Guild Wars 2

Hi!
The title tells it all: Is the lore and environment of the charr zones gloomy? And by gloomy I mean a dark, rugged place with no much of green, something with some dark, dull colors… I hope u know what I mean. :p
Oh, and how variable is the lore when comparing charr zones with each other? Is the vegetatio and fauna all the same from lvl 1-80?

So now u can see how important visuals are for me… :p I just started playing GW 2 and I ended up creating a charr as my first character and so far the visuals are looking great to me.

Darkest area of the game in my opinion, rivaling Orr and Frostgorge.
-Genocide back and forth and an entire nation cursed to fight until there are either no more Charr to kill or nothing of Ascalon left to fight for.
-A sexist faction of religious zealots routinely attacking and killing civilians and enslaving females.
-The Brand, which cut a swath through Ascalon and took both Ascalonians and Charr with it. The Brand is claiming more soldiers routinely and casualties to keep it sated are always high.
-Two opposing hostile factions trying to break the peace between mankind and the Charr, which would just lead to more genocide.

If you look deep enough, you’ll find that the whole of GW lore has a dark undertone. This is often overlooked due to the fact that just about every other npc since Nightfall has been a comedy routine.

I have to partially disagree about the Charr zones being gloomy when it comes to the environment (except Fireheart Rise and the Brand). To me it does not “feel” that way, as an old GW1 player, since it is the reborn Ascalon, at least when it comes to nature having restored itself.

Some places make me feel sort of sad, like Grenditch Courthouse or what’s left of Piken Square, and i generally dislike the metallic structures the Charr erected, as well as them exploiting Ascalon (chopped down trees and mines). But that does not change my overall impression when walking through Ascalon – or maybe i’ve just gotten used to human Ascalon being gone.

You should have seen Ascalon in GW1, where pretty much all of it (once you left Pre-Searing) was looking like Fireheart Rise is looking .

As i said, this is only my impression about the environment. The lore is a different thing, but there are positive developments as well, and the future looks far less dark.

If you find the lore and environment to be gloomy, which i can understand if you just started to play GW2 (and probably didn’t play GW1), then i have to tell you that it more or less stays like that throughout Ascalon – with the exception of Fireheart Rise, where it is much worse.

I find a lot more than just the brand and Fireheart gloomy in Ascalon. I mean much of it can be verdant and beautiful (much like the Charr Homelands in EotN, which was obviously trying to create nostaliga for pre-searing ascalon), but you also have so many ghost filled zones which are dark and spooky, and you have the ever-looming ruins of the great wall casting a dark shadow on most all of the zones, then you have the war ravaged plains in the Fields of Ruin. Ascalon is one gigantic warzone and is/should continue to be one of the most gloomy zones in my opinion.

Ascalon is incredibly gloomy in some areas. Primarily those areas that are filled with the branded/corrupted zones, and especially given that there is a giant dragon living in one of the regions of Ascalon. And don’t forget the Ascalonian Ghosts. It’s been a very long time since the wars with the humans, but they still have to fight off the ghosts that will never begin to accept that their lands have been lost forever. They also have the Flame Legion to deal with. And while the Flame Legion DID help the charr gain back their homelands, they go against a significant portion of what the rest of the charr stand for. The two differing groups are stuck in a battle that will ultimately end in genocide. There are also the charr Renegades and the human Separatists, each of which are terrorizing the charr and the humans, trying to break the treaty between the two races and create another era of war and genocide. You also have the Brandeds that are plentiful in much of Ascalon.
The charr have a lot of darkness in relation to their culture, and this is why they are very hardened and more tribal compared to the other races, because the life that the world has given to them gave them no other choice but to fight back.