Guild Wars 2

I just watched the WoodenPotatos retelling of the Prophecies story.

I have to say that looking back on it now, it was probably the singularly best, most creative and most well-concieved story in any RPG I have played.

The real downside was that it was told in such a fashion that the player could basically ignore it and still make it through just fine. Which is what I did cause I’m lazy and didn’t read.

GW2 does a much better job in terms of presentation, no doubt. But the story is just not on par with Prophecies, not even close.

The GW2 main story is glaringly similar to the Bioware type stories that you see in Mass Effect and Dragon Age:

1. Obvious, in your face evil threatens world/galaxy
2. Heroes arise, decide to save world
3. Unite all races
4. Fight final climatic battle

You can practically overlay the plot for GW2 over that of Mass Effect and it would be the same structure turn by turn, play by play.

It’s not a BAD story structure per se, it’s just overdone and entirely predictable.

Prophecies was pure drama from start to finish. It was an even tug of way between circumstance, and initiative. You never felt too weak or too strong as the story forward. The story is neither completely driving you, and nor are you completely driving the story.

Even when you are driving the story forward, you’re always suspicious in the back of your mind if you’re actually doing the right thing. First the White Mantle, then Glint, and finally the Vizier.

I really wish I paid more attention to the story in GW1 because I think it would have made if my most enjoyable and memorable RPG experience, even more so than Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, or ANY of the Bioware games.

ecthelion.6794, I think in Origin Guild Wars such a story was your first experience, you was surprised. And the lore in Guild Wars 2 didn’t surprise you, because it’s not your first experience anymore.
I think that’s the reason. I’m not sure though, just one of my thoughts.

And I’ve played in GW1 too. =) Still playing, sometimes.

I don’t think it should get marks down due to similarities with other existing stories. Is everything with stocky Dwarves who are skilled smiths post Lord of the Rings unoriginal?

I actually watched the video after finishing the personal story in GW2. I missed the story when I was actually playing Prophecies cause I just didn’t bother to read anything, which, in retrospect was a huge mistake.

It’s not a matter of “all fantasy stories are the same anyway”. It’s a matter of story structure. If GW1 and 2 were written into full novels, there’s no question in my mind which would sell better.

Guild Wars has some really amazing history and lore behind it. I don’t feel like GW2 conveys that lore… Also the lack of cinematics makes the game hard to immerse myself in.

The way I see it, the Guild Wars 2 story has several big problems, which are somehow interconnected.

First of all – it feels disjointed. When I played through the storyline, I felt like I was jumping between phases which lacked good transition between them. Important plot points are reach to never even be mentioned again later on.

Because of this lack of smooth transitioning, we do not get to establish connections with the characters in the story – which brings me to my second point. I think that most people will agree that the most interesting and well developed character in their personal story was their mentor (except for maybe the charr, who have some cool warband members). All of the characters in the personal storyline are lost in the transitioning between the acts to never appear again. This makes the player unable to develop an emotional connection to the character.

The third problem is the lack of major plot twists. How can you introduce a good plot twist when you do not have characters to do it with ? There is nobody that the player cares for among the cast of characters ! There are vague attempts to make the player feel connected to the Mary-Sueish Trahearne with the whole story of how their paths were destined to cross, but they fail due to the bad execution and emotionless VO.

In my opinion this is a case of quantity over quality. In GW1 we had one good story with multiple elements and twists – here, we have many, different, disjointed personal stories which suffer from all kinds of issues – from bad cohesiveness to lack of plot twists.

the problem i see is that to get the most out of the gw2 story you need to roll a char of each race and play through the story for each in order to have all the pieces. I think thats both a fantastic design decision or a horrible one depending on your personal perspective.

There’s stuff I like in both GW1 and GW2, though I do prefer the original game simply due to the darker and more serious tone it carried. That is something that doesn’t seem to have been carried over into GW2 as much as it should have, in my opinion.

That’s not to say that GW2 isn’t a dark and serious game at times, since Orr is a pretty terrifying place! I just wish the setting had more visible grit and wasn’t so black and white in regards to having good guys and bad guys. We need more shades of grey, in my humble opinion.

I’m also a little frustrated at the lack of real, lasting consequences for the charr despite the chaos they’ve brought to Tyria. A lot of their recent lore feels like a cheap way to partially redeem them for the sake of having them as a playable race at the expense of forcing humans to be the underdog.

That’s fine, when done in moderation…though as it stands, there isn’t much that human players have to be proud of. The race revolves heavily around religion, yet that element is largely absent.

“I have to say that looking back on it now, it was probably the singularly best, most creative and most well-concieved story in any RPG I have played.”

……..Did we play the same game?

The Prophecies story was absurd. Hilarious, fun, amusing, and rather enjoyable, but absurd. To pull out some examples…

-You say GW2 feels disjointed. Prophecies had you fight the charr, then abandon the fight to run away. While running, you fought the stone summit, and then dropped that when you got to Kryta. There, you fought the undead, until you realized the Mantle were bad dudes and chucked undead hunting in favor of fighting mantle. And when that went poorly, you ran over to the desert to ascend for absolutely no reason conveyed in the actual storyline, and then returned to fight more mantle by slaying your way through the summit. At the end of the game, only one of the four antagonists presented in the campaign is actually defeated, and the others are just left out completely (leaving the Sorrow’s Furnace update, EotN, and GW:Beyond to pick up the slack later on).

This was the campaign that had you slogging through undead creatures from Orr, and then introduced you to a wizard from Orr who had the power to control the undead. And you are supposed to be shocked when he turns out to be a bad guy. Likewise, this was the campaign that gave characters like Marcus, who betrays you to the Mantle, exactly one line in the entire plot, yet still expects you to hunt him down with a personal vengeance. And let’s not forget the epic drama, including “As a boy I spent much time in these lands. Look at them now, just look at them!”

Prophecies had some great ideas, but if you’re going to fault GW2 for presentation, you can’t look at GW1 with nostalgia goggles. Both have some epic themes and grand arcs, but both suffer from some awkward presentation and a lack of background lore.

I may be looking at GW1 through nostalgia goggles as you say as well, but I think first game at least tried to have plot twists. White Mantle being bad guys return of Rurik as undead even betrayal of Vizier. Truth be told other stand-alone expansions were really strait forward with less engrossing characters kitten stupid Kormir.
I’m not saying that GW1 was greatest RPG ever, but for MMO standards plot of Prophecies was one of the kind. To this day I like to nostalgia trip to Pre-Searing Ascalon.
And for characters accompanying with story there was that team of NPC’s: Dveona, Mehnlo etc witch helped player feel as part of the world.

Prophecies plot was one of a kind for a MMO plot, because it wasn’t a MMO plot. It was a cooperative RPG, in which the instanced nature allowed the shifting alliances. The Mhenlo team was not really that major, it was fun following their comments around various areas, but that’s about it.

Oh, and you never wondered why there were no Mantle at Lion’s Arch? For the simple reason of not having one of the antagonists occupying the capital city. It’s not very surprising to end up fighting them after a few mission, just as with old man Vizier Khilbron. If not predictable, the story is a tad bit absurd in it’s turns. Now, the EotN storylines were excellent, and I liked Nightfall too. Factions… Factions had some weird moments that broke the flow of the story, such as when the legendary weapons of Luxons and Kurzicks failed to do a thing to Shiro, resulting in pointless running around which somehow led to Kuunavang.

Prophecies was a good story? Enemies showed up and disappeared without reason, we blindly trusted the guy who was clearly an evil dude, the main enemy changed no less than 6 times (charr, Stone Summit, undead/Shining Blade, White Mantle, Mursaat, Titans), oh yeah, and we were totally responsible for the cataclysm we ended up having to prevent at the end. And a genocide of a race so ancient they were around before humanity’s gods.

Disagree with the Mursaat’s methods all you like, odds are that the world would’ve been better off, within the strict confines of the Prophecies story, if the Chosen had all died at Sanctum Cay. Yes, rigid theocracy stays in place, but on the other hand, world-destroying monsters never awaken from their extra-dimensional tombs. Nice job breaking it, hero.