Guild Wars 2

So I’m returning to GW2 after a long absence. I’ve noticed they implemented a living story with several chapters now. Is it still playable to see what happened? If not, is there a video or videos that are best to watch to recap what happened?? Thanks.

Personal Story and Season 2 are playable still – though you have to purchase previous updates for 200 gems each. Except for a couple open-world changes that aren’t major to the plot (yet).

Season 1 was pretty much all temporary except for one of the two aftermath updates (one for Tower of Nightmares and one for Lion’s Arch; the former is what’s still fully available), however ArenaNet has stated the intent to at some point make it permanent (though without great improvement, you should probably just stick to summaries as they’ll make the story actually sound halfway decent).

Here’s a decent review for Season 1. Though it avoided holidays and The Lost Shores (the first update of Season 1 when excluding holidays).

You would have to look up a recap of Season 1 if you missed that and probably the best recaps off the top of my head are WoodenPotatoes’ patch day videos. For Season 2 you can unlock missed chapters with gems if you weren’t there to participate in them.

So does this mean that from Season 2 onward all seasons we’re going to be able to play through… as in a game design change that fixes what I suspect is a sad but necessary consequence of living stories?

Going to have to reword* that a little clearer.

Errrr…. Both said that Season 2 can unlock the missed chapters but season 1 cannot.
Season 2 I suspect is still in progress. When it “finishes”, will it still be unlockable with gems to play through?
Will all future seasons be unlockable and playable even after the live version of the content is concluded?

Season 2 should be. Season 1 cannot because it was released in a different method. Don’t know about future seasons, Season 2 should give an example of how it will go though.

alcuin.1257:

So does this mean that from Season 2 onward all seasons we’re going to be able to play through… as in a game design change that fixes what I suspect is a sad but necessary consequence of living stories?

yes