one couldn’t get back up because… the camera was doing weird things when he died? That’s not dark. That’s not tragic. That’s arbitrary, that’s killing someone off simply to give characters something to mourn. As bad as Zott was, though, the case I have to say was the worst offender for a dark moment shooting itself in the foot was Grechen. I was helping a friend with PS quests, but I decided to stay behind here to participate in the battle that overcame the combined might of the Vigil’s second in command and a norn havroun. I knew it was only going to be a bunch of trash mobs, but I was in a tolerant enough mood at the time to pretend that was reasonable. My friend went on into the crypt, and when everything remained calm, it seemed perfectly reasonable to me that we’d be overcome by a sudden rush right at the end. Since I couldn’t see my companion’s progress, I almost missed it when Grechen abruptly turned into a risen and all her companions fled yelling that they’d been overrun. Not a single other risen in sight. What the gameplay showed and what the story said happened were so entirely opposed I missed the rest of the fight laughing about it. That’s not what dark events should do to you. The worst part is that it was inconsistent- even knowing that the devs didn’t expect the player to be there, I also know there are other places where the devs don’t expect you to be, where you can nonetheless watch NPCs get beat down by hordes of enemies. Claw Island, for instance- you can swim around and see the body of your order mentor, with the risen standing clumped around it.

And then, wonderfully tying my whole rant together, you can kill all the risen, squat down, and revive them.

Anet’s writers have gone dark before. With Guild Wars Nightfall, the Realm of Torment was added, which is a very dark hellish realm. In fact, that was a little bit too dark for my taste. Because it felt un-Guild Wars. It didn’t seem to fit with the overall tone of the game.

What I hope to see is simply more intricate plots. I like to see clear character motivations, and I like seeing it in a way that involves the players. It’s odd that with all the innovation that GW2 seemed focus on, storytelling is the one thing they have not tried to innovate with. The story is still conveyed mostly by watching side characters talk, rather than directly involving the players. One of the few departures from that format, seemed to be the investigation at the Dead End bar. That was one of the few instances where the npc’s were pushed aside, in favor of the player as the main character.

By the way, I like what they did with Lion’s Arch. Al though I would much rather have seen LA fall due to overwhelming forces of evil (Titans/Mursaat/Dragon Minions), I do like that they had the guts to really trash a familiar hub. It shakes things up, and gets me emotionally invested. On the whole my feelings remain mixed. I don’t like Scarlet as a villain, and I like her alliances even less. So I don’t like that it is them that destroy Lion’s Arch. But I do like that Lion’s Arch does get destroyed.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

By the way, I like what they did with Lion’s Arch. Al though I would much rather have seen LA fall due to overwhelming forces of evil (Titans/Mursaat/Dragon Minions), I do like that they had the guts to really trash a familiar hub.

I’ve had this dream from the start where the Canthan Empire makes a “Pearl Harboresque” raid on Lion’s Arch, ravaging parts of the city and occupying the rest — in the weeks prior to the release of the Cantha expansion… ah well.

The writing is dark in many places, not grimdark, but it is a dark story (personal story at least, with lots of death etc. however most deaths are trivialized through the non liniear story telling, which caused a fragmented experience, making you not care about many characters deaths…).

The LS so far had a lot of dark szenarios, which were just poorly represented.
- Flame and frost lost its touch through the fact that it took too long, refugees came from places we do not know about, aside from: “somwhere north” and we never saw the supposed destruction.

- Southsun, was unfocused and a lot was hidden, never showing off the stuff that went in the background

- Dragon Bash was supposed to be dark, but the antagonists came out of nowhere and the good investigation part was ruinedthrough too many plot holes (how does the stupid base apear right in LA? Why even bother with LA? etc…)

- Queens Jubilee was supposed to shock us, however it all took a backseat to buggy presentation, never showing us the death of hundreds of victims and presenting us with a at that point ridiciulus villian… (also, stupid invasions out of nowhere, which ended up being nothing more then a reward test and devalueing Scarlets position as someone to take serious).
The comic releave was great though.

- Tequattle rising gave us nothing actually…

- Twilight Assault was good

- Tower of Nightmare, was great for the Zone, better foreshadowing, but in retrospect it came and left not enough behind in the long run.
Okay, it changed Kessex Hill completly which is awesome (in a dark way of course) but what was lost was a little village that was under constant attack by krait anyway and a Quaggan village…
The poison was “bad” but we never actually saw a lot of it, outside of the tower, since there was just not enough change.

- Fractured conclusion was actually pretty dark to be honest, but it is easy to miss

Now things get better actually
- Orgins of Madness let us actually feel how powerfull the Marionette was, as we constantly saw dozens of dead player if we failed…
The hideout and journal was also great, but its placement, like the aetherblade base was again unbeliveable…

- The finale in general was very good, but again the gameplay got in the way, it felt depressing and then uplifting.
Sadly they messed up in the final seconds of Scarlets death, but that is just my personal opinion. I was just not satisfied, since i never fought against Scarlet and gave her the beatingshe deserved (nope, i do not count fighting a giant hologram which overloads and then ha haer crippled just to kill er of as a fight, nor does i count the stuff in the Queens Pavillion, since i was not even able to touch her there..)

Overall the writing does try to be dark and hit you in the stomach by killing of people. The problem is that gameplay, exposition time and the type of presentation just gets in the way of it.

They get better, certainly, but there are too many things that rip you out of the illusion.

(btw. Yes, we need less asura-ex-machinas to explain stuff. By now we should have a stupid holographic army to rise against the dragons, thanks to Scarlets mass production. And i hated that soooo much….)

I like that word, Asura-Ex-Machina. I think I’ll adopt it, haha.

Now that you mention it, I do like it when they foreshadow things. I like exploring the world and discovering things, without it being announced on the front page of the website. The discovery of the Tower of Nightmares was pretty sinister, and they should do that more often. Scarlet’s lair was also a great addition, providing us with lots of clues to wildly discuss on the forums. Not everything needs to be clearly spelled out.