Guild Wars 2

Game desperatly needs some more mature content, story and characters. And no, I don’t mean throwing in more skimpy, underboobed armors to make this game look like pornstar casting.
I mean more balance with sex (stop with throwing feminism and homosexual things into everything) , more interesting characters with not obvious choices and their visible burdens.

Why shouldn’t they kill innocent people, but with some greater reason for them? Imagine a Sylvari necromancer, my suggestion for mix of Personal Story and Living Story worlds

Let’s say during some story we encounter a village surrounded by Krait.
Outside of the city, there is no Krait, only their corpses surrounding city walls.Inside, everything is silent. We can see blood spills everywhere, clues of massacre, but no bodies, only occassional body parts. We decide to investigate.

In the late afternoon, after searching whole empty, bloody city we spot a friendly voice, crying near the gates of mansion which is closed part of city.
We cannot get any real information from it besides the warning of staying the night in this place. He’s too terrified to speak. It only asks us if we can burn his body which lies inside the mansion and to pay off, reveals how to open the inner gate.

So at night we wake up in dead silence. No rumors of krait encampment nearby, no fauna sounds. We walk up to inner gate and open it.
At the moment we do so, the grand bell in the mansion rings, we hear human-like scream all around us. After the moment of dead silence, something starts to happen.
All dead bodies of people slain in the bloody massacre we saw start to raise up. From every hole, every house, dead citizens appear. They’re not Risen, under the command of Zhaitan.

They’re neutral. They stare at us with dead eyes, but don’t care about our presence. All of them, massacred or not start to do normal daily(sic! :p) activities. Guards start guarding the gates, blacksmith uses the forge etc. We even hear some sounds which may be a language, dead speaking in some unfamiliar language.
We go to the mansion and burn the body of ghost. Suddenly, strange, living Sylvari appears in the doorhall.

He reveals that he’s a Necromancer, born of another Tree, same as Malyck. He came to this village and were living for a week between people.

They had told him that they’re surrounded and opressed by Krait. That even death is better than being slave of Krait. That people just want to live everyday life in happiness. That they would die for their city, defending it.
As a Sylvari, he came to conclusion that something should be done. With a Livia’s Journal part he has found, he had decided to make all wishes come true. The “salvation” to their cause could be only one: make them stronger, reckless to allow victory over Krait opressors.
However, Sylvari scared off even the Krait.

He had slaughtered all the people in village and awaken them as undead. But not servants.
With the power of Livia’s spell, their souls have not gone to Mists, they’re bound with corpses. They still think, speak and live at night and they’re happy, being able to take care of Krait without a problem, living normal lives, just as undead, they call their slaughter a “Salvation”. Unknown Sylvari starts to call himself with this name, as he hadn’t other before.

Salvation tells us that only one thing gone wrong – in the daytime, undead have to hide from light and their souls suffer. In night, they’re happy and grateful, at day they praise for freedom, same as a ghost we saw, screaming for release and end of nightmare.

At this point, in group we decide to take Salvation with us (he wants to join us) and not judge him yet because he has important news for us. However, we have to deal with curse of city somehow.
One of the options would be to just kill and burn all undead since they’re abberation and they suffer. However, Salvation suggests to help him perform some rituals which could bring peace to dead at day, but still leave them be.

After this point, he can be part of Livia and Sylvari story. If we purge the city, our decision would matter in future and we would see no help.
If we help souls however, in future we could get tremendous help from them in some encounter. However, in far future, there may be some problems.

Not easy choices, mature story and content, not bad or good character. What’s more?

You see what I did there.
I’d put the first part in Living Story. Then, your choices would be seen in Personal Story/further Living World instance.

PEGI 12 of Guild Wars 2 allows for something more than unicorns, rainbow, fairies and poor Scarlet plot and character. We deserve something more about our next Living Story/Personal Story companions. The main concern about them shouldn’t be if they’re sexy pixel lesbians or not. The concern should be:
Did I make a good choice? Was it the best way? What can I expect from that guy? He’s a murderer, but he wants to help. What are the consequences?

Rym.1469:

PEGI 12 of Guild Wars 2 allows for something more than unicorns, rainbow, fairies and poor Scarlet plot and character. We deserve something more about our next Living Story/Personal Story companions. The main concern about them shouldn’t be if they’re sexy pixel lesbians or not. The concern should be:
Did I make a good choice? Was it the best way? What can I expect from that guy? He’s a murderer, but he wants to help. What are the consequences?

I’d be right with you and would love to see some of Witchers morally gray choices that are difficult to make and almost always end up haunting you later in the game, or at least some of Planescape Torment’s originality.
However, I don’t think bringing up homosexuality is a childish thing, like you implied several times. In fact I find open approach to the subject somewhat refreshing (sexy lesbians or any other means notwithstanding).

That being said, allot of the bad guys are for the most part just regular B rated villains all neatly packed with cheesy dialogue™, dramatic expositions™ and evil laughter™.. The game user base might be in their 20’s and 30’s, and the game was marketed mostly to that kind of crowd but unfortunately, story wise, for the most part it feels more like something you’d see on Saturday morning cartoons.

Lastly, not to end it all on grim note, I do believe that ANet writers are at least trying to bring up some maturity to their characters in LS releases (for example Canach is a step in that direction, being more then your regular one dimensional hero/villain and Scarlet might be as well, if what ANet and magazines who had access to story are to be believed, EDIT: forgot about “Destiny’s Edge 2”, any one of those guys have more character value then entire original DE put together).

I don’t understand the point of this post O_o.
The game’s content maturity level is in a really good place, not everyone needs senseless violence to enjoy a video game – in fact I would hope that most people don’t.

While I would say that the setting of the game – which is dastardly dark – and the portrayal of the story – which is annoyingly comedic and bright – are quite imbalanced and the latter could be made a bit darker – not horror or blood and gore! BLOOD AND GORE! level, but darker and with fewer constant jokes/pop culture references/<insert changed term here>-O-Tron (am I the only one who facepalms at that golem?) – there is something you must keep in mind when discussing the theme in relation to the game’s rating…

ArenaNet wants a Rated Teen game. They catered the game specifically for that rating.

Silly, I know. Oh how much better the game would be if they didn’t care what the rating would end up being. But that’s how it is.

So wish as you might, ArenaNet will never do something that makes the game anything above Rated T for Teen.

I agree with Rym. I’m really tired of gentlemen pirates, caring assassins and empathetic murderers.

We already had a pretty good indication of what the tone of the game was going to be before release, and especially if you played GW1 (although it maybe wasn’t quite so jokey, but was certainly silly at times). If you want to play something more mature then go ahead, but saying that a game that people really like should be changed simply because it isn’t what you want is kind of silly. There are a ton of “mature” MMO’s out there, go play one of them.

I love dark themes. For example Aetherblades should carpet bomb Divinity’s Reach.

@Konig – I could list you many games with Teen Rated content which are far more serious, including World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 1.
I am not all for blood and gore. I don’t like it either when everything looks like a B class horror movie with a head talking from some basket (+ for anyone who guesses what crap film is it ;p ).

ArenaNet already shown they can make pretty good-looking creatures and places without livers dropping down from the ceiling.

I say, we already have some good skins (I went too wild with “massacre”, was not intended – but some signs other than trail of flowers would help the story), we just lack something behind it.
The difference is very, very simple.

Try to imagine same city without my description.
You go in, you see some undead, you kill them or leave them be. Nothing special, is it? And now same location has story described above.

I think we need a lot of that in the game. Again, I don’t call for hack’n’slash, spilling blood everywhere.

My point is we need some backstory and choices. Some things
which are not either bad or good, dark or bright, same goes for characters. ArenaNet tries to do something like that but without any effort. Majory, from what I’ve seen, should’ve been a character like that – I can’t feel she is.
When game has Teen PEGI ArenaNet should realise that maybe even about 50% of their playerbase are adults.
It’s perfectly seen on the example of Scarlet :
ArenaNet made a villian based on Quinn apperance and behaviours, gave her some 80s feel. For many months, she’s been just evil. Why is Molten Alliance evil? Because Scarlet is… Evil.
Why do we kill Zhaitan, apart hin being threat for Tyria? He hasn’t contacted with us even once, he has less background than his champions. Lizard appears, roars, we kill it.

I think you see what’s my direction in here. Even teenagers don’t accept content like that. Threat suddenly appears, we kill threat and get backpack.
Some new character appears, bam, he has to be good so he joins us in being good, slaying threats and gathering shiny rainbow backpacks for good.

Personally, I feel like treated as someone who can’t even make a step without help.
Giving game more maturity is not only adding blood, it’s much more about psyhical maturity. And, Foxx, stated that I respectfully disagree, psyhical maturity in this game in on the ground level.

It can be the reason that I’m Polish, in our culture, history and literature we’ve been always treated without “pink glasses”and huge doze of reality in everything and with no easy choices but well.. I don’t know. I just feel that game simply lacks in that matter in a major way

I think some people have issues with equating maturity with gore.

Personally I wouldn’t care much for more gore, tho I wouldn’t mind more flashed out dark/macabre content especially considering the game back story is built on massive disasters, sacrifices, grievous errors and what not (Guild Wars, Searing, Cataclysm, Mad King etc.). However, that’s not the point.

To put it more simply: if I had to choose between adding some graphic gratification with the same one dimensional characters from the vanilla GW2 OR deeper characters and factions with the tone of the game remaining the same then I’d definitely choose latter, but why chose in the first place, why not have both ?

Freeelancer.2860:

However, I don’t think bringing up homosexuality is a childish thing, like you implied several times. In fact I find open approach to the subject somewhat refreshing (sexy lesbians or any other means notwithstanding)..

The truth is there is little mature with how it’s done. It’s more like it’s been packed into every other conversation for certain characters to say: “Everyone look! homosexuality is cool, sassy & hip!” They make sure there the dialog is directly in the forefront of any story parts & the fact that they need to put more major lesbian relationships into the game than strait ones is indicitive of the writers person choice or some kind of pc social message. I think the fact that people have been attacked for being critical of these choices is.. interestng. There are always red flags popping when you can’t be critical of xyz. I’d like to have some strait romances I can connect with that don’t revolve around a loveable idiot male & the perfect female genious.

Freeelancer.2860:

I think some people have issues with equating maturity with gore.

I agree, but that’s not what the OP was saying. I also disagree with moral ambiguity, since in moral ambiguity there are no stakes. Real depth come from when you have a difficult time in trying to make the right choice, not when there is no right choice.

Rym.1469:

@Konig – I could list you many games with Teen Rated content which are far more serious,

And I would not refute such a list without research. As I said in my own post, I think that GW2 can do with a lot less light humor. My point was not that GW2 cannot be with less humor or with more seriousness, but rather that ArenaNet is going out of their way to ensure it keeps that teen rating. And as such, they won’t risk tiptoeing the rating borders and instead play in the “safety zone” which is where they have. Have a dark background and setting, have some character deaths and some somewhat revealing outfits, and then make every other character a clown in persona.

Rym.1469:

My point is we need some backstory and choices. Some things which are not either bad or good, dark or bright, same goes for characters. ArenaNet tries to do something like that but without any effort. Majory, from what I’ve seen, should’ve been a character like that – I can’t feel she is.

And this is another foot-in-the-door attitude ArenaNet has.

They want to enforce your character being “the good guy” – and this was known for some time before release. They don’t want you to be the “morally questionable guy” nor the “possibly bad guy doing good deeds” – you’re the straight up hero. And to ensure that you remain this way, it seems that their solution was “make all enemies black as can be”. Something I really, really hate because at face value a player may think he or she can get behind say… the Separatists. Especially GW1 players. But spend 5 minutes in Fields of Ruin and you get “all Separatists without exceptions (except the deserters) are vile, evil, backstabbing, kitten -their-own-sister, cruel beings with no remorse” (more or less). The sad thing is that in the beginning they were going about how there would be few “unquestionably evil groups” (centaurs and krait being the two such groups listed beyond dragon minions). But yet, seems every evil group is unquestionably evil and all good guys are unquestionably good. All for the sake of “the players are heroes, good guys, and we don’t want to change that.”

And given how adamant ArenaNet were about that during release despite the outcry I saw, I doubt it’ll change anytime soon even if you got a hundred+ folks saying they want darker storytellign. Because telling them that will just produce crap like the Jubilee: “Hundreds of innocents died by the fifth bomb Scarlet lied about! Go fight Scarlet!” leading to… <Insert a mini-dungeon instance the dialogue of which is 100% glorified jokes upon jokes upon jokes>

And oh yes: facepalm

I think that in past this problem was less common in GW1. Take a look at Livia, setting free Palawa Joko. We all knew that they’re not any trustworthy heroes, yet we were working with them.
We can’t say much about Livia for now, but Palawa is perfect example of something I’ve described in start post – we desperatly need knowledge and help so we free very evil guy with questionable plans and it helps us. However, in time he got stronger and now has tyranny over Elona.

I don’t like to bring it up, but World of Warcraft had one amazing storyline about Arthas.
The entire way from a king’s prince to faithful paladin, then.into crazed man, killing innocent people in the city.
He was “purging” it, led in madness by a clever demon, his personal nemesis. To prevent plague of undead, he was killing people on the streets, seeing “infected everywhere”.
A hero of humanity, soldier of light, right paladin slowly falls into madness, to then become something he hated so much – Undead, The Lich King. And ending of him, both with encounter was probably one of my greatest moments with that game.

It’s sad that ANet refuses to treat us as someone over 6 years old. If not us, “the hero”, then make it at least other characters and content. We already have something very good in Charr Personal Storyline, when we even fight with Adamant guards to protect the criminal. And people loved it!
Opposite edge is human personal story. Kill centaurs, kill those, kill those. But, wth, why? Because they’re evil

What about Livia was untrustworthy O_o. She joined the shining blade to protect people, she’s pretty good… I don’t think anything she has ever done has been morally questionable. Yes she took the Sceptre of Orr, but as far as we can tell she quite obviously didn’t destroy the world with it or anything.

DarksunG.9537:

The truth is there is little mature with how it’s done. It’s more like it’s been packed into every other conversation for certain characters to say: “Everyone look! homosexuality is cool, sassy & hip!” They make sure there the dialog is directly in the forefront of any story parts & the fact that they need to put more major lesbian relationships into the game than strait ones is indicitive of the writers person choice or some kind of pc social message. I think the fact that people have been attacked for being critical of these choices is.. interestng. There are always red flags popping when you can’t be critical of xyz. I’d like to have some strait romances I can connect with that don’t revolve around a loveable idiot male & the perfect female genious.

Is it that much obvious or flaunted tho ? I wasn’t following the story intensely in the beginning, so I might have missed something, but first time I learned about Caithe and Faolin was in the Orr vision. As for Casmere and the other one I learned from developer stream, not from the game (in fact the lesbian topic popped up right after that accidental reveal, not because of any implicating dialogue in the game). I do agree that more hetero relationships need to be worked in (and worked out.. it’s painful to watch Logan and Jennah, and not in a good way).

DarksunG.9537:

I agree, but that’s not what the OP was saying. I also disagree with moral ambiguity, since in moral ambiguity there are no stakes. Real depth come from when you have a difficult time in trying to make the right choice, not when there is no right choice.

I didn’t mean the OP, I meant some of the other replies from both sides of spectrum
And I think that what we consider morally acceptable is a matter of personal choice. For example to one person “an eye for an eye” is perfectly acceptable by their moral compass, for another “sanctity of life” or for another yet “the good of the many” with vast majority of us hanging out in gray areas in between any number of morally easy standpoints.
I’m not at all against bringing some hard moral choices to the game, but choices that hang on our own moral priorities and watching them unfold with expected or completely unintended consequences is more griping and has more value in the long term. my2cents ofc.

Maturity doesn’t always equal blood, gore, and sex. If I really wanted to play a game with those, I would play the Witcher or DA. Like Konig said, this game is a teen rated game, and it is being written as such. Any “mature” elements they would add to the game would be less blood and more of grey morals. They stuff that makes you question if you are on the right side, without you having to step over a mound of dead bodies to do so.

Which I would very much prefer they add more of.

Freeelancer.2860:

Is it that much obvious or flaunted tho ? I wasn’t following the story intensely in the beginning, so I might have missed something, but first time I learned about Caithe and Faolin was in the Orr vision. As for Casmere and the other one I learned from developer stream, not from the game (in fact the lesbian topic popped up right after that accidental reveal, not because of any implicating dialogue in the game). I do agree that more hetero relationships need to be worked in (and worked out.. it’s painful to watch Logan and Jennah, and not in a good way).

yes, it is. I mean you’d have to have the sound off or look at the ground during most of their sections no to notice. You come out of a cinematic right next to a vendor that everyone & their mom is using to have fully voiced dialog about how hot they think Kasmeer’s nakedness is… you have to be pretty focused to miss that.

Rym.1469:

mature content

Sieran died!

GW1 lore is where it was at; I don’t know what they changed their approach – it was fine as it was.

DarksunG.9537:

yes, it is. I mean you’d have to have the sound off or look at the ground during most of their sections no to notice. You come out of a cinematic right next to a vendor that everyone & their mom is using to have fully voiced dialog about how hot they think Kasmeer’s nakedness is… you have to be pretty focused to miss that.

Unless i’m missing something, I remember only one conversation about Kasmeer being naked ingame, and it is only between Kasmeer and Marjory, with no other npcs involved.

Marjory Delaqua: How’d you get out of all that without a single smudge or tear on your dress?
Kasmeer Meade: It’s not a dress. It’s an illusion. You think I’d take my best dress into a place like that?
Marjory Delaqua: An illusion? You mean you’re…
Kasmeer Meade: Naked. Is that a problem?
Marjory Delaqua: Noooo. Not a problem.

Do you happen to have a quote or transcript of the fully voiced npc dialogue, describing how hot Kasmeer is, by any chance?

Rym.1469:

I mean more balance with sex (stop with throwing feminism and homosexual things into everything)

I stopped reading here.

Even if the rest of your post is legit, not sure why you think that has anything to do with characters and themes that are based in sexual equality and diverse representation.

Erukk.1408:

DarksunG.9537:

yes, it is. I mean you’d have to have the sound off or look at the ground during most of their sections no to notice. You come out of a cinematic right next to a vendor that everyone & their mom is using to have fully voiced dialog about how hot they think Kasmeer’s nakedness is… you have to be pretty focused to miss that.

Unless i’m missing something, I remember only one conversation about Kasmeer being naked ingame, and it is only between Kasmeer and Marjory, with no other npcs involved.

Marjory Delaqua: How’d you get out of all that without a single smudge or tear on your dress?
Kasmeer Meade: It’s not a dress. It’s an illusion. You think I’d take my best dress into a place like that?
Marjory Delaqua: An illusion? You mean you’re…
Kasmeer Meade: Naked. Is that a problem?
Marjory Delaqua: Noooo. Not a problem.

Do you happen to have a quote or transcript of the fully voiced npc dialogue, describing how hot Kasmeer is, by any chance?

Um.. That’s the conversation. You honestly need to have a literal wording saying “that Kasmeer naked is so hot!”? holy semantics batman… The whole crux of the conversation is that Marjory likes that she’s naked. I mean really, why did we have to have that conversion anyways? I mean the writers actually when through the effort of coming up with a situation where Kasmeer would actually be naked & Majory could react to how she likes it. I mean are people that sexed that this is normal relationship dialog?

I stopped reading here.

Even if the rest of your post is legit, not sure why you think that has anything to do with characters and themes that are based in sexual equality and diverse representation.

No story needs to be diverse for any reason other than to be a good story. When something is shoehorned in it stands out. GW1 story was better & it didn’t care if it were diverse or not. It seems more like these are added so people can fantasize.

You read that as Marjory liking that Kasmeer was naked? When I first seen that, I saw it as Marjory wanting to drop the subject, because Kasmeer was asking that question in a semi-challenging tone. If Marjory would have said, “Yes, I do have a problem with that.”, she would have been questioning Kasmeer decision on the matter. Which could have possible led to an argument. So, Marjory took the disbelieving diplomatic approach, and she simply answered with a “nooo”.

Dark you’re stepping into very dangerous territory. To a lot of people being gay or being a woman is just part of everyday life. The only reason it stands out to you, is presumably because you’re a straight male. What you see as things that are being included when they don’t need to be, is actually just a game finally starting to better represent what society is actually like.

Or would you rather that everyone played a male character and that women NPC’s were silent and everyone was repressed?

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Dark you’re stepping into very dangerous territory. To a lot of people being gay or being a woman is just part of everyday life. The only reason it stands out to you, is presumably because you’re a straight male. What you see as things that are being included when they don’t need to be, is actually just a game finally starting to better represent what society is actually like.

Or would you rather that everyone played a male character and that women NPC’s were silent and everyone was repressed?

omg.. enough.. It doesn’t even matter what I say, it just goes over your head & you label me a homophobe so you can be the hero. It doesn’t matter how logical I am or how much sense I make… Forget any logic, jump to conclusions, strawman, go for it.. Whatever makes you look right.

You read that as Marjory liking that Kasmeer was naked? When I first seen that, I saw it as Marjory wanting to drop the subject, because Kasmeer was asking that question in a semi-challenging tone. If Marjory would have said, “Yes, I do have a problem with that.”, she would have been questioning Kasmeer decision on the matter. Which could have possible led to an argument. So, Marjory took the disbelieving diplomatic approach, and she simply answered with a “nooo”.

It’s been confirmed that it is a “love story” so you’re reading it wrong.

I’m sorry but when you refer to the inclusion of diversity being about people being able to fantasise that is how you’re going to come across to people. It’s highly insulting when someone insinuates that gay relationships and strong women are just objects to fulfil peoples fantasies.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

I’m sorry but when you refer to the inclusion of diversity being about people being able to fantasise that is how you’re going to come across to people. It’s highly insulting when someone insinuates that gay relationships and strong women are just objects to fulfil peoples fantasies.

Like I said, forget it. If you’re gonna strawman to such a galactic level there is no point in talking. You’re a social champion, I’m evil that’s exactly what I said.

Can we let go of Marjory and Kasmeer. I don’t care if they are gay, straight or lamps, as long they are interesting as a characters. (I find Marjory’s detective theme pretty cool tho)

For me, problem is the game feels like a fable for kids.

The Fox and The Crow

A Fox once saw a Crow fly off with a piece of cheese in its beak and settle on a branch of a tree.
“That’s for me, as I am a Fox,” said Master Reynard, and he walked up to the foot of the tree.
“Good day, Mistress Crow,” he cried. “How well you are looking today: how glossy your feathers; how bright your eye. I feel sure your voice must surpass that of other birds, just as your figure does; let me hear but one song from you that I may greet you as the Queen of Birds.”
The Crow lifted up her head and began to caw her best, but the moment she opened her mouth the piece of cheese fell to the ground, only to be snapped up by Master Fox.
“That will do,” said he. "That was all I wanted. In exchange for your cheese I will give you a piece of advice for the future: “Do not trust flatterers.”

Same as when Charr wants to kill an Asura, there is 15 minutes long talk how he is big and strong and Asura is small and puny. Then Asura says the he is 2^C times smarter then him. Then after long and boring dialog heard millions of times before, they finally start to fight. And then in the middle of the fight they start arguing again. And all of that because they are both in love with Scarlet.

I understand some people find this style of storytelling interesting. But some of us find it boring and repetitive. We don’t want game to be changed entirely. Just that they add some character that are different then those and we can connect to.

Edited: Added some space between paragraphs.

Rym.1469:

PEGI 12 of Guild Wars 2 allows for something more than unicorns, rainbow, fairies and poor Scarlet plot and character.

Really looking for those fairies. I could use some of the Fair Folk (the original type stuff, not whimsical giggly stuff) around here. Also, unicorns and rainbows figure into one legendary and I figure part of that was just because it was silly.

We deserve something more about our next Living Story/Personal Story companions.

We don’t deserve it, we request it.

The main concern about them shouldn’t be if they’re sexy pixel lesbians or not. The concern should be:
Did I make a good choice? Was it the best way? What can I expect from that guy? He’s a murderer, but he wants to help. What are the consequences?

Really wondering why you think the concern on “sexy pixel lesbians” is actually a real thing and not something whipped up and flogged over and over trying to make an outrage out of it.

You have a point in there needs to be some weight to the story going on here. Your presentation of the point needs some work. Death, torment, and malaise aren’t needed. What is needed is a feeling this has an impact. Flame and Frost managed to hit that somewhat well, the next chapter worked mostly okay with the “morally ambiguous sides” thing.

We’ll see what they do with Scarlet as they pull into the final chapters. I’ll tear it apart only once it’s finished.

DarksunG.9537:

It’s been confirmed that it is a “love story” so you’re reading it wrong.

There is no right answer, unless we get the writer that wrote it in here to confirm either way. I could easily say you are reading too far into it because its been confirmed a love story. Just because we now know there is a romantic destination between the two, doesn’t mean all their dialogue has subtext and innuendo now. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Heck, we don’t even know if they are actually together yet.

While I see Marjory trying to defuse a possible argument, you see her liking the idea of Kasmeer naked. It’s a matter of perspective.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Really wondering why you think the concern on “sexy pixel lesbians” is actually a real thing and not something whipped up and flogged over and over trying to make an outrage out of it.

When you have a player that is gay saying:
“I loved that an LGBT relationship was such an important part of the main story in GW2, but by adding another lesbian relationship to the “biconics” as well as the “iconics” I’m starting to think Anet is just doing it because girl on girl is hot. The only other relationship we have really seen in a major part of the game is Logan and Queen Jenna, and even then they don’t have 10% of the flirting that the 2 lesbian pairings do. Am I alone in thinking like this?”
I think there is some credence to it. It seemed very much like that to me & others too. The Caith Faolain things was just there. Didn’t stand out, worked with the plot. But this is like “tee hee! lesbian smexy!” It stands out even more when, like Mortifact said, The only major strait relationship is so passionless & one sided you wonder why they choose to do what.
tbh it also seems weird that Marjory would act in that way. that first bit you get of her is the noir feel which is more controlled & sly. Then it’s pet names, jokey, silly alliance puns & nooooo. It just kind of degenerates her character into an RP persona. I’m so sick of the sassy jokey talk in pretty much most of the characters now. It’s all “witty” one-liners & “fun” dialog. maybe all people want is crap about “fancy panties” but I think people who went through Nightfall & watch General Morgan see his life & loyalties fold in on themselves remember better characters & stories.

DarksunG.9537:

DarksunG.9537:

It’s been confirmed that it is a “love story” so you’re reading it wrong.

There is no right answer, unless we get the writer that wrote it in here to confirm either way. I could easily say you are reading too far into it because its been confirmed a love story. Just because we now know there is a romantic destination between the two, doesn’t mean all their dialogue has subtext and innuendo now. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Heck, we don’t even know if they are actually together yet.

While I see Marjory trying to defuse a possible argument, you see her liking the idea of Kasmeer naked. It’s a matter of perspective.

Pretty sure the writer said that it’s a love story & it’s flirting.

DarksunG.9537:

yes, it is. I mean you’d have to have the sound off or look at the ground during most of their sections no to notice. You come out of a cinematic right next to a vendor that everyone & their mom is using to have fully voiced dialog about how hot they think Kasmeer’s nakedness is… you have to be pretty focused to miss that.

Well I guess my head is buried in the sand, because I (and everyone else for that matter.. I’ll remind you that the lesbian thread appeared only after dev stream) wasn’t aware of their “relationship”. Probably because it didn’t even start yet.
And, as someone already said, one line in probably hundreds of lines of dialogue doesn’t quite constitute as “everyone & their mom is using to have fully voiced dialog about how hot they think Kasmeer’s nakedness is”. And to be honest, that line sounds much more like resigning then flirting.
IMHO you are reading novels between the lines that aren’t even there.

DarksunG.9537:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Really wondering why you think the concern on “sexy pixel lesbians” is actually a real thing and not something whipped up and flogged over and over trying to make an outrage out of it.

When you have a player that is gay saying:
“I loved that an LGBT relationship was such an important part of the main story in GW2, but by adding another lesbian relationship to the “biconics” as well as the “iconics” I’m starting to think Anet is just doing it because girl on girl is hot. The only other relationship we have really seen in a major part of the game is Logan and Queen Jenna, and even then they don’t have 10% of the flirting that the 2 lesbian pairings do. Am I alone in thinking like this?”

I’m not sure why you feel the need to stress the player is gay. It doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t necessarily mean they are infallible on the topic.

Also, Logan and Jenna don’t flirt because it’s not a relationship, it’s him as her champion and wishing there was more. But, of course, there can’t be so long as she keeps finding reasons to back off and he keeps wanting to take swings at political opponents in a physical manner.

(Seriously, he does more damage than good hanging around her when she’s trying to be political.)

I think there is some credence to it.

Their orientation does not lend them authority on the topic, as not all couples and relationships are created equal. And also worth noting you have a “deadbeat mom” plot if you choose to see it that way with Eir/Braham. (I don’t subscribe to it, but it’s been brought up.)

It seemed very much like that to me & others too. The Caith Faolain things was just there. Didn’t stand out, worked with the plot. But this is like “tee hee! lesbian smexy!” It stands out even more when, like Mortifact said, The only major strait relationship is so passionless & one sided you wonder why they choose to do what.

Really? The one time it’s done it stands out like a sore thumb? And Logan/Jenna has to be a straight relationship instead of a Bodyguard Crush thing? It has to be a relationship.

tbh it also seems weird that Marjory would act in that way. that first bit you get of her is the noir feel which is more controlled & sly. Then it’s pet names, jokey, silly alliance puns & nooooo. It just kind of degenerates her character into an RP persona.

Given the untold weeks she’s had dealing with that Tower refusing to die despite many many attempts? She lets the facade slip when she gets a chance to relax and now it’s too degenerative?

Gods forbid a character can let go of their overly serious, overly dramatic persona for a minute after what had to be slightly harrowing. If she remained serious and no-nonsense, and never cracked a joke I would consider her far worse of a character. In fact, that’s about what I consider Zojja as a character, which is why I want to assign her and all the asura to be dragon-bait.

I’m so sick of the sassy jokey talk in pretty much most of the characters now. It’s all “witty” one-liners & “fun” dialog. maybe all people want is crap about “fancy panties” but I think people who went through Nightfall & watch General Morgan see his life & loyalties fold in on themselves remember better characters & stories.

Nightfall, better characters? Isn’t that the story everyone loves to crap on over Kormir being unfit to exist? Where I find Varesh being more cartoonish than Scarlet and only terrifying because she’s ruthless instead of laughing? Where we have a paint-by-numbers love triangle in Koss/Melonni/Tahlkora? Where our characters might as well not even have existed for all we actually have impact on any of the heroes’ lives?

Where we had Norgu and Goren, two of the worst examples of cliche and buffoonish characters even including all of GW2?

DarksunG.9537:

No story needs to be diverse for any reason other than to be a good story. When something is shoehorned in it stands out. GW1 story was better & it didn’t care if it were diverse or not. It seems more like these are added so people can fantasize.

Homosexual relationships are part of everyday life. They are not ‘fantasies’. Having two in a video game compared to 99.9% of straight binary-gender relationships in games, movies, on TV, in books, is not overkill. That you feel it is just goes to show uncommon it is for homosexuality to get any representation in video games.

For a game that ’didn’t care’ about diversity, GW1 didn’t do half so badly. It had plenty of solid female characters and dared to set a campaign in a nation full of non-white people. Did that not count just because you didn’t notice? Diversity isn’t ‘shoe-horned’ in. Good stories simply show diverse experiences, especially when they span an entire world.

Guild Wars 1 was much darker and more morally nuanced. Compare Queen Jennah to King Adelbern. She’s flawless and he’s horribly flawed. His story (and Rurik’s) was a lot more compelling than helping our good Queen do more good. What difficult decisions does Jennah have to make? Distance herself from Logan? Adelbern lost his kingdom, he disowned his son and sacrificed his own people for vengeance. Jennah got magical mesmer powers that saved the day and at the same time paved the way for peace between the humans and charr. Look at Southsun. Instead of a dirty solution with some loses, the whole plot was tied up neatly by a convenient ship explosion with no casualties. Then you have the Queen’s Jubilee which didn’t have any significant deaths (Faren, Jennah, Anise, Logan – any of them could have been killed for emotional weight). There was a missed opporunity there to really bring the emotional impact of the civilian deaths into the story. Final Fantasy X does this really well when Yuna does a kind of funeral dance to send of the spirits of the deceased. It was almost trivialised that Scarlet killed people in her attack.

Tyria seems to be full of politically correct, morally clear and clean decisions, like some kind manifestation of tumblr’s wet dream. The bad guys are truly bad, he good guys are truly good. I really miss stories with good guys who aren’t perfect and bad guys who aren’t all bad (which is why I think so many people liked Canach – he was one of the few grey villains so far). I liked a lot of the questions that Caedyrn was asking about the Dream, I was really disappointed when they decided to cross the line from “why are second born less important than firstborn?” to “we must corrupt all and literally torture puppies”.

Even if the player has to be the truly heroic hero all the time, do the NPCs around us have to be so PC all the time? Can we have some more characters like Canach? More flawed leaders that make mistakes? Add a little colour to the story.

Shiren.9532:

Guild Wars 1 was much darker and more morally nuanced.

Darker? Yes, generally. More morally nuanced? Not really, not until much later. Winds of Change was perhaps the best showcase of watching something go terribly wrong. But there was so many tropes at work around most of the stuff in Guild Wars . . . I can’t (anymore) be sure if the nuances came from the writing or from recognizing each trope and knowing the beats the story was aiming for.

Is it truly nuanced if those nuances are not included directly but are instead implied or left to be called by the mind of the player?

His story (and Rurik’s) was a lot more compelling than helping our good Queen do more good. What difficult decisions does Jennah have to make?

The ceasefire agreement around Ebonhawke is one. How to handle her Ministers is another, though we only get to hear hints about that can of worms. I don’t doubt what she is dealing with is any less deadly than King Adelbern deciding to throw his life away trying to fight the Titans after knowing his son was never coming back.

Look at Southsun. Instead of a dirty solution with some loses, the whole plot was tied up neatly by a convenient ship explosion with no casualties.

It’s not tied up, or rather it’s not the focus of the story currently. The Consortium has put too much into that place to just roll over.

Then you have the Queen’s Jubilee which didn’t have any significant deaths (Faren, Jennah, Anise, Logan – any of them could have been killed for emotional weight). There was a missed opporunity there to really bring the emotional impact of the civilian deaths into the story. Final Fantasy X does this really well when Yuna does a kind of funeral dance to send of the spirits of the deceased. It was almost trivialised that Scarlet killed people in her attack.

The word you want is “marginalized”, not “trivialized”. The loss was not made out to be trivial, it was just not dwelled on in the mist of the rest of the events going on. Some civilians died, and almost immediately afterwards Scarlet began attacks on other parts of Tyria through her portal machines.

In the rush to try to figure out all that, and how to get in to stop her directly, the losses became less of an issue. But they were never trivialized.

Tyria seems to be full of politically correct, morally clear and clean decisions, like some kind manifestation of tumblr’s wet dream. The bad guys are truly bad, the good guys are truly good.

No, no not really. All of them have flaws which have consequences. Logan’s got a crush on the Queen he’s supposed to be protecting. Eir’s got a son she ran away from owning up to so she could be a legend. Caithe’s ex is a crazy plant lady, but she still pines away over that. Zojja can’t really, truly, forgive over what happened to her mentor Snaff. Rytlock has an ocean’s worth of pride and very little sense when to put it aside. Traherne is Traherne, and that’s punishment enough to the players. Forgal is, deep down, unsure the Vigil can prevail. Tybalt is goofy and unsuited for field work, yet craves the chance to have action. Sieran is just reckless and naive about the dangers she could face, so long as “everything works out in the end”.

In the Living Story, even the seemingly innocent Moto may or may not have done some morally questionable things to get his Box running. Ellen Kiel potentially willingly turned a blind eye to Canach’s bomb to tie things up neatly. Canach is not even close to clean, and he knows it. Captain Magnus is manipulative and shady about his attempts to get Ellen Kiel on the Captain’s Council. Tixx has a reckless disregard for whether or not his “wonderful creations” are stable enough to be sending out to people.

Even if the player has to be the truly heroic hero all the time, do the NPCs around us have to be so PC all the time? Can we have some more characters like Canach? More flawed leaders that make mistakes? Add a little colour to the story.

We do have less than perfect people alongside us all the time. They get better over time, though.

spoiler alert

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

No, no not really. All of them have flaws which have consequences. Logan’s got a crush on the Queen he’s supposed to be protecting.

Reading the book, i got the feeling Logan’s crush on Queen is very reason why he become Seraph and why he is protecting her right now. But, Logan is… well Logan… and there is separate thread about our great and noble hero Logan…

FlamingFoxx.1305:

What about Livia was untrustworthy O_o. She joined the shining blade to protect people, she’s pretty good… I don’t think anything she has ever done has been morally questionable. Yes she took the Sceptre of Orr, but as far as we can tell she quite obviously didn’t destroy the world with it or anything.

She was willing to do “whatever it takes” to protect Kryta. This included sending her men as disposable assistants to Gadd, well knowing that they could perish just for the attempt of learning from him. And as other medias show, “whatever it takes” can mean some severely nasty things, like burning a whole village to prevent the enemy from taking it.

Rod.6581:

spoiler alert

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

No, no not really. All of them have flaws which have consequences. Logan’s got a crush on the Queen he’s supposed to be protecting.

Reading the book, i got the feeling Logan’s crush on Queen is very reason why he become Seraph and why he is protecting her right now. But, Logan is… well Logan… and there is separate thread about our great and noble hero Logan…

I don’t have the book, but I was understanding he joined up out of a sense of duty after his brother got killed.