Guild Wars 2

I’m creating this thread as a constructive discussion about the delivery of story and lore in-game and I hope to share my thoughts on what the current strengths are, areas for improvement and creative ideas for new content. I would love this to be a forum for other fans to bring their vast creativity together to act as a think tank and (hopefully) a resource for Anet.

I want to stress that this thread is specifically for the delivery of story and lore and would like to keep it positive! The reason we all get passionate about this game is because – at it’s core and regardless of personal opinions – we love it!!

Quick disclaimer – I’m totally unqualified to make any comments about this subject, I’m just a fan that loves this game and the vast lore it has already built up!! Though I appreciate this game is first and foremost an online mmorpg, my choice of games is all about story telling and a sense of adventure.

So here goes…

Personal Story:
One of the amazing strengths of this game is the fact that we have character creation that allows us to decide our lineage and core values. Throughout the Personal Story we see some of the impacts of our choices, though they can seem to have little consequence and feel very finite. Obviously in a world of hundreds of thousands of heroes it’s very difficult to make each player to have the sense of ownership over the fate of the overall world due to their ideals and choices.
My idea to improve this lies in the core values we choose in character creation and the core relationships we choose to invest in.

- Firstly, during character creation we are given the choice of what our character’s personality should be, i.e. dignified, charming, aggressive. I think significant choices in the game will have more impact if the character dialog reflected these personality choices closes consistently through the game. Our decisions should be compared against these core values and we should see some of the internal conflict that goes on if they don’t sit well with each other. This should be consistent in both serious moral decisions and minor decisions to reinforce the player’s ownership of that personality. I.e. Scenario 1 I choose to use untested Priory technology to harness possible significant results rather than rush in with the Vigil to protect the people of the local town from the Risen, but I am an aggressive character, I want to deal with this situation head on and passionately defend my people. I have internal conflict when weighing the risks up and making the decision to choose a high risk – high reward strategy. It eats me up inside that I may lose innocent people because of my decision but I know that it must be done.
Scenario 2 I am dignified, a member of the prestigious blood legion, but in order to achieve the reconnaissance I need I have to wear the disguise of a Flame Legion. I hate this, it’s humiliating, I want to spit on this armour, but I know I’ve got to get results. I hope my warband doesn’t find out.

I think that this consistent internal conflict being brought into dialog cutscenes would help to build a lot closer affiliation between the player and their character they choose to role play as.

- Secondly, We have witnessed some amazing characters who have made a real, meaningful impact on the community playing this game – for example: Tybalt Leftpaw. While Tybalt’s (and the other order mentors) involvement in engaging us in the story has been mostly successful, Guild Wars 2 appears to have a fear of holding onto significant characters and developing meaningful relationships. Each personal story initially establishes specific personal relationships with NPC’s in the game. I feel however that too little time is spent developing those relationships to make them meaningful should that person be in need of saving or be killed off. GW2 needs more developed emotional connections. There are so many NPC relationships that are made with our character that we move onto another before we have had a chance to get immersed in that relationship. Though many people hold a grudge against Trehearn for stealing a little bit of our thunder I feel he is a good example of what could be an appropriately developed relationship. We spend a huge amount of time with him and gradually learn what his values are, his calling is and what his personality is like (though admittedly he is a bit of an introvert!). We should experience longer last relationships with significant NPCs throughout our personal story, establishing them as our followers and aides, and revealing depth of character and interaction along the way. That way, when significant events happen such as losing a friend, the significant emotional connection has been developed to facilitate the expect reaction and experience to that event. Another simple addition would be to periodically be mailed by your NPC friends beckoning you to return to your home instance to have some meaningful dialogue about the world, your quest, their feelings towards you, and a debrief of the events/traumas you have experienced.
I.e. Scenario 1 My Lab partner and his pet raptor join me on every adventure I have. They are constantly providing me with thought provoking questions about the world around me, apologising for not quite holding their own in a fight, and panicking while we deal with the effects of their over curious pet and malfunctioning experiements.
Scenario 2 My Warband has seen me through every success and victory. They have had my back when I’ve doubted myself. We’ve bled for each other, lost some brothers and sisters, gained some new ones on the way. I know that though I’m likely to lead them to there doom, they’ll gladly die fighting by my side to protect Fort Trinity. I’ve had to leave one of them behind, they didn’t make it through the gates in time. I know she’s gone, every time hurts more than the last. The rest of my Warband assure me that I couldn’t have made any other call. I’ll finish this fight for her. I’ll build a monument to her name when I return home.

Cutscenes
Cutscenes currently consist of one-to-one dialogue with NPCs, and sometimes animated concept artwork. The living story has re-introduced traditional GW cinematic camera panning cutscenes with Characters being in the world environment. By far, the best cutscene in this game is the one in the Citadel of Flame story dungeon where Logan saves Rytlock from falling – this is a STUNNING sight to see where beautiful concept art is seamlessly integrated with in-game models to create a perfect cinematic experience. I feel that these cutscenes that combine art and in-game models should be utilised as the method to deliver majorly significant, story-progressing cutscense. I feel that the current 1-1 clip should be utilised for more text based dialogue where choice of discussion content can be made (maybe introduce a Bioware-style dialogue selection) which would benefit by being wholly voice-acted and other significant cutscenes in the story should be delivered by the method utilised in the living story (traditional cutscenes) as it aids in emersion by not removing the player from their environment. I think Anet should not be afraid to demand attention to background dialogue as currently it is very easy to miss content due to player proximity to the source of the content or due to other environmental sounds or player triggering dialogue to skip due to progressing to fast. The traditional cinematic cutscenes would aid in bringing more focus and emphasis on content delivered through dialogue.

Living Story
Anet has currently promised to commit to producing free content every two weeks for us to experience which is the most generous and amazing concept of content delivery I have ever seen! Anet should be seriously praised for this model! Currently I think they are seeing a lot of success from it and are learning a lot from this process, however I feel that a compromise needs to be made to ensure that the content is regularly engaging, deep, fun and enduring. I also think that the content should be designed in a method that is permanent alongside content that creates living changes to the world. At current we are experiencing a lot of new lore, characters and factions – which is great, however I don’t feel Anet allow themselves the time to flesh these out with proper motivation and meaning.
Currently I feel that it isn’t wise to develop new cultures/factions when there are already so many cultures/factions/mysteries in the games lineage. I think that Anet should focus first on fleshing out content regarding already established lore, for example mysteries regarding race religions, magical artefacts, rival cultures, historical races and characters etc (for example Wooden Potato’s Youtube channel featuring the GW2 Mysteries videos!). This content could be rolled out in-between living world cultural and political content as it would be able to maintain it’s permanence due to being earthed in already established lore and history and therefore not holding present-time critical relevance. This could mean that this content could be explored and experienced at any time in a player’s game career, even years after it’s release. This would truly reflect expanding the world of Tyria and communicating that the game itself is alive.
While I think it is a fantastic Idea for the cultural and political issues of the current times to develop in real life to maintain a sense of a living world I think that Anet should take their time with this to make it meaningful and significantly impacting. New factions should be given time to fully investigate their motivation and reasoning, we should have to investigate the scale of threat/change they will soon have upon the world and there should be a sense of mystery and discovery of stepping through these world changes. The game would feel more fluid and synchronised if time was spent building a story-filled, interesting plot arching over a significant period of time, say 6 months, that will truly reflect the tensions of the living world i.e. the threat of the elder dragons or of established rival factions (for example the Halloween content appears to be establishing a paced plot to intentionally reveal the Lunatic Court as a serious world-changing Faction).
Imagine this: What if the release of the Tengu as a playable race was developed through a plot that led to a rise in tensions between the Tengu government having to face the threat of the Elderdragons on their home territory while being confronted by the challenge of conforming to a world of established races that they lack all trust in. Wouldn’t the addition of Tengu as a playable race be so much more meaningful if we – the players – had to play an active diplomatic role in aiding them in integrating into the modern tyria – maybe in establishing a new government/leadership to take over from the xenophobic zealots of the previous leadership. The Character creation of the Tengu race would then take place in a time of significant development that had been built up to over a period of 6 months. Not only would this keep the player base desperately engaged by tempting us with this future addition, it would also substantially flesh out already popular mystery and lore about a race of people loved by the fans.

I feel that for this content to be appropriately fleshed out and well-planned it should be released on a monthly basis rather than two weekly, with enough content to keep us engaged through that whole period of time.

I also think that the living story should be documented in the same way as your personal story in the hero panel so player can recap and reminisce over the events that they participated in, and that changed the world as we knew it. On this note I think these summaries (both personal and living story) should be given a voice-acted narration by the player voice actors to be viewed as a sort of story documentary.

I’ve dished out a lot of stuff there, some of which I haven’t thought much about, others of which I’ve thought about far too much. Please share your thoughts and ideas! Let’s see what creations we can develop!