Guild Wars 2

When the next living or personal story begins, can you implement into the story a way to allow the player character to choose a name that will work with your future lore? Surely, being referred to as the slayer, the hero of Shaemoor, commander, hey you, etc. gets tiring and makes the dialogue less believable. I can only stand it so many times until you run into “who actually killed Zhaitan…? Oh, the Zhaitan slayer!”

What I’m thinking is you run a story instance (solo) that puts you in a tight spot that results in having no option other than to change your name to an alias (something cheesy like protecting loved ones. Actually no please don’t use this one…!) If it’s a story driven approach then I reckon people would be attached to the name (as long as you give us some good ones to choose from)

If audio budget is of no concern you just make a few names (3 or 4, that work with all races) and have each actor pre-record the name a few times for different tones and recycle them.

I’m told Mass Effect did this in a similar way and worked out well (haven’t played it yet). I’m sure it will work with GW2. Ultimately you’ll break future canon, OR make canon interesting (A: “XXX killed Zhaitan”, B: “No, according to this tombstone, YYY killed Zhaitan”, C: “Bookahs don’t know history, I killed Zhaitan”)

Mass Effect set the last name for the character, completely ignored the first name that they chose for themselves, and still more then half the time you’re referred to as Commander. But I digress.

My characters have names. They have backstories, flexible ones, but history and personality nonetheless. I’ve invested in the customization we were offered. I cannot articulate how peeved I would be if ArenaNet kittened on that and assigned them names. That would be far, far, far worse than being called by a title which changes every fifteen levels or so anyway.

i’m very fond of my character’s name, and would rather have him referenced by it whenever possible. they have been rather smart with it during voiced segments so far, giving the character’s name enough exposition through non-voiced text that it doesn’t annoy me.

i do wish for two things though:

1- that my character got a proper title he could introduce himself with (rather than having braham or whoever’s around go “and this is my friend” ), or some feat that can be used to describe him (“did you know this guy and i took down scarlet ourselves?”).

2- that characters that are close to my character can refer to him by the first name only. this is something that’s been annoying me since GW1. having people call my character by his full name even when it doesn’t make sense can be a bit grating.

In the very final instance of the Personal Story, there’s a group of norn you can listen in on.

They call the Commander the “Dragonslayer”.

There’s your title. ALL HAIL THE DRAGONSLAYER!

Issue with using these kinds of titles in the Living Story is that the Living Story is for everyone regardless of their placement in the Personal Story. You’d need at least 5 different lines – per language, per mention – if you mention the PC by the original term (Savant, Valiant, Slayer of Issormir, Legionnaire, and Hero of Shaemoor). You could add in the Orders rank but not everyone would reach there and there’s three different ranks meaning you’d have an additional 9. Or you could skip the Orders rankings and keep to the racials and Commander (Forging the Pact and on).

I hope when they continue the personal story (and they better kitten well better, and I would much prefer if the past Living World – except maybe holiday stuff where it isn’t relevant – gets made into a post Victory or Death personal storyline, perhaps with some alterations to make it more personal) they use Dragonslayer from then on. I mean, you slew Zhaitan. Screw being the second-in-command of the Pact. You are THE DRAGONSLAYER.

Or alternatively: Champion of Orr. Cuz King Reza granted you that title kitten and it doesn’t exist anywhere (completing the final PS achievement should have granted that title…).

Of course, all the above would count primarily for voice acting. In dialogue boxes, NPCs already often refer to the PCs by their name.

TBH, i like “commander” better than dragonslayer. the former gives authority (especially when said by rytlock brimstone himself, like he did during flame and frost), the latter sounds like a bad heavy metal album :P i wouldn’t mind the dragon slaying being brought up, but i’d rather be called commander than slayer (though i still would rather have characters call me by name :P)

It could be based on your selected title.

“If it wasn’t for the courage and heroism of the Crabgrabber, Scarlet would have succeeded.”

Serval.6458:

It could be based on your selected title.

“If it wasn’t for the courage and heroism of the Crabgrabber, Scarlet would have succeeded.”

while it would probably be too much work i’d love it.

“all hail been there, done that!”

but then GW1 veterans would be at an advantage, what with the exclusive “God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals” title.

At the end of the personal story they should have resigned the hero from the Pact and that would have made some of the Living Story dialogue more believable. We are permanently left wondering why, as Commander of the Pact, we are unable to do anything about Scarlet apart from chat to stray adventurers in bars.

A cute and neat thing they could’ve done in the PS was to ask if your 1st word in the name is your 1st name. I would say most people followed that order, and if that isn’t the case the game would just treat your name as it does now.

On the other hand, if you had nominated what your first name would be, closer NPC’s like the current band of heroes(Braham etc.) could call you by your first name only to signify the bond between your toon and them. This would’ve been particularly awesome in the newest story instance!

moomooo.9357:

A cute and neat thing they could’ve done in the PS was to ask if your 1st word in the name is your 1st name. I would say most people followed that order, and if that isn’t the case the game would just treat your name as it does now.

On the other hand, if you had nominated what your first name would be, closer NPC’s like the current band of heroes(Braham etc.) could call you by your first name only to signify the bond between your toon and them. This would’ve been particularly awesome in the newest story instance!

on GW1, you had to pick a first name and a last name (or last names).

then the game proceeded to ignore that and call you by your full name all the time.