Guild Wars 2

Please, please, please don’t have some silly obvious story where the bad guy reveals himself, bad guy attacks innocent people, we go hunt him down, we kill him.

Do something interesting! Maybe the dragon wins this time! He kills one of the party and flies off to another area of the map for a future season where we have to fight him again in a different setting.

A massive opportunity was already missed with Kasmeer and Marjory. I read a suggestion for the story that would have been INSANE.

For those who didn’t read the forum post, basically someone was suggesting the Marjory was actually dead but Kasmeer created a mesmer clone to keep her alive in her mind. They could have gone super far with this. I could imagine Kasmeer standing behind Marjory whenever we saw them and losing concentration during conversation, Marjory’s sister could also have been confused about some of the things Marjory would say and think she’s acting weird.

THAT is a story and a half! So please do something really interesting with this one. When you’re dealing with magic etc. you can churn out some really interesting storylines.

They couldn’t have gone too far with it.

Because everyone would have been questioning why everyone’s allowing Kasmeer to continue adventuring when she’s clearly gone insane after having created a clone of her dead girlfriend just to continue functioning.

That story, by all rights, would end after a couple sentences with “And then we had her committed to the nearest asylum.”

Neat suggestion, we’ll see how it influences Season 3.

You mean just like how Season 1 ended, with the bad guy very clearly “winning”?

Yeah, no to the idea of Marjory dying and then becoming a mesmer illusion.

We already got enough kitten about that with Jennah and Anise tinfoil theories.

I am not sure that I am really on board with the specifics listed in the OP, but I quite agree with the general idea of the message.

Suikoden III was a great example of storytelling in a video game. Enough information was given to the player that they felt like they were constantly progressing, without just dumping everything on them in a way that left little mystery to chase. And all of this was done within the confines of the game itself, none of the reliance on the website or forums to disseminate information.

Contrast this to Guild Wars 2’s living story. Where most of the dialog seems to be built around amusement rather than story building. In two hours of following the opening of Season 2 I was left mildly curious about who this Master of Peace really was and greatly annoyed that even though she is dead the storyline still seems to be all Scarlet, all the time. Two hours into most games I am really building my excitement, learning what is going on and being made more and more eager to find out more!

ya…. NO!

The story will then become more cheesy because now we have to deal with a Insane character that will just end up acting like a Human Scarlet but with a bit more showy with her Insanity.

Insanity character never makes good antagonists because their reason behind their actions is simple Insanity rather than any type of complex reasoning that makes players question their own actions.

I’m all for losing and seeing the world change as a reaction. But I just want the plot to make sense and not have someone claiming to “save ourselves through joining the bad side.” It’s great once in a while but once you hear it three-four times, it loses its appeal. Scarlet teetered that point but not quite, I wouldn’t like another insane person for the next Dragon fight (S3).

Also, if they made Marjory actually be dead, then it’d change the impact to the characters when they kill Belinda.

ObsidianSaint.1079:

Do something interesting! Maybe the dragon wins this time! He kills one of the party and flies off to another area of the map for a future season where we have to fight him again in a different setting.

So basically what happened with Kralkatorrik?

not a year goes by in tyria where people aren’t raving in the streets “it’s really a mesmer clone” that it should be a national holiday by now. . .
don’t be obvious? and by obvious do you mean having any semblance of rational thought whatsoever, because if that’s the case.. arena net already has that mission accomplished

They could have gone far with it indeed, but still it’s too late now. Mesmer clones don’t create bone bridges.

not without a full spectrum transglamour condenser with thaumacluster modifiers   
please ignore me, i’ve been up all night z_z

Personally I find that clone Marjory idea to be incredibly dumb.

When video game writers try to be different at all costs or create insane twists for the sake of it we end up with crap like Mass Effect 3’s ending. No thanks.

Also, if it wasn’t obvious to the players at first, whenever the ‘big reveal’ comes along, everybody would just go “Not surprising.”

Mesmers and illusions are very well known to the playerbase. Also how could you kill of Marjory in that room without having the rest of the team know about it? And then NOT send Kasmeer to mental help once a Marjory illusion starts walking around with them everywhere?

See George RR Martins work on why killing characters can become tedious bore rather than exciting plot twist.

lordkrall.7241:

You mean just like how Season 1 ended, with the bad guy very clearly “winning”?

Yeah, the best we could do was limit the body count. However since Scarlet died and few players actually care about things like overarching narrative they probably thought it was a victory for us.

RedShipRaider.9560:

Contrast this to Guild Wars 2’s living story. Where most of the dialog seems to be built around amusement rather than story building.

Amusement can also be story. Your talking about narrative and to a certain extent I do agree with you.
Although very often in video games you have dialogue which consist purely to move along the plot. The characters become little more that plot devices meant to spew expository dialogue and as such are rather shallow. And I think ANet is trying to not do this.

Well here’s a amusing example: http://youtu.be/016dZuob2Dc?t=1m44s from about 1:44 to about 2:30

And some more intelligent conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG1ziCvLkJ0 , the channel in general takes a deeper look at video games.

Entanglement spoiler:

Traveller.7496:

Entanglement spoiler:

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Instead there’s a plot twist surprising exactly no-one, redshirt sister croaks. I’d be more surprised if she lived.

This is important… does she drop her sword???