Guild Wars 2

I have to say I’m a bit disappointed about the villains we have in GW2 so far. The Elder Dragons are just beings without any character, then we get some characters which aren’t really that scary. (SPOILERWARNING: I’m talking about Canach and a Karkaqueen)

GW2 has such great concept art and really scary looking characters… why not flesh out a storyline which introduces those as dark lords, nemesis, someone to be feared and present (not hidden at the very end)?

http://www.kekaiart.com/uploads/5/4/7/6/5476798/9027365_orig.jpg
http://www.kekaiart.com/uploads/5/4/7/6/5476798/442814_orig.jpg
http://www.kekaiart.com/uploads/5/4/7/6/5476798/1626017_orig.jpg

My ideal villain would be like Shiro (Guild Wars Factions)
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/8377/gw997m.jpg
this lore-video gives you a pretty good idea what I mean:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thVuIZDdn80

what do you think? Which villains would you like to have?

Those first two actually are in the game. The second is concept art for the Nightmare Court, and the first in an early Eye of Zhaitan. As for that video… don’t get me wrong, I like WoodenPotatoes for what he is- a letsplayer- but his lore exposition has quite a bit of, ah, artistic license. It makes for an entertaining watch, but it is no substitute for first-hand experience. Did you ever play Factions? It was not nearly that dramatic, not unless you fill in the blanks like Potatoes does, and that is something that can just as easily be done with Guild Wars 2 as it currently is.
EDIT: On second glance, that third probably is in-game as well, as the Risen Knight. So, really, two of these villains of yours are thralls of the Elder Dragons.

Elder Dragons don’t have character?

You don’t pay much attention. Because they do. It’s just that the personality is subliminal beneath the magical power they are.

As to your concept art links, the first two are (somewhat) in game already: the first is early concept art for the “Risen King” as it is called, which were renamed into Eyes of Zhaitan. The second is early concept art, I presume, for Faolain – a much better appearance, if you ask me.

And yay, another WP video. >.> See Aaron’s post on that.

As for Shiro, well… once more, what Aaron said: he was hardly a dramatic villain with character. Not unless you dug and dug and dug into the lore that’s not presented at face value. Same thing with the Elder Dragons, or Khilbron, or Abaddon, or Faolain, or ANY villain in the game. This is the biggest fall point ArenaNet has: they have SO much lore that is never presented in the game itself, and if it is, it’s hard to find and piece together so we get folks like you who never read, for example, Edge of Destiny or take note of the actions, sayings, and reactions of the various dragon minions to see that the Elder Dragons do have personalities and characters (they just don’t feel like speaking our language, I guess, and let their minions do the talking, which tends to be ‘all hail the dragon!’ with some tidbits mixed in).

It’s nice that you gotta dig for things, but when you get some facts only through interviews or out-of-game lore documents like those stories that’s been presented on guildwars2.com for the living story… it’s somewhat annoying because you get… well, the OP here.

wow no need to come along rude, I read both books and to me elder dragons are just pure chaos. Snaff looked into one’s mind and didn’t find anything else.

Shiro is a great villain because you fear him, you even die confronting him which is something that doesn’t happen often in storytelling.

It really doesn’t matter if those concepts are in the game already, those were examples of how I’d wish a villain would look like, not like this:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/f/f4/Canach.jpg/133px-Canach.jpg

This topic isn’t called: “I want exactly these concept arts as villains in GW2”. It’s about how I miss scary evil villains with a cool background-story. The pics were just examples, get over it.

I totally understand OP, I feel similiar about villians.

Let’s start with renegade factions:
1. Bandits, in theory they are used by Caudecus to embarass the queen, they believe they are fighting against tyrant, basically a bunch of simple men and women that believed in Cadecus’ lies. In fact they are a bunch of psychos that only care about killing and stealing, every time you can talk to them in PS they are all like: “huehuehue we are so evil”. I still remember the commoner’s personal story arc, where you learn about the plan of destroying the orphanage, and bandits acting like: “wohoo we will be able to kill children!”.

2. Inquest. They are pro-asura organization who want asuras to become the master race, yet most of the time they sabotage other asuras. Also they are super amoral.

3. SoS and FL are laughable and pathethic (in my eyes). Through the whole game they are shown as goofs, mindless brutes or absolute morons. Often I felt bad for them when they got their kitten kicked another time. In fact they remind me of cartoon villains.

And so on… Dredge, NC, Krait… All of them are super black, evil and not interesting. Dredge – race that is a giant pun at communism. NC – a bunch of sylvari who by kidnapping and torturing and being a bunch of sadists want to prove that The Pale Tree is a tyrant by forcing Ventari teachings. Krait…. nuff said.

And then villains themselves. Kudu, Gaheron, Faolain etc…. all are a bunch of super evil, mwahahahing, moustache twirling villains, psychos, doing evil for evil’s sake/power/just because they can. And they are not even good at doing evil things

And Dragons. Not sure if they are doing anything (DSD maybe is doing something because we get those new ocean races appearing). Judging only by Zhaitan they are a mess:
1. They are not “primal forces of nature” because Risen are cappable of: building towers, fortifications, anti-air (!) cannons, sending assasins etc.
2. Final fight and another asuran deus ex machina, nuff said.

It seems that Anet have big problems with writing interesting bad guys.

Lol! That’s Canach? Ridiculous! Yes, Shiro was awesome. I didn’t pay too much attention to him or the story of factions, just whatever the cut scenes gave me. He was very formidable to fight though. His life steal / teleport was crazy. The Mursaat were great villains too. I would love to see some throwback villain related to guild wars 1. They had some good ones. maybe a profession shows up from gw1 that you cannot be. As Shiro was a super assassin I think we should have someone show up that’s insane. Like a super warrior or something who dual wields great swords or something unobtainable to us. A sgular entity that far surpasses our abilities. We have a few in game, such as the centuar elementalist and some other reference I can’t think of right now. I believe Anet needs to look back at old school villains from RPG’s and replicate that feeling. Sephiroth is always a good example, he was a friend who turned his back on you and had immense power. You wanted to be him, and you hated that you couldn’t.

We just need a powerful and cool looking unique enemy that decimates something we were working towards and leaves to go about his own business. Like say we finally FINALLY save all these refugees and establish peace among them and the Karka. Then one person comes in and annhiolates them all and burns the settlements down because they were interfering with his plans somehow.

All those months layed to waste by this one person. We as characters have not felt loss. We choose to do something and we win, and continue winning. Its getting stale. We cannot be Superman and be invincible, we need to be shown that even as powerful as we have become, there are things we cannot save, and fights we cannot win.

idea! A rogue Largo does it, he’s found an ancient power and it brings a largo hero/ally to join Braham and Rox.

Imagine a villain who randomly raids different zones and obliberates every ally. So you are doing an event when suddenly this huge army falls in and kills everything.

Now this would be memorable. It’s sad that I have no idea who Kudu and Gaheron are… they aren’t memorable enough / aren’t acting outside of dungeons (I guess).

Wouldn’t it be nice to see a random spawning event in the Maguma Jungle zones where Faolain and 15 champions, 20 veterans and tons of normal nightmare court members raid across an area? Impossible to kill, only there to evoke fear among players. (for those of you who played WoW-Cataclysm: remember Deathwing laying waste to different locations everywhere in the world – and you being 1-hit).

Henge.3907:

idea! A rogue Largo does it, he’s found an ancient power and it brings a largo hero/ally to join Braham and Rox.

I love it, bring it on!

http://i47.tinypic.com/2061n5d.png
http://24.media.tumblr.com/5caad3975328cdbfb7b3f665b3e4ec6e/tumblr_mif3cqU9nb1rk1pgmo1_500.png

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

wow no need to come along rude, I read both books and to me elder dragons are just pure chaos. Snaff looked into one’s mind and didn’t find anything else.

1) I wasn’t being rude.

2) You’re wrong. Snaff did find “something else.” Though the Elder Dragons’ character is seen more through their minions than through them.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Shiro is a great villain because you fear him, you even die confronting him which is something that doesn’t happen often in storytelling.

No one really feared Shiro, actually… Yes, he does kill the characters in the storyline, but it’s lampshaded that the mechanical deaths also occurred (just not during cinematics and the like) in GW1.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

It really doesn’t matter if those concepts are in the game already, those were examples of how I’d wish a villain would look like, not like this:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/f/f4/Canach.jpg/133px-Canach.jpg

In other words, you want enemies to look kitten, and not like someone who could be the fella sitting next to you on a train. You want enemies to be obviously identified as enemies, and not a villain that could befriend you and be hiding dark harboring secrets without you knowing?

Because that’s what Canach is – and a lot of the GW2 villains, actually. Just like the White Mantle or Khilbron would have been if not for the Prophecies manual. They are villains that don’t obviously appear as villains on appearance alone.

Really, you’re saying you want “cool looking villains” and “villains that have personality” when… you kind of already got that in the game. It’s just that they tend to be mutually exclusive UNLESS you dig into the lore.

Which is, again, a fault that ArenaNet has – they have so much more lore written out than what they show in the game itself, which only lowers the quality of the game for folks who don’t do all the digging that could be done. You say that me saying this before was being rude, except that I was just pointing out a fact. I wasn’t insulting anyone at all, lest of all you despite saying that folks acting like you are now tend to be the result of such.

For example: can you tell me why all krait are slavers? I can tell you right now that it’s never once mentioned in the game why the krait are xenophobic slavers. It was mentioned in a blog post that is now taken down.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

get over it.

I have nothing to get over?

Shagaz.6209:

1. Bandits, in theory they are used by Caudecus to embarass the queen, they believe they are fighting against tyrant, basically a bunch of simple men and women that believed in Cadecus’ lies. In fact they are a bunch of psychos that only care about killing and stealing, every time you can talk to them in PS they are all like: “huehuehue we are so evil”. I still remember the commoner’s personal story arc, where you learn about the plan of destroying the orphanage, and bandits acting like: “wohoo we will be able to kill children!”.

The problem you have here is that you’re mixing up people with each other.

There are bandits who are true criminals. Then there are bandits who are misguided fools. The former tend to be the higher ranked individuals like Two-Blade Pete or Big Nosed Ted who make the sinister plots.

Shagaz.6209:

2. Inquest. They are pro-asura organization who want asuras to become the master race, yet most of the time they sabotage other asuras. Also they are super amoral.

The problem you have here is that you’re taking the intention of the Arcane Council and attributing it to the wrong group. The Inquest only care about one thing: learning everything that they can about the Eternal Alchemy. And they’ll do it by any means necessary. Yes, they are amoral – they’re meant to be amoral. But they don’t give a kitten about asura being the master race. They want themselves to survive and learn all there is to learn. Other asura can go to the Realm of Torment for all they care.

On the other villains, I think you only look at the surface. The dredge have an interesting story to them. The krait and Nightmare Court too, but to a lesser degree.

Shagaz.6209:

And then villains themselves. Kudu, Gaheron, Faolain etc…. all are a bunch of super evil, mwahahahing, moustache twirling villains, psychos, doing evil for evil’s sake/power/just because they can.

Apparently you didn’t pay attention to Gaheron and Faolain’s story. But I cannot blame you. See above for why. You’re just like the OP who don’t see the full story because ArenaNet doesn’t put it in the game or, if they do, it’s so well hidden that you have to spend hours digging into it to see it.`

I think I can agree that the Elder Dragons don’t have character, but it’s not in the sense that they have no personality. As Konig points out, they very much do have personality. But in a writer’s sense, they do lack character. They don’t seem to have personally-relatable motives, they don’t make the kinds of mistakes we can learn from or make decisions that we can disagree with them over.

Not all enemies in story-telling need to have that, but it does somewhat shoe-horn them into external conflicts. The most engaging stories tend to have a tale of internal conflict along side the external conflict, and if that internal conflict can’t be generated by your villain, it needs to come from elsewhere.

I actually think this ties into why the execution of the mentor storyline is such a shame. That provided a very real opportunity to turn the amorphous dragon conflict into a more personal one, but it was never capitalized on by the story itself. Some players will fill in those blanks and make the rest of the story personal, but the game itself tries to ignore what you went through in that arc. It’s weak story-telling of a variety that’s pretty familiar from Prophecies.

It also doesn’t help that you can pew-pew-pew them and they die…. IN THE FIRST GAME! Whatever happened to that whole “the order’s disagree on how to beat them plot?” Why can’t we form the Pact, the Pact assault Zhaitan… and fails? You can’t destroy a tornado, tsunami, or earthquake by firing missiles at it. If an Elder Dragon is a force of nature, why did ANET treat it like a common villain? Assaulting Orr was awesome, the event chain to attack the Temple of Balthazaar is an epic chain. But I think Zhaitan should have taught the Pact that while brute force can stop its minions, it can’t stop a being of magic, no matter how much you starved it. They didn’t even have an Elder Dragon destroy a major city. Yeah it’s army overran Claw Island, but you take it back the next day. The only dragons that seem to make a lasting present impact is DSD and Jormag (Quaggan/ Krait/ Kodan Migrations)

Heres my view on dragons being primary villain. Though yes dragons are large, cool, and drives fear to hearts of mortals, they are in sense “too powerful” to become an intereseting enemy. One of the things I loved about any story villain is the journey from discovering the villain is indeed a villain to ways to defeat him/her. Problem with dragons and any other godly being is everything becomes cliche and obvious. Looking at GW2: Dragons, Mass Effect: Reapers, WoW: Deathwing, they all used the same superweapon idea to defeat the villain. ArenaNet could have strayed from that idea by focusing on the starving Zhaitan and weeakening Zhaitan quest.

One that bothers me most however is the lack of backstory and uniqueness. Look at every beloved villain. Lich King/Arthas, Joker, Illidan, Vader, Khan, etc. Their backstory were plentiful. In the case of the Lich King (a character beloved from Warcraft 3), the downfall of Arthas from beloved prince to souless murdering maniac gave the character so much story that equalizes hate and pity to the villain. All we know of Zhaitan was he was a dragon who awokened hell bent on destroying the world.

Yep, it should be a rogue Largo who has found the Scepter of Orr, and is collecting powerful artifacts such as the Sanguinary Blade. Then a Largo hero joins to help track him down and you keep coming across the ruin that he has left behind him and helping the people who have lost everything.

Arcturus.5846:

One that bothers me most however is the lack of backstory and uniqueness. Look at every beloved villain. Lich King/Arthas, Joker, Illidan, Vader, Khan, etc. Their backstory were plentiful. In the case of the Lich King (a character beloved from Warcraft 3), the downfall of Arthas from beloved prince to souless murdering maniac gave the character so much story that equalizes hate and pity to the villain. All we know of Zhaitan was he was a dragon who awokened hell bent on destroying the world.

Counter-points: Sauron, Emperor Palpatine, the Daleks, the Borg (pre-Voyager). Not every great villain requires an involved tragic backstory, sometimes you can easily get away by simply dropping a giant threat and letting it loose on the world.

Uruz Six.6594:

Counter-points: Sauron, Emperor Palpatine, the Daleks, the Borg (pre-Voyager). Not every great villain requires an involved tragic backstory, sometimes you can easily get away by simply dropping a giant threat and letting it loose on the world.

nah, Sauron wasn’t a good villain, more interesting than him were the fallen 9 ringwraiths. The finale in LotR was just bad – no direct confrontation with the villain at all. Palpatine had sort of a backstory – haven’t you seen episode III? The Borg had that queen, was a pretty interesting villain.

I agree that we should work to continually starve them. Hell, I’d be fine if they were immortal and we could only starve them back into a slumber. As to their backstory, there are so many opportunities wasted on the Arah explorer mode. Nice to know some vague details AFTER we found out how to kill Zhaitan.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

nah, Sauron wasn’t a good villain, more interesting than him were the fallen 9 ringwraiths. The finale in LotR was just bad – no direct confrontation with the villain at all. Palpatine had sort of a backstory – haven’t you seen episode III? The Borg had that queen, was a pretty interesting villain.

It all depends on how in depth you go into the whole story, with GW2 and LOTR. Sauron is a much better villian if you read the Silmarillion and The Hobbit and gain a lot more backstory on him.

Actually, the Daleks had their own tragic backstory of how they came to be, although it wasn’t necessary for them to be good antagonists.

The Borg were probably a good example of a villain that worked best as a ’here’s a threat that cannot be negotiated with and just needs to be dealt with’ type of villain like the elder dragons. Others are free to disagree, but in my opinion the Borg worked best when they were simply a collective – introducing the Borg queens in First Contact and Voyager diluted what was frightening about them.

I notice that games made in North American cultures usually have nemesis are purely evil for the sake of being evil. Like you have this evil dark lord that is out to kill everyone. There is absolutely no reasoning with him, so heros need to stop him.

When you look at games from Japanese cultures on the other hand, the nemesis are not purely evil for the sake of being evil. They actually have a philosophy. They will have a different way of seeing the world, very different from the main character. The nemesis would usually have a long conversation with the main character to express their view on things. But it is still up to the hero to stop them from their twisted ways and logics.

e.g. Nightmare Court
NA version: They abandoned Ventari teaching for no reason. Now they are just purely evil and wants to kill everyone.

Japanese version: They abandoned Ventari’s teachings for very valid reasons. And they explained it very clearly: They want to protect and preserve nature from the other 4 races.

The words of the centaur sage Ventari are carved into this stone. More than a relic, the tablet is the moral foundation of sylvari society.
Read the tablet.
I. Live life well and fully, and waste nothing. Yet all 4 other races couldn’t care less about the well being of the life around them, and waste and destroys everything.
II. Do not fear difficulty. Hard ground makes strong roots. Exactly, because we Sylvari are born the guardians of nature. Nature wants us to fight back against the races that are slowly bringing total doom to the world, which we all saw clearly in the nightmare.
III. The only lasting peace is the peace within your own soul. Peace will only come if the other 4 races agree to abandon their wasteful and destructive ways to nature. Else, there is no peace until all enemies of nature are eliminated.
Continue reading.
IV. All things have a right to grow. The blossom is brother to the weed.In their greed for growth, the other 4 races consumes everything in their path. They are denying the growth of all other life in nature.
V. Never leave a wrong to ripen into evil or sorrow. The greatest evil the Sylvari can do is to let the other 4 races continue to destroy life in the world.
VI. Act with wisdom, but act. Our wisdom is correct, and we are acting on it
Continue reading.
VII. From the smallest blade of grass to the largest mountain, where life goes—so, too, should you. The nightmare court will bring back the balance of nature to the whole world, as it was meant to be.

The Nightmare Court actually aren’t evil for the sake of being evil. It’s poorly represented in-game though, like an increasingly large amount of Anet’s background lore. The Nightmare Court were formed by Cadyrn who, besides being spoiled and an attention-kitten, he believed that sylvari should work to form their own rules and destinies, not blindly follow the teachings of a pacifist centaur who never knew sylvari could exist.

This concept got perverted somewhere along the road (in the lore, not in the writing of the game) and Cadyrn went from spoiled “I’ll do what I want!” Secondborn to “we will engulf the world in darkness!”

And why the Nightmare Court went from an actual noble cause to being pure evil is up to question, though I suspect that the Nightmare itself has to deal with it, and that it is tied to Mordremoth.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Which is, again, a fault that ArenaNet has – they have so much more lore written out than what they show in the game itself, which only lowers the quality of the game for folks who don’t do all the digging that could be done. You say that me saying this before was being rude, except that I was just pointing out a fact. I wasn’t insulting anyone at all, lest of all you despite saying that folks acting like you are now tend to be the result of such.

You can find out an astounding amount of lore in game if you want to by talking to NPC’s, listening to conversations and reading the yellow book icons. There is no shortage of lore in game for lore hounds.

However, not everyone is a lore hound. You can ignore the lore if it does not interest you. ArenaNet is doing this correctly. A warning I saw on City of Heores for designing a back story is that people don’t like huge walls of text. Try not to write more than a sentence or two. Put the rest of the story elsewhere. For example, dialogues between people as you walk by, or notes people can choose to read or ignore.

Most of these NPC villains (and allies, for that matter) are less cartoonish than they seem if you dig into their lore. But, do not forget, it is a game, not a fantasy history book. Many people don’t want to watch an extra 2 minutes of exposition on the Inquest, Svanir or Quaggan philosophy during a cinematic.

Yes John, but much of what we have on these races aren’t even in the game. Much of what we know of the other races and such come from ArenaNet blog posts that have been lost in the hundreds of other posts. They could expand a lot of things in-game if they wanted to.

Yeah, I agree with the OP here. While there are some fun and wonderful characters in the GW2 universe, there is certainly a lack of well-developed villians.

There is no Magneto or Lex Luthor in this universe. No person you must fear, yet you do understand. The villians in GW2, maybe because of how the game is structured, are wholly unrelatable forces of god or mustache-twirling archetypes.

There was some interesting stuff going on with Orr and the subversion of the priests and temples. The dragon at claw island was good. The main problem with Zaitan was really Zaitan himself. We didn’t see him at all until the story mission and we all know what a let down that was. The eye and mouth and Zaitan seemed fine as villains but perhaps as Zaitan’s intermediaries they came into the story at times when Zaitan himself could have been introduced.

JohnLShannonhouse.1820:

You can find out an astounding amount of lore in game if you want to by talking to NPC’s, listening to conversations and reading the yellow book icons. There is no shortage of lore in game for lore hounds.

Trust me, you don’t have to tell me there’s a lot of lore in the game. I’m one of those who talk to every NPC at every possible moment between various stages of events, story steps, or dungeons.

What I was saying is that there’s so much more lore never even hinted at out of the game. For example, for as much as you can learn of Rox in-game, you would never know about her old warband’s name. For as much as you can learn of Canach in-game, you would not know that he got those Molten Gauntlets from raiding a Molten Facility (so far you wouldn’t, at least). In GW1, there was never a mention of the Canthan emperors other than Kisu and Angsiyan – however, from An Empire Divided we learn of so many more. In Factions, you wouldn’t know the month the campaign began in, but in the update notes Anet provided a letter from Togo to Mhenlo (which is talked about in-game) with a date while talking about early Factions events.

This is just the very tip of the iceberg. I could go on for HOURS about what’s never mentioned in-game.

These facts presented to the playerbase – or not – do not need to be be presented in a single wall-o-text. They just need to be presented. And there are players who would enjoy walls of text, and they could be added via books or something unnecessary to interact with.

About Canach, and the original post. The guy has definitely changed a bit between the stories. I wonder if we’ll ever go into why he went from green to black, or lost his hair…

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The Nightmare Court actually aren’t evil for the sake of being evil. It’s poorly represented in-game though, like an increasingly large amount of Anet’s background lore. The Nightmare Court were formed by Cadyrn who, besides being spoiled and an attention-kitten, he believed that sylvari should work to form their own rules and destinies, not blindly follow the teachings of a pacifist centaur who never knew sylvari could exist.

This concept got perverted somewhere along the road (in the lore, not in the writing of the game) and Cadyrn went from spoiled “I’ll do what I want!” Secondborn to “we will engulf the world in darkness!”

And why the Nightmare Court went from an actual noble cause to being pure evil is up to question, though I suspect that the Nightmare itself has to deal with it, and that it is tied to Mordremoth.

You can thank Faolain for Cadyrn’s fall to evil.

If Zhaitan’s turns out to be the only Elder Dragon Sylvari are immune to(the only quest I read says they are immune to Undeath it does not mention Icebrood creation or Branded corruption) then Mordremoth most likely corrupted Faolain just so that she could take over the Nightmare Court from Cadyrn.

ok fine you want elder dragons to have more of a personality

silly idea go

destroyers have been seen more and more frequently around the surface so the priory send out a call for heroes to head underground to find out the situation. As second in command of the pact you first go to meet Gixx and Ogden to see if they have any further insight into the matter. When you are discussing the situation with them the ground begins to shake and Primordius breaks through the bottom of the priory clutching Ogden in this hand and quickly smashes him to pieces. Ogden’s stone head bounces and rolls across the floor and lands at your feet, (he’s made of stone so this would hopefully minimize the gore and keep it within teen rating) followed by Primordius letting loose a mighty victory shout (Ex. Where are your followers now Great Dwarf, they have all fallen before me). The ground continues to shake beneath your feet suddenly the priory begins to lean to one side then quickly slide down the mountain you emerge with the few survivors to learn this has happen at the vigil keep, chantry of secrets, and fort trinity. They were all annihilated by, destroyers burrowing beneath the structures and melting their foundations or supports. Even the Glory of Tyria (airship) was destroyed in this attack now you must shake off this defeat and prepare for battle.

end silly idea

not exactly what you were after but figured it would give the dragon a bit of personality easily seen by the player through the situation with Ogden.

I do not think they can, nor should they, give the elder dragons more “personality” then they already have. I think for interesting enemies to become involved in the game they would have to be centered around Joko, The White Mantle, Cantha’s Emperor. Pretty much people that aren’t completely mind numbed by dragons. Personal Nemesis has a possible chance to add this type as well.

Infamous Darkness.3284:

ok fine you want elder dragons to have more of a personality

silly idea go

destroyers have been seen more and more frequently around the surface so the priory send out a call for heroes to head underground to find out the situation. As second in command of the pact you first go to meet Gixx and Ogden to see if they have any further insight into the matter. When you are discussing the situation with them the ground begins to shake and Primordius breaks through the bottom of the priory clutching Ogden in this hand and quickly smashes him to pieces. Ogden’s stone head bounces and rolls across the floor and lands at your feet, (he’s made of stone so this would hopefully minimize the gore and keep it within teen rating) followed by Primordius letting loose a mighty victory shout (Ex. Where are your followers now Great Dwarf, they have all fallen before me). The ground continues to shake beneath your feet suddenly the priory begins to lean to one side then quickly slide down the mountain you emerge with the few survivors to learn this has happen at the vigil keep, chantry of secrets, and fort trinity. They were all annihilated by, destroyers burrowing beneath the structures and melting their foundations or supports. Even the Glory of Tyria (airship) was destroyed in this attack now you must shake off this defeat and prepare for battle.

end silly idea

not exactly what you were after but figured it would give the dragon a bit of personality easily seen by the player through the situation with Ogden.

It isn’t about personality. It is about the nemesis’s philosophies. In most NA games the foe lacks any sort of philosophy. They are evil for the sake of being evil.

Mickey Frogeater.1470:

You can thank Faolain for Cadyrn’s fall to evil.

If Zhaitan’s turns out to be the only Elder Dragon Sylvari are immune to(the only quest I read says they are immune to Undeath it does not mention Icebrood creation or Branded corruption) then Mordremoth most likely corrupted Faolain just so that she could take over the Nightmare Court from Cadyrn.

It’s told to us that Faolain fell because of Cadyrn, rather than the other way around, though at the same time we’re told that Faolain embraced the nightmare before Cadyrn’s birth. So it’s never really clear what’s what there, though Faolain certainly seemed to have done something to Cadyrn between the end of the story events in the sylvari blog post and Twilight Arbor’s story mode.

Regarding sylvari immunity to Elder Dragons – this is another thing not (fully) mentioned in game that was mentioned out-of-game. We were told during sylvari week (the week said linked blog post was released) that they (paraphrased) “do not become corrupted by the Elder Dragons. Instead of becoming corrupted, they simply die.” – this wording would actually possibly exempt Zhaitan’s corruption, since he only (directly) corrupts corpses, and would only mean Jormag and Kralkatorrik’s corruption is ineffective on sylvari. The interview made it sound like it was all Elder Dragons.

I don’t think the nightmare is Mordremoth’s outright corruption – there’s no physical change to Nightmare Courtiers – but rather that he’s influencing them. Kind of like how Drakkar pulled Svanir’s attention by whispering in his mind. There was no corruption, but still some influence.

CHIPS.6018:

It isn’t about personality. It is about the nemesis’s philosophies. In most NA games the foe lacks any sort of philosophy. They are evil for the sake of being evil.

That’s not what the OP said. Your argument is different than the OP, though the Elder Dragons do seem to hold a philosophy/motivation – it’s just presented via their minions. One – just one – example from the Risen is this:

“Defilers! Poisoners! We see you. We know your foul intent. These waters must remain as they are – and you must die!”

This gives, although only an implication, a glimpse into Zhaitan’s view on the world. That he is the one purifying, not corrupting, it.

Narcemus.1348:

About Canach, and the original post. The guy has definitely changed a bit between the stories. I wonder if we’ll ever go into why he went from green to black, or lost his hair…

Case in point for what Konig’s talking about. We do know that, but not from in game and likely never from in game. That bit of lore exists only outside of the game so far.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/southsun/Canach-s-Mutation-Radical-Change/first

I personally would love it if all of these “outside of the game” bits of lore could be hooked up to the random books and scrolls and random papers lying around the world. They’ve got a good number of great shorts lying around and I’d love to hunt for them and collect them in-game ala codex entires in Bioware games.

Jenosavel.1756:

I personally would love it if all of these “outside of the game” bits of lore could be hooked up to the random books and scrolls and random papers lying around the world. They’ve got a good number of great shorts lying around and I’d love to hunt for them and collect them in-game ala codex entires in Bioware games.

+1. That’s a good idea.

Caution: I don’t have played all personal story chapters. What I say has to be taken as true only if it’s true what OP states, i.e. you don’t get to know anything about what moves Zhaitan.

Zhaitan will still be nothing more a huge lizard skeleton.

Oh, shiny objects will tell you that thing is much more than a zombie horde spawn point. Too bad you’ll never see any more than that.XD

If that’s true, Zhaitan’s character is as deep as the source of all the orcs in Gothic 2:

A signboard behind a wall.XD

Really, the lore shouldn’t just be a wall of text.

That’s ok for stories. Like Guy A did this in year XYZ and then guy B got kitten ed off and did that.

But the player should have some hints about how his world works. On what really are the dragons. What do they want. Bioware had both: you could go straight and do the main quest only, and still (almost) realize what was the Reapers’ purpose. Almost.

And another thing: are there any chance to hear what a Dredge or a Flame Legion Charr has to say? Or all we do is slaughtering them?

I’m asking because I really don’t know, but as of now I didn’t have any occasion.

Regarding the Elder Dragons – like I’ve said multiple times, you do get to delve into the Elder Dragons’ mind… through their minions. Keep in mind that all minions are no longer their self. They’ve been altered into the belief that their dragon is their reason for living (or unliving), and they work to their dragon’s goals, act to their dragon’s beliefs, and say what their dragon thinks (paraphrasing the dragon’s opinion, that is, not being a speaker for the dragon’s mental process).

In the case of the Flame Legion and dredge – actually, yes, you were capable of this, but only through the Order of Whispers’ side-quest with the dead drops, where you got reports of the Molten Alliance’s dealings from a infiltrating spy. Then there were the two prisoners at the end.

I would particularly like to be a villain myself. What if you had the option to become a renegade, gain allegiance with certain bandit bands and would become an enemy of the Seraph, the Peacemakers, the ‘Good sylvari’ etc. I think the story would be incredibly exciting if you had the option to choose a radically different way.

Then you would have players on opposite sides of the field when it comes to enemies… Which is all out PvP in the game world. Something ArenaNet prefers to stay away from. PvP and PvE are two completely separate areas.

this is fun to watch i like the elder dragons as villains and i really like how they hate each other i would love to see theme battle in the future like as we battle one right as we are about to get crushed another that was thought to be defeated earlier in the battle gets up and takes the other by surprise and then they fight while we rebuild and in the end destroy theme both i think that would be a great concept where the dragon doesn’t realize but the other would have destroyed us so its almost like they destroy themselves through in fighting almost like the jouton except the dragons are not together they hate each other and want all the power for themselves

I am quite disappointed that the primary antagonists of the game are Elder Dragons, sure they are powerful and corrupt/destroy everything and amass to epic proportions (yeah spam skill one!), but the idea is quite generic and personally I find it quite uninteresting, and what even saddens me even more is that I read on Guild Wars 2 wiki and I quote "Dragons were not always the main antagonists of Guild Wars 2. According to The Making of Guild Wars 2 book, original drafts for story included demons and angelic beings descending to the world to judge it. " Oh my god that sounds simply superb its a pity that this idea was replaced by the “ED concept”, but perhaps they will come to their senses and introduce this marvelous idea into an expansion, because to be honest if we remain in continental Tyria and zerg dragons I will quite this game. Guild wars was know for its diversity, and its expansions truely reflected that – having expansions based on real world locations was rather eccentric and strayed from the generic path of most other RPG’s. But only time will tell.

I do hope you’re being sarcastic on your opinion of the original drafts for GW2’s plot.

And I think the Living Story is proving that, while we’re remaining in continental Tyria, we’re not solely focusing on Elder Dragons.

I’m sorry Konig but I have to agree that so far GW2’s villains have been incredibly disappointing.

The only villain I have found to be interesting at all is Faolain. She is twisted but you can understand her perspective and her motivations (her selfish love & willingness to fight the Dragons anyway possible), even without agreeing how she chooses to follow it.

This is in stark contrast to the Elder Dragons and their mindless, throwaway minions that we see in the game. I can’t think of a single dragon minion who has stood out in the story compared Faolain. The only motivation the Dragons and their minions are given is ‘Destroy all life’. There is no empathy for such a one dimensional goal and so as villains they fall flat.

Motivations are what make a villain interesting and there are limitless possibilities that ArenaNet has completely ignored.

Once they become dragon minions, NPCs become cardboard slaves , removing any possibility of interesting characters. Where is an NPC with dying children who becomes a minion of the Dragons in an effort to save them? Where is the dragon minion who willingly submitted to them in the misguided belief they could fight them from inside and now secretly want the players to destroy them? Where is the dragon minions whose goals and motivations are ones the players can appreciate and feel empathy toward?

Because empathy is critical for a good villain. You need to understand their fears and hopes and even see how you might have ended up just like them. You can’t say that about the Elder Dragons, they simply exist and they’re just doing evil because it’s a convenient plot device.

You say that players should be researching more into the lore to appreciate it. (The research I have done only confirms that the dragons are nothing more than ‘Forces of Generic Evil’) I have to disagree with this as well, players should not have to do any out-of-game research to be told a good story in a video game.

The gameplay is the medium ArenaNet has to tell their story. They need to work within that medium. If you read a book or see a movie and then you’re told you have to go and do research to actually appreciate the story, then the writers have failed. Their responsibility is to effectively present their story in the medium they are using. Good writers should not have to rely on the reader researching to make a story worthwhile.

That’s not to say a good story cannot be enhanced by doing research into it, but the story itself should stand on it’s own. The drama, the characters, the essential pull of the story should all be there without any crutches or supplements outside of how the story is presented.

If ArenaNet’s stories can’t be presenting in the format and medium of a video game, then they need to make different stories that can. Every medium is unique and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Ignoring those weaknesses and expecting readers to fill in gaps is not an excuse, ArenaNet needs to be better than that and sometimes they are better than that. Unfortunately, many times so far in GW2 they are not.

The game designers have shown that they learn from their mistakes. I remain hopeful the ArenaNet writers can do the same.

The first step will be creating memorable and interesting villains.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

This is in stark contrast to the Elder Dragons and their mindless, throwaway minions that we see in the game.

And this is why you think that the GW2 villains are poor.

The Elder Dragons aren’t mindless. Nor do they only have one motivation – if you looked through Jormag’s minions, or Zhaitan’s minions you’d see this. You’d see personality to them. Sadly, Sea of Sorrows is the best means of finding out the latter.

The problem isn’t the villains, it’s ArenaNet not putting all of their story and their lore at face value. And this has been an issue since day 1.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

DoctorOverlord.8620:

This is in stark contrast to the Elder Dragons and their mindless, throwaway minions that we see in the game.

And this is why you think that the GW2 villains are poor.
The Elder Dragons aren’t mindless. Nor do they only have one motivation – if you looked through Jormag’s minions, or Zhaitan’s minions you’d see this. You’d see personality to them. Sadly, Sea of Sorrows is the best means of finding out the latter.
The problem isn’t the villains, it’s ArenaNet not putting all of their story and their lore at face value. And this has been an issue since day 1.

Perhaps I should not have used the term ‘mindless’, I know from the books that minions retain parts of their personality and rationalize their new lack of will in an attempt to emphasize the horror but in the end every minion has the exact same goal. Their motivation is solely to obey the dragon, and the only thing the dragon wants is for them to kill everything. The minions may make up excuses for doing so based on their individual personalities, but in the end they end up all being the same.

When we see a minion who believes that he can serve Zhaitan best by helping people or by baking pies or anything other than the typical kill-all-living things-and-be-crazy-and-evil then their individual personalities will start to matter. Right now, their personalities are little more than a thin coat painted over a uniformity of generic evilness.

You keep saying there are differences in the dragon’s motivations. Could you list them out? You’ve never said the actual differences in this thread and I’ve never seen anything in the out-of-game material like the novels that points to dragons being anything other than the standard “Forces of Nature” line used by the devs themselves.

Zhaitan wants to feed on magic and turn everyone into zombies, Kralkatorrik wants to feed on magic and turn everyone into crystal beings. What exactly is shown by any of their minions that clearly shows their motives are different? Can you give specific examples from the game or whatever source you are using, because I haven’t found any that clearly show this.

One question, have we ever seen conflict within the ranks of Zhaitan’s forces? From what I’ve seen of the lore and in-game stories, minions are all under the control of Zhaitan’s will, seemingly even connected to it like telepathic insects in a hive. This adds further to the sense of conformity that only serves to make them even more boring.

Also I stand by my point that a story needs account for the medium that is being used to tell it. You say people need to do outside research to appreciate GW2’s story, I say a game’s story should be a compelling and engaging experience solely from playing the game.

Expecting players to appreciate a story only if they do extra homework is like making a movie that is not comprehensible unless you’ve read the book. A movie should stand completely on its own as a movie, otherwise one shouldn’t try to make it. Just as the story of a game should stand on its own.

There are actually encouraging signs that ArenaNet realizes they need to improve their storytelling. The recent interview with Bobby Stein has him outright admitting that they have not been presenting the game’s story with things like the Southsun plot in an effective manner.

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/features/interviews/exclusive-interview-arenanets-bobby-stein

It was good to hear they’ve realized that game writers need to think like game designers. They need to understand the medium that is being used to tell the story. I’m just surprised that they’re figuring this out now, I thought anyone writing for a game would realize that they have to account for the fact that their story is being told through a game, not through text or film or live actors. Every medium is different and every medium is strong enough to tell a good story solely by itself without the need for additional, outside research.

For one, Zhaitan recreated a nation, the peasants still tilling the dead ground, priests now revering Zhaitan in their temples, with an army, not of monsters, but of beings still retaining a semblance of their original appearance.

Tuomir.1830:

For one, Zhaitan recreated a nation, the peasants still tilling the dead ground, priests now revering Zhaitan in their temples, with an army, not of monsters, but of beings still retaining a semblance of their original appearance.

Everyone in Orr is a zombie, they are all generic evil monsters. They all have the singular goal of killing any living thing that shows up. Priest, peasant or whatever facade of their previous personality remains, they are now identical crazy, undead killers who just go around mimicking their lives because there’s nothing in sight to attack. They may have different catchphrases and different powers but they all do the exact same thing and have the exact same goal, just like the minions we see in the books and in-game stories.

You bring up the priests worshipping in Orr We’ve seen icebrood-transformed Son of Svanir worshipping Jormag. This just makes the dragons seem even more identical. It seems a good bet that there are crystallized brood of Kralkatorrik worshiping at shrines to him.

Zhaitan raised an island nation and his minions act like the nation is still functional. Do we have any reason to think the result would be any different if Kralkatorrik raised Orr? Save that we would be fighting Crystal Ships trying to invade Lion’s Arch instead of dead ones?

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Tuomir.1830:

For one, Zhaitan recreated a nation, the peasants still tilling the dead ground, priests now revering Zhaitan in their temples, with an army, not of monsters, but of beings still retaining a semblance of their original appearance.

Everyone in Orr is a zombie, they are all generic evil monsters. They all have the singular goal of killing any living thing that shows up. Priest, peasant or whatever facade of their previous personality remains, they are now identical crazy, undead killers. They may have different catchphrases and different powers but they all do the exact same thing and have the exact same goal, just like the minions we see in the books and in-game stories.

You bring up the priests in Orr, well we’ve seen icebrood-transformed Son of Svanir worshipping Jormag. This just makes the dragons seem even more identical. From what we’ve seen, I’m willing to bet there are crystallized brood of Kralkatorrik worshiping at shrines to him.

Zhaitan raised an island nation and his minions act like the nation is still functional. Do we have any reason to think the result would be any different if Kralkatorrik raised Orr? Save that we would be fighting Crystal Ships trying to invade Lion’s Arch instead of dead ones?

Go take a walk around Orr. You’ll see risen peasants working. Go to one of the temples. When the high priests attempt to kill you, they tell you Zhaitan has killed their gods. When they sail, they sail on ships made by humans.

Sons of Svanir are different. When they were alive and not transformed, they chose to revere the dragon instead of Spirits of the Wild. There is no icebrood army, Jormag seems to give them free reign on how to use the given power. When Sons of Svanir are corrupted, they remain Sons of Svanir, and are honored by those sons still norn. We never see the icebrood colossi leading groups of Sons of Svanir, or icebrood. They seem to lose their mind to it.

When it comes to Kralkatorrik, he doesn’t corrupt halfway. His minions rarely speak (Victurus the Shattered being the only one I remember having talked) and their skin is turned completely to gray, purple lighting streaking off them. And these weren’t minions spawned for a reason – they just were there when the dragon flew over them.

I could go on, but if you blatantly refuse to see the differences, I don’t know if it’s worth my time.

You do have a point, I’ll grant that Sons of Svanir are different but they not full icebrood minions. There are icebrood norn in the game and you don’t see any of them walking around Hoelbrak anymore than you see zombies walking around Lion’s Arch.

Sons of Svanir actually do have the potential to be more interesting villains than mind-controlled icebrood norn or undead zombies. But rather than focusing on these more interesting possibilities, our personal story sends us up against bunch of throwaway zombie minions who leave no impact.

As for Kralkatorrik’s minions, they may have been created by accident but in the first novel they become another bunch of slaves, just like Zhaiten’s undead, just like Jormag’s icebrood. How they made their minions, what the minions are doing when they’re not killing people, these are superficial details. In the end the Elder Dragon motivations and goals are interchangeable because their personalities or lack thereof are interchangeable. (At least as far as we are shown in the game, I’m still waiting to see what Konig presents).

I was originally talking about what is needed for decent and memorable villains. I didn’t mean for this to get sidetracked into cosmetic differences of the dragons rather than focusing on the lack of differences between them in the most important part, what could have been used to make them into memorable villains.

What is the most memorable thing about our personal story? What do people talk about most? Trahearne and how annoying and glory-stealing he is. Nobody talks about how cool zombie boss minion X was or that amazing scene with eyeball/mouth/zombie boss minion Y. In contrast, WoW players still talk about the storylines with Ragnoros, Onyxia or the Lich King. There is much I don’t like about WoW but I truly hope that someday GW2 players will able to do the same for villains they fight in this game.

There is potential in the lore, as Konig has pointed out, but it is being wasted by giving us generic villains whose motivations don’t extend beyond “Kill everybody because we’re Bad”. If there is evidence that there are deeper motivations to their villains then ArenaNet has not successfully presented them in the game’s story. When we do see villains with more interesting potential like Faolain or Caudecus, they get tossed aside from the main storyline.

In the recent interview, they dropped hints that the SuperAdventure Box and Flame and Frost and Southsun are all connected somehow to an overall story that presumably has something to do about the dragons. They need to stop dropping hints and start showing it.

The thing about the elder dragon’s motives is that we don’t know what their motivations are. However, their minions, actions, and the actions of their minions can tell us a lot about their individual natures.

Tuomir.1830:

Go take a walk around Orr. You’ll see risen peasants working. Go to one of the temples. When the high priests attempt to kill you, they tell you Zhaitan has killed their gods. When they sail, they sail on ships made by humans.

Sons of Svanir are different. When they were alive and not transformed, they chose to revere the dragon instead of Spirits of the Wild. There is no icebrood army, Jormag seems to give them free reign on how to use the given power. When Sons of Svanir are corrupted, they remain Sons of Svanir, and are honored by those sons still norn. We never see the icebrood colossi leading groups of Sons of Svanir, or icebrood. They seem to lose their mind to it.

When it comes to Kralkatorrik, he doesn’t corrupt halfway. His minions rarely speak (Victurus the Shattered being the only one I remember having talked) and their skin is turned completely to gray, purple lighting streaking off them. And these weren’t minions spawned for a reason – they just were there when the dragon flew over them.

I could go on, but if you blatantly refuse to see the differences, I don’t know if it’s worth my time.

So, there is a theoretical difference.

Now, is there a difference for me as a player? All I see are mobs to kill. Even if they are working before they attack me, it doesn’t make a big difference.

Neither it does for the Sons of Svanir or the Shattered.

Now if, for example, Jormag worshipping was seen as an heresy by Norn, and Sons of Svanir were hunted in a way similar to the Inquisition, I’d see a difference. If you had to hunt down suspects of heresy in Hoelbrak, maybe making some mistakes, I’d see a bigger difference.

Maybe it’s me who didn’t play much of the personal story, but they all seem Evil for Evil’s sake. They act in different ways? Maybe. But that alone doesn’t mean they are that much different.

And not knowing their motivations is not enough. We at least want some hints, or some doubts.