Guild Wars 2

Becka Williams.4978:

BobbyStein.2315:

Dunan Atreides.5436:

+1 to everything.

Who was Aerin’s VA? Aerin and Taimi stole the show IMO.

Aerin is voiced by Jon St. John. Taimi is voiced by Debi Derryberry. Glad you enjoyed their performances!

May I ask who voices Belinda? I feel like I’ve heard her before, but can’t place the voice.

Im 100% sure its who ever did the voice for Jimmy Nuetron.
Whenever balinda talks, i cant help but think “jimmy nuetron” over and over and over. Its really distracting, but not their fault.

BobbyStein.2315:

Dunan Atreides.5436:

+1 to everything.

Who was Aerin’s VA? Aerin and Taimi stole the show IMO.

Aerin is voiced by Jon St. John. Taimi is voiced by Debi Derryberry. Glad you enjoyed their performances!

I knew it was Duke Nukem I knew it !!

Carighan.6758:

Kentsui.4930:

Also the achievements that unlock don’t seem to give access to some kind of ‘unique’ reward

This was specifically asked for by players. All over the forums, repeatedly, throughout season 1. To not bind stuff to the meta-achievement or the achievements in general, so as to remove the “forced grind” of it.

And they listened. :P

The one big difference with season 1 is that the content doesn’t go away, so everyone will have a shot to grab it.

A single achievement in the form of a challenge ( when I think of challenge, think something like Liadri ) would do the trick just fine.
It may involve some kind of ‘grind’ if you fail repeatedly, but it’s way more satisfying when you complete it.

Also achievement hunting for the sake of it isn’t really exciting for everyone, and having challenging things to complete without having something to show for it(but a pile of greens ..) only goes so far.

I must agree story wise it was great I hope it will continue same way:-)

I am increasingly concerned about the core of the story being told through exposition dumps, particularly when they come from Taimi. The world should tell the story, not the characters. We keep being told about ley lines or little plot details about Scarlet, but we aren’t seeing these things, the biconics (and other characters) are being used as crutches to tell the story.

Personally I felt like most of the biconic banter was very self indulgent and took away from the moment or needlessly prolonged my advancement. Listening to Kasmeer and Marjory talk about each other, or Taimi Braham and Rox interact with each other (and their views on the world) began to grow very tedious by the end of the instances. I was trying to focus on the Zephyrites, the people that died, but I’m having to listen to Marjory and Kasmeer instead. They weren’t adding anything to story, they were just slowing it down or distracting. They seem to constantly undermine the serious tone of the story.

Even when it came to a murder investigation Marjory (the person who kinda specialises in that) defers to the player to point out stab wounds. As I player I couldn’t see that, they looked like ordinary bodies to me. In Telltale’s The Walking Dead game, I would see stab wounds and be able to point them out myself. In GW2 I just say the words put into my mouth by the writers about something I can’t actually see. I was more surprised than Marjory that there were stab wounds even though my character was saying it. That took me right out of the moment. My character felt like a biconic – someone else’s story, not my own. Honestly, Marjory should have pointed out the stab wounds – I’m a commander of the Pact, not a homicide detective. This kind of forced agency hurt more than it helped.

Weindrasi.3805:

Kasmeer and Marjory are great. In the previous season, Kasmeer was the vulnerable one and Marjory the “tough” one. That was fine, but I’m glad to see their roles evolving. Now, Kasmeer is acting as the tough one—being protective over Marjory. They’re both showing their competence and depth—Kasmeer has come a long way from the noblewoman we first met in Southsun. I love the showcase of her Mesmer abilities.

That was never the case. Kasmeer hasn’t grown or evolved, she was always the same as she is now. She didn’t go through a training montage last year and learn how to be a mesmer, she learnt how to be a mesmer before Marjory ever met her. The primary source of Kasmeer being less than any one else was Marjory. Marjory was the one who fabricated this idea that Kasmeer was vulnerable or needed protecting. We never see Kasmeer be vulnerable in a fight, every time we’ve seen her use her powers she comes off as the most powerful mesmer in Tyria, whether it be stripping a veil, creating an exit portal in Kessex from inside the Tower of Nightmares (not only a greater range than a normal mesmer but she didn’t need to be at the exit location), creating several more clones than a normal mesmer and blinking to places a mesmer can’t blink to. Kasmeer has never been portrayed as anything but OP, certainly not weak. Her only vulnerability was a financial one.

While some may complain of the small map – I greatly applaud.
1) Less running to get where you’re going
2) You can actually explore every nook and cranny
3) There is more likely to be something worth finding in every nook and cranny
4) It feels less generic. You actually get to know the terrain visually by landmarks, instead of running through a flat plane for several minutes before reaching the next hamlet.
5) The sandstorm! It gives you a real sense of a dynamic ecosystem with how drastically it changes the landscape and even which critters come out to play.

Content wise – the mechanics of delivery are much improved:
- stuff like the notes already being there but taking on added significance in the story
- having green stars that lead you to the area but have you actually figure out what to do once you’re there
- animated 3d cutscenes and in-scene dialogue instead of the horrible “2 actors standing against a hand drawn background”
- Having the NPC’s do interesting player-like things (mesmer blink & portal, yay!) instead of being a dialogue-reader and random useless body. It takes away some of the sting of them being the ‘heroes’ of the story while we do all the work.

Story wise – Better than LS1. I do think the couples’ soppiness could be turned down a notch. Maybe emphasize synergy/trust and how they make great duos, and de-emphasize “kiss your boo boos all better because love!”

I greatly enjoyed the content update myself. I was pleasantly surprised from the get-go, when I saw that there is another story mission after the first new one in Brisban. You can imagine my surprise when I realized that there are more and more, creating an entire arc in themselves, in contrast to the sluggish, slow-paced story delivery we witnessed in the first season.

POTENTIAL STORY SPOILERS AHEAD
The story missions felt interesting and the characters within them had nice interactions, and I felt much more included in the story when the NPCs acknowledged my existence, making me feel like the “leader” of the group on only via dialogue, but also via game mechanics, like in the final confrontation with the zephyrite sylvari on top of the rocks, where my companions were clearing up vines as I was dealing with the guy.

The only big problem with the story from a narrative standpoint I noticed was Braham. I would really like to see more engaging, interesting male personages, and all Braham does is to personify the “dumb norn” stereotype.
Rox, on the other hand, is easily my favourite – she has plenty of little quirks which make her feel alive and real. The little details of her character is what makes her relateable.

END OF POTENTIAL SPOILERS

The mechanics of the bosses and the events throughout the map are interesting and original, and bring me back to the release of the game when seeing new events was exciting since each had its own cool vibe. This feeling was lost as I kept moving through the game and saw the same patterns throughout multiple zones, but this time around the devs really managed to surprise me. The NPC dialogue and the environmental design are also great, along with the phenomenal, atmospheric music in the background, which is amongst my favourite tracks amongst all of GW2.

The idea around the sandstorm is also really interesting, giving the map different goals depending on the whether or not it is currently up. I enjoyed the idea behind this mechanic, and am glad that the designers decided to put it in.

All in all – a great update, easily my favourite content update so far (feature patch aside). I hope the guys at A-net keep bringing us such high-quality experience, and wish that players would post more on the forums praising what they like, rather than simply bashing on what they dislike.

This was by far the best release ever as far as story. I really hope Anet can keep it up!

Agreed, a great update with an interesting story and a great area to explore, even though I hate jumping.

I haven’t made it very far with the ls2 story (didn’t have a whole lot of time last night), but I have enjoyed what I’ve done thus far. Admittedly, when we got to the part with Aerin, I fell out of my chair laughing. Hmmm, another sylvari seemingly gone mad and hearing voices in his head it seems. Mighty coincidental me thinks.

Anyway, that’s about as far as I’ve gotten. I’ve caught the snippets of conversation about the strange sylvari’s house and about npcs’ wondering if she’s ever coming back for her stuff, which automatically made me think ‘Scarlet?’, so that’s pretty neat. I can’t wait to continue with it tonight.

BobbyStein.2315:

Dunan Atreides.5436:

+1 to everything.

Who was Aerin’s VA? Aerin and Taimi stole the show IMO.

Aerin is voiced by Jon St. John.

Good, because I thought he sounded familiar.
Then again he’s done work on this game in the past.
I too wish to extend a hearty +1 to the writing staff on this season’s first episode.

I liked the mystery with Aerin, but was saddened he died so quickly in terms of story.
The Master of Peace would be interesting to follow, especially after he talked about a great power.

I was more fascinated with that compared to looking through Scarlet’s stuff.
Don’t take that last line as a burn on those efforts though.
It is good that we manage to rummage through her stuff.
I was intrigued when we were told about the Steam creature’s intelligence.
There’s potential story seeds being planted all around with this episode.
Far better than slamming down signposts and eating kid’s drawings.

Atlas.9704:

but was saddened he died so quickly in terms of story.

I wished however he died a little bit faster in the fight. Having to run around for 15-20 minutes to kill him was a little over the top for me, especially since i get always backache in such long fights due to problems with my spine

Indeed it is a big improvement! Good job Anet.

All I ask is that you guys tone down the Majory and Kasmeer thing going on… I honestly think there are far more pressing matters than hearing them talk about their relationship. It feels super forced and pushed to be important when, in reality, it isn’t and it shouldn’t be. Elder dragons are by far more important.

This is the best thing I’ve seen ANet do since Winds of Change.

Different dialogs, so replaying (and roleplaying) can be fun if you are an altaholic and an avid reader.
Challenging fights, so you just don’t faceroll them and must develop at least a minimum degree of skill.
Acceptable rewards, so even if you don’t really care about the story, there’s still reasons to do it.
Just like War in Kryta and Winds of Change.
They brought back those and other things that worked before, and thanks to that, they managed to bring back fun like the the fun I had back then.

I’m glad they they didn’t keep with the “making things different for difference’s sake” trend they had lately. Keep what works, innovate in what doesn’t.

Good Job on the story, it really is an improvement !

What I’ve seen so far is a big improvement. The story telling is much better, new map, new mechanics, without external guides to know how to follow the story…
In this episode I’m enjoying the story rather than farming AP.
Congrats ANet, keep it up!

GG Anet, really enjoyed the start of the story in this one. Plenty of dialogue & prospective lore to get through til the next release in 2 weeks

I’ve got to say I’m really pleased with this release.

The Living Story is actually leaning pretty kitten being a story.
Simply put, the way it flows feels like a more robust personal story. It’s natural, the encounters seem sensible rather than just forced in to shove more combat in to each instance, and the entire episode had a definate and satisfying beginning, middle, and end with enough of a hanging thread to drive continuity. It didn’t feel like a wholly disappointing forced cliffhanger and I appreciate that.

Building on the world that is
Several characters who had since fallen to obscurity popped up. I was thrilled to reconnect with my BFF Riot Alice and learn what she’s been up to all this time, and while sad the inclusion of the zephyrites, and inquest, and the inhabitants of prosperity and all of their motivations and respective struggles seem natural and fitting unlike the contrived alliances of season 1. Prosperity, especially is a great example of a place with easily understood but important derived history drawn from existing lore. Right next door is the “hell’s triad” of the GW2 underworld, and prosperity is sensibly positioned and inhabited to reflect this place where people go to get off the grid but find themselves in indentured servitude to the bandit overlords whom they rely on for survival. It’s well written and presented, it makes sense, and it feels like a natural part of the world.

Mechanics, Mechanics, Mechanics!
The new monsters, the trigger conditions, the Zephyrite reward tiers, the sandstorm chests, everything in this release is an obvious progression from what was learned about event, zone, and reward design from the past. The open world is actually fun again because of the fun rather than the loot, and the small use of zephyrite crystals and z-axis play found here breathe new life in to what was for many a stagnant and boring overworld. The sandstorms and inquest mine door, especially are the sort of thing we should see more of. Events that have important rather than trivial impacts in the zone mix things up admirably and keep it fresh. Little details like sifting sand or the quicksand river are peppered everywhere and display a level of care and attention to detail that even GW2’s release content doesn’t have.

The Journal and achievements
Again, this is an instance of “feels right” and it harkens back to the design of GW1’s primary and secondary missions. It was a good system for GW1, it works extremely well for GW2, and it feels more guild wars than GW2 has in a long time.

Overall
The best parts of the open world are massively improved, and the living story/journal stuff now bears a much tighter and more focused GW1 style design that feels much more true to the roots of the franchise. While I’m sure there are some that will bemoan the lack of “good farms” or have framerate issues, or, simply, can’t be asked to jump, dodge, or otherwise learn to play anything that isn’t zergball, the overall forward momentum is consistent with what GW2 is at its core as a refinement, rather than an obvious attempt to tinker with or fix something percieved as broken.

Personally, I love it, it feels like the game has finally “found its legs”

8/10 will play again.

That said, I want to echo some of the earlier sentiments people have raised, both good and bad. On one hand, I like Scarlet a lot better dead than alive, and not for the obvious reasons. The epilogue to this episode put a real point to the tragedy of her character and filled her out in a way that I’m not sure could have been as effective before her death. Complexity in hindsight is a good device, and I approve, particularly in this context. Maybe you’re band-aiding oversights in character development that should have happened in S1, but the execution is pretty smart. It makes me wish I’d paid a little more attention during S1, and that’s a tall order.

The zone is good, if cramped—and I don’t mean the sheer size, which is adequate. I mean six meters of sand to cross with a gimmick does not a wasteland make. You don’t need to give me an hour long walk across an ocean of sand, but I feel like the expansiveness of Maguuma could have better been portrayed with some clever lighting and particles instead of big rock walls on the other sides of the quicksand moats. To put a finer point on what I mean: the zone is a good size to play, but it needs to look bigger. If, however, you’re saving sand that stretches out infinitely for the crystal desert, I can totally accept that. If you’re not, though, you should.

Movement gimmicks suck. Bundles suck. There, I said it.

Finally I want to repeat something adroit some others have said: I do not like having words put in my character’s mouth, but there’s a way to do that without making me roll my eyes. Now part of it is just being clever. There are plenty of solid story-heavy roleplaying games that have had silent protagonists, but even if you need me to relay things to the biconics, the things I’m relaying should be bare-bones and immersive—just enough to move the story along. Let me read between the lines and imprint my own emotions and opinions.

For example: My necromancer couldn’t give two kittens about Kasmeer. He doesn’t give a kitten that she’s a noble, a mesmer, or whether she’s kittening Marjory, Taimi, or Moonboy for all I know. Now I don’t need a dialogue option that says, “Hey, Kasmeer, you can go kitten yourself,” but I also don’t want it assumed for me that I’m interested in her origins or that I have stereotypical Charr opinions about human nobility or religion. You don’t have to account for every possible variation, but you at least have to account for the possibility that the majority opinion of the (in this case, Charr) population isn’t shared by every furball wandering around Tyria. Give me an option that says, “Not interested,” whenever she starts babbling about court, even if it ends the conversation.

Anyway, on the whole, I’d say that this is nonetheless the best story implementation since the very early sections of the release Personal Story (and speaking of which, you should really introduce branching points that depend, like in the PS, on things about my character that I decide and that pre-date the start of the game, rather than just letting me choose whether I like Jim’s or Bob’s shorts better). Further, the biconics were actually likeable, more or less, if somewhat flat. In terms of gameplay elements, nothing terribly special, but then I don’t expect a Nightmare Tower every two weeks.

Keep it coming!

The biggest problem was that it ended just as I was getting really engaged!
Probably do it with a alt or two.
Still good job ANet, can’t wait for the whole thing to be released to I can experience it in it’s entirety.

Shiren.9532:

I am increasingly concerned about the core of the story being told through exposition dumps, particularly when they come from Taimi. The world should tell the story, not the characters. We keep being told about ley lines or little plot details about Scarlet, but we aren’t seeing these things, the biconics (and other characters) are being used as crutches to tell the story.

Personally I felt like most of the biconic banter was very self indulgent and took away from the moment or needlessly prolonged my advancement. Listening to Kasmeer and Marjory talk about each other, or Taimi Braham and Rox interact with each other (and their views on the world) began to grow very tedious by the end of the instances. I was trying to focus on the Zephyrites, the people that died, but I’m having to listen to Marjory and Kasmeer instead. They weren’t adding anything to story, they were just slowing it down or distracting. They seem to constantly undermine the serious tone of the story.

I will agree that there was exposition, but it was that overt. Since S1 is no longer available these expositions are necessary to get new player up to speed. So maybe I’m giving it a bit more leeway under the assumption that we’ll be seeing less of it in the future.
I feel a bit differently about the banter. My favourite piece of dialog is where Tiami walk behind Rox and get’kitten (or almost hit) by her tail. For me the Banter helps to flesh out the characters, provide them some depth. In S1 I felt that there wasn’t enough character building, most of the dialog was purely in service to the overall narrative and at times the biconics felt a bit shallow.
I will admit the inability for me to be able to skip past the dialog at times was sorely missed (especially when my connection dropped out and I had to replay an instance and listen to the same dialog not 5 minutes later) but overall I liked it.
Maybe however ANet can look into a way of allowing player to skip it in some way. Although based on current game mechanics I’m not sure how or even if it could… the conversation system from the personal story for example allowed you to skip over some of the dialog but it’s no longer being used. ANet could put more of the dialog into the 3D Animated cutscenes and allows us to skip over some of the dialog that way but I’m not sure if the game can do that.

Emissary.3792:

- Having the NPC’s do interesting player-like things (mesmer blink & portal, yay!) instead of being a dialogue-reader and random useless body. It takes away some of the sting of them being the ‘heroes’ of the story while we do all the work.

True, having them do stuff other than provide dialog and some dps in encounters was a nice touch.

Beldin.5498:

Atlas.9704:

but was saddened he died so quickly in terms of story.

I wished however he died a little bit faster in the fight. Having to run around for 15-20 minutes to kill him was a little over the top for me, especially since i get always backache in such long fights due to problems with my spine

A bit more difficulty, and a bit less time would have been ideal (especially since it’s now permanent I don’t mind having my behind handed to me). The checkpoint mechanic could also be looked at since you’re basically able to die and retry with little penalty (although that’s all mechanics, this thread seems to be about story).

Where are polymocks?

I hardly ever post about updates, I can’t recall I ever did about S1, and although I enjoyed it, it hardly felt like a real story and I wasn’t invested in it.
Start of S2 blew my mind.

First of all just the amount of things we got in terms of story, instances, explorable area, and the fact that it’s repeatable.
I love the dialogue around the village where two npc’s talk about ‘that crazy sylvari who barely left her home’, it got me thinking right away of scarlett, although I dislike the character in general, it’s nice to get to know a bit more about her.

The new area is awesome. I like the fact that it’s not a very big zone, so it’s easy to get around, you get to explore all the nooks and crannies without too much trouble. And the new achievements for exploring the place are great! (I for one love exploring and think achievements related to it are great. Still looking for the last couple of coins!)

The sandstorm adds a great dynamic to the place, as well as that the chests can only be found at that moment.

During the story instances I am mostly greatful for one thing: The bloody npc’s don’t die.
When Braham got to the point that he should be dead he just stopped fighting for a while, looked slightly confused, regenerated some health and fought on. I was really glad to see this, there is hardly anything more frustrating than having to continuously scrape your npc allies of the floor.

I do think the relationship between Kasmeer and Marjory is a bit too emphasized, but ah well.
And my weapon will not add stacks of condition damage/bloodlust/etc when killing enemies during the story instances. Which does make me a bit sad. (But I have submitted a bug report. Hope it can be fixed.)

Overall, I am really enjoying the content, it’s wonderful and can’t wait to see what will be next!

EDIT: And the music! Good grief I love the music from this update!

Shiren.9532:

I am increasingly concerned about the core of the story being told through exposition dumps, particularly when they come from Taimi. The world should tell the story, not the characters. We keep being told about ley lines or little plot details about Scarlet, but we aren’t seeing these things, the biconics (and other characters) are being used as crutches to tell the story.

I hate to say this, but you’re in the minority. Players want this stuff spoon-fed. Even some that claim they don’t.

Aedelric.1287:

Definitely an improvement, not amazing, but definitely good enough to keep me interested for more.

The only thing that really did bother me was them stuffing more Scarlet rubbish into the storyline. So many people hated everything about her, even though she is dead Arena Net’s writers feel compelled to stuff more of her nonsense into the story line.

Considering the fact that she destroyed large chunks of Tyria and woke up the last Elder Dragon prior to her death, did you really expect them to just ditch her completely? I know she was disliked by a lot of people but she still played a huge role in the story line. The whole REASON we’re even making our way into Maguuma is because of her.

Rage.9723:

Which I will NOT be repeating that story. Thus I can not get any of the achievements.

And that is your choice – so?

I really liked this story – thanks for a great job.

Anet, SO MUCH BETTER than season 1. And the best part is that the content is available forever! Woohoo!

What I loved:

The new ninja outfit. That was awesome. Got one for me and my spouse. That was a well designed outfit. Kudos to the artist who did that one.

What I liked:

a) I like the kites we get to “kite” over and the Inquest we can kill while doing it. That was actually quite fun getting a chance to kill a lot of evil asurans.

b) The new champ chain is also a great way to keep level 80s in a level 80 zone. The level of map chat is slightly improved.

c) Sandstorms. (though, depending on the moment, I might change my mind on this)

What I didn’t like:

a) I’m not actually complaining about the diving goggles, but on my way up to the top, I hit a few areas that shouldn’t have had invisible “roofs” so to say. So I’d jump and hit something that shouldn’t be there and then fall to my death. Having access to better camera angles might have solved this though.

b)The duration of Aspect powers should last longer than what it is now. If this has been limited during the previous event though, I think I would have been less surprised when I found out it had such a short duration during this one.

c) Lack of Way points – should be self explanatory. Should have had one more way point to the far west to form a triangle.

What I really didn’t like:

a) Our player character yet again having no voiced dialogue. There isn’t even a need to reference the old stuff, the new lines (limited lines)you get to click through though should be voiced. It’s rather depressing and discouraging to see my character just stand there and “click” dialogue that doesn’t really engage him or her with the ‘DE 2.0’. I shouldn’t be left feeling like the odd man out when the other characters engage with each other and I’m standing there with small token hints that I may or may not exist for them. The best part of the game for me was hearing my character speak and I miss it. (If I wanted a mute character I’d play Chrono Trigger or Half Life)

b) Also, I wasn’t particularly happy watching the other characters move around in the small cut scenes while mine is standing facing the wrong way. It’s rather sad to see everyone rush off to fight and there’s my character in the corner with his backside showing. I would have been a lot more happier seeing my character involved in the events.

The map is pretty good, I like the events aside from Tootsie. I’m intrigued by the story so far, though it could use a little less Scarlet. I guess that can’t be helped since she was the one responsible for waking the dragon.

All in all, I really like what they’ve done with the second season. What I love the most is the periodic sand storms, though I would rather them just happen without warning rather than have a timer on the side letting me know when to expect it. Anyways, I feel like it makes everything just a bit more engaging. The sand blowing off the dunes, the sand storms, the quick sand, the dark cave… all a very nice improvement to see and really helps to make an engaging atmosphere.

I am a bit disappointed that the map is so rampant with the need to be jumping all over the place, but I get it. I was also disappointed that the map was so small. I had hoped for a normal sized map to be released all at once. I really had hoped that they would add more than just one zone actually and maybe add a whole section of the map…

I liked at first all the rewards I was getting from completing the LS but was disappointed to see that all the achievements at the end of the episode were so ..boring and without much variety.

This is only the first episode of the second season and who knows what’s still in store. Perhaps the second episode and each episode after will fulfill some of what feels missing so far. Either way, I am enjoying what I’m seeing and hope to see some of these atmospheric improvements to the map implemented in other preexisting maps.

If only it wasn’t about Scarlet. It seemed to me that while Anet got the memo that she wasn’t exactly a well made character, instead (of) acknowledging (seriously, kittens again? edited to avoid misfiltering) that, it made them force feed her to us even more. How much longer till we’ll be allowed to forget about her?

Balsa.3951:

Story telling wise anets writer made a leap.

They changed the writing staff.

The new one can’t obliterate that Scarlet was the main threat in S1.

But I agree that they did a great job !

yup i loved this too, S1 while i thought the underlying story and scarlets concept was great it was just not delivered in a way that was gripping however the start of S2’s story? hell im all over this kitten a ley line?! i mean i was just not expecting that kind of story leap suddenly its gone from ‘’bland and boring (s1)’’ to a concept that concerns everything and as an asura having the snaff prize mentioned and refered to by taimi as an asura equal (maybe a peer?) was great felt personal again.

really well done and i cannot wait for chapter 2 im searching for the ley line currently see if i can expose anything

Everything about this patch feels extremely well done – but there is one thing I can point to that makes me extremely optimistic about the future.

That is the heavy focus on dynamic events in the new map zone. Dynamic events are what make the world feel alive and I think the development team hit a major home run with the way they fit together in Dry Top. Please give us more like this, Anet.

And the story is very tight and well written so far. While I enjoyed Season One, some of it felt a little forced. Can’t wait to see where the story goes next.

This patch have been awesome The map is awesome, and that enviromental changes between sandstorm and clear is really wonderful detail in this map.

I love this new story in this patch. It is well written, and voice actors are awesome. Whole story was long and it surprised me positively. It left so many doors open, so it is quite hard to figure out what is going to happen in future. Most of all, I know that all of my characters will have it their journal too, it makes me even more happy. My low level characters can have this story too.

I am looking forward new updates more eagerly. I just want to know what will happen next and how this whole story will progress.

ArenaNet, Thank you for this wonderful Living Story 2. You really have shown your quality, You are the best one!

The map is a little small, but so was Dry Top in GW1 – yet what a difference. Landscape is nothing short of spectacular, which I was hoping to see in the reimagined Maguuma.

If we’re going to see a new area or map every month, I’ll be blown away. It is about time the world was expanded a bit, and so far it’s a good start, provided we get to see a variety of map layouts from the somewhat intimate Dry Top layout to sprawling areas more akin to Harathi Hinterlands, and all sorts in between. Can’t wait to see the Falls (and crossing my fingers we might see Rotscale again on Majesty’s Rest…)

The bosses are much more interesting as well. Actually needing an interrupt to complete one of them, rather than it just being outright immune to them 59 times out of 60, was very nice to see. “Explorable” achievements for the story mode instances that weren’t overly difficult but did require a bit of attention reminds me of the bonus goals for GW1 missions but with more flair. So far I found all three missions outstanding, and even the epilogue was an interesting moment from a lore perspective.

Was quite surprised that we didn’t find Belinda in need of rescue, too. I was expecting it to play out a bit like chasing the Chosen through the jungle in GW1, but it’s taken a more measured approach, and left me scratching my head about exactly what the bandits and Inquest are gathering all that copper for…

Kudos to the writing and all teams involved. I really enjoyed it all.
Keep it up.

way more coherent and engaging story & dialogue, good job! I’m starting to like DE2 more, the characters’ unique personalities work in the dialogue and the weirdness from LS1 is gone for now

Cyga.1246:

Where are polymocks?

Good question.

Ben K.6238:

but it’s taken a more measured approach, and left me scratching my head about exactly what the bandits and Inquest are gathering all that copper for…

I noticed that bit of conversation as well.
I truly hope it does come back somehow and wasn’t just simply a throwaway ambient line.

I wholeheartedly agree, the first episode of this Season was a HUGE improvement on Season 1. I just played it and loved the story. Made me gleeful to actually play Guild Wars 2 again.

IMO, it was just the right amount of content too. Had they tried splitting up this story into the multitude of different sections at 2-week intervals, it would’ve been such a dead crawl I would be disappointed.

The best part of this story for me was inside Scarlet’s store room in the village. Sticking around after they leave Taimi in there, Taimi leads you to a hologram projector where Scarlet has left diary entries, all voice acted……..

That’s good to hear, let’s hope this grows the beard quite well in further episodes.
When is the next one coming out?

I just wanted to echo what other people are saying… you guys did a great job with the story telling this time around! Great job indeed.

Also loved every bit of the story and can’t wait for more! :-D
I really hope we won’t have to wait 4 weeks excited

BobbyStein.2315:

The best is yet to come.

So more massacres, mayhem, and destruction in your words. Why is that since the start of this Living World (although I may risk saying that there were signs of this in the vanilla game as well) the only way you guys seem to be able to drive the story forward is through mass killings and calamities (that often draw parallels with real life modern attacks on innocents)?

Remember this picture attached to the Story Journal reveal page? I can’t decide whether it’s hilarious, ridiculous, or outrageously imbecile and depressing that it’s a spot-on summary of your entire storytelling to date…

BobbyStein.2315:

Actually, it’s the same writing staff. We just planned better and collaborated more closely with design, art, and audio folks to weave the narrative more tightly with the episode structure. We learned a lot from season 1 and we’re applying what we can to season 2 to continually improve our storytelling and narrative design.

Really glad people are enjoying episode 1. The best is yet to come.

Actually, it did progress incredibly in the presentation and the flow, but what I like the more is all those very little pieces of lore which aren’t of great importance in the great flow of Story but flesh out the world; in my case, as a mainly Norn player (and an engineer) it is clearly the old legends of both Jotuns and Norns that are spoken about by Ogden and that I want to learn.

I’ve seen several times that people complain about exposition speeches, and it’s true that it’s a problem but I think it can be solved easily, maybe by putting the player in the skin of an npc. For instance, in the case of the informations found in this room in Prosperity, instead of exposition maybe we could have played Cerea/Scarlet for very short mini-missions while the Biconics were explaining what she did.

Nonetheless, it is indeed quite good and I’m waiting the next update with great impatience, and I know I’m lot alone since there is so many discussions on the forums about this Chronicle and all the possibilities that exists storywise. I just hope that all the following updates won’t suffer from the two weeks release since I believe that it is probably kind of hard to create a zone like Dry Top in only two weeks…

Thalador.4218:

BobbyStein.2315:

The best is yet to come.

So more massacres, mayhem, and destruction in your words. Why is that since the start of this Living World (although I may risk saying that there were signs of this in the vanilla game as well) the only way you guys seem to be able to drive the story forward is through mass killings and calamities (that often draw parallels with real life modern attacks on innocents)?

Remember this picture attached to the Story Journal reveal page? I can’t decide whether it’s hilarious, ridiculous, or outrageously imbecile and depressing that it’s a spot-on summary of your entire storytelling to date…

To be fair, the meat of this episode WAS detective work. Also, calamities and mortal peril are sort of the core content drivers for all armed conflict, and the core design of the guild wars franchise revolves around armed conflict as a game play focus.

Your character is a tool for violence in these games, and thus, the responsibility of the writing is to give you the player, and your character virtuous motivations to engage in said violence. Rescuing refugees and defending the innocent are some of the most noble motivations one could ask for. Harken back to GW1 and you’ll see less unaviodable death of the innocent in a direct sense, sure, but it was always there as an implication and driving motive as well. The white mantle section of prophecies was especially more disconcerting than anything in GW2. Your character actually escorted human sacrifices to their deaths before the veil was pulled back.