Guild Wars 2

This may or may not be related to Guild Wars 2 whatsoever, but rather Guild Wars the original game (could tie in, who knows).
Basically, the first trailer for the game (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA6vRTFU6JI) is set with Devona, Cynn and Aidan fighting (what look like undead?) in a pretty impressive area.

I’m curious, are there any areas like this in GW2 at the moment? I don’t remember seeing any in Guild Wars 1. I was recently reading about the floating wizards castle and thought of this video, though watching it again now it looks like it’s built on land rather than floating.

So my main question; does this trailer, and it’s setting, have any relevance to the lore of either the first, or second Guild Wars game?

I’m inclined to say “nothing what so ever”. None of the action we are seeing seems to have any relevance to what the voice over is saying. The enemies they fight on the bridge do not appear anywhere in GW1 or GW2. Especially that horned guy. The bone dragon looks different from the bonedragons in-game (who are missing their lower half). And the only active volcanoes in GW1 are on the Ring of Fire, which looks very different from what we see in this trailer, and features none of these enemies. And we see Cynn leap into the air… false advertising!

What I always wanted to know, who is that dragon? The way they displayed it implies it’s a dragon of some significance but I can’t remember any dragon in Prophecies besides Glint.

If you think that changes between Guild Wars 2 from the trailers/Anet interviews and final game are bad, it was literally about 1000 times worse for the first game.

When Prophecies was being written, the two main writers were clashed about the direction to go, I recall being told – with one writer wanting to go one way, and the other wanting to go another. Not sure whom wanted what, but I believe one wanted to focus on mursaat/white mantle while the other wanted to focus on Khilbron/undead/Scepter of Orr.

Those enemies, to me, look like Grasping Ghouls (they even move similarly) and the environment looks like this concept art, believed to be of Orr so I think that was when the main plot was to be about undead being the threat from the West (Orr being west of Ascalon).

I believe that dragon was meant to be Rotscale, and the guy with the flail to be an executioner – I think this is just very early concept designs (as such CG cinematics had to be sent early on) meant to portray a storyline that got changed in development.

Either way, it is definitely early concept designs in the video.

In GW1 we often go on our separate ways so no wonder we had never been to where Devona, Cynn, and Aidan were in the trailer.

Isn’t that from like 6 years ago? Why would you think it held any relevance when ideas that were laid out weeks ago still aren’t realized.

I had always personally thought that the creatures looked like a fleshy type of gargoyle (although I do not remember if it was officially stated whether they were made of stone or not). And there are other volcanoes in Tyria. I know we do not know this, but the Isle of Janthir looks like it is a similar set of islands as the ring of fire, and similarly we know that Hrangmer is in some area that we never seemed to visit. I don’t think that this really holds any pertinence to the game at hand, but the place may have existed.

I think Konig is right, they probably hadn’t decided what direction to go in terms of lore yet. Kind of weird that they’d spend money on such a lore-defining CGI trailer that early on if that’s the case, but hey.

The very first trailer, for the Guild Wars alpha was even worse though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydyueTjyl80

Larkir.6502:

I think Konig is right, they probably hadn’t decided what direction to go in terms of lore yet. Kind of weird that they’d spend money on such a lore-defining CGI trailer that early on if that’s the case, but hey.

The very first trailer, for the Guild Wars alpha was even worse though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydyueTjyl80

Woah! Is that really a trailer for GW1?! Funny how there’s not a single thing similar to what we have in GW1. Except maybe the red circles around enemies… =D

That’s because it was very early alpha, before they brought in Daniel Dociu, and the first reveal ever of the game. All art then was 100% placeholder. When Daniel Dociu was brought on board, they literally remade all of the art of the game. This was said in an interview with Daniel… some time ago, idk when.

Interestingly, there are a few of those weapons that returned to the game in later additions (with improved art, ofc) – particularly Nightfall. I see Fiery Gladius and the Colossal Scimitar for instance.

Many, I never saw much of the alpha stuff. I didn’t know the game existed until Eye of the North had already been released, but I’m glad they took a different route with the game design back then.