Guild Wars 2

Some minor spoilers ahead. Continue are your own discretion.

I want to keep this as brief as possible. This isn’t a major concern, maybe more of a suggestion if you can call it that. I’ve played through the first two episodes of the Living Story and so far it’s really good. Definitely a step forward from the Living Story season one (mainly due to instanced story quests; I like that). My concern is the tone that this living story brings. We’re up against another major threat in Tyria. Vines having surfaced from the ground, essentially “eating” waypoints. This threat then destroying settlements and killing people. If I were in the fictional land of Tyria, I’d say this is a major issue. That said, I feel like the current tone of this Living Story acts as if it’s some sort of joke. The primary “issue” from my perspective rests with Taimi. She is too happy-go-lucky with the way things are acting and it sets a completely different mood than what I would believe the setting to be. Rather than our heroes being a bit scared or brave or determined to vanquish this threat, I feel like our heroes are making this threat out to be a joke. I feel like our heroes are not actually determined to kill this threat but instead would much rather sit around a campfire with a keg of ale singing Kumbaya. (Spoiler here) So Marjory’s sister dies, lets go into a cave and start giggling and laughing! That doesn’t seem very realistic.

Although the Living Story season one was not favored by a lot of people including myself, I feel like the overall mood was a lot better than what we have been giving thus far for season two with the exception of Kasmeer’s hiccuping at the end of the Scarlet fight (and even that received some critical reception). I’m sure it is too late to suggest a change as I’d assume that most of the dialogue and voice acting is finished but should it not be, consider this a personal suggestion; a suggestion to make the mood reflect what is actually happening in the world. Change up Taimi to be less (sorry Taimi fans) annoying, cheerful and full of humor to something that also reflects what the mood should be.

I don’t know how many others will agree with me but I am sure there are a few (maybe a lot, who knows).

Thanks for reading.

Honestly, comedic was the last thing I’d use to describe this episode. It was pretty kittening dark actually.

As far as the laughing after the death of someone, keep in mind this is the next day and maybe it’s just me, but laughter is very much something I use, hell require, to get through periods of grief. It’s a very human thing to do.

I think our definitions of dark and comedic might differ. Sure, the episode was darker than the last but Taimi is still running around giggling as if she’s an eight-year old in Disneyland. I just don’t think it suits the storyline.

Also, yes, humor is one way to brighten up a problem but I think there’s a time and place for it. It just seems like every quest within the episode had some sort of comedic vibe to it. A day in-game is like 5 minutes real-time too. All in all, it’s just not my cup of tea and takes away from the story.

I thin the comedy is great, and the tone mostly fits well.

Anyone ever consider there might be something wrong with Taimi?
I mean really wrong…

She likes Scarlett a little too much…

Think about it

Omar Aschi Popp.7496:

Anyone ever consider there might be something wrong with Taimi?
I mean really wrong…

She likes Scarlett a little too much…

Think about it

I don’t know. Taimi just acts like any kid that get super excited easily. She is after all a Kid in a Candy store with all these technology and discoveries Scarlet made that will make any Asura famous.

Its far to light for me in the wrong places. It always feels like – “look there are the bad guys, whippee! lets go for guys! me first! who gets the first inquest buys the first drink back at the bar!! Oh Taimi you’re so cute! come on Kasmeer give her wee break, you just said wee because I’m small cue group laugh”

It feels like the writers are targeting the teenage audience. Some where in-between my little pony and twilight.

Taimi is arrogant asura child who care not so much about all this death. And she even did not know this Belinda.
But she have found a lab of the most “cool” person in her life and she have found machine that allows to understand The Eternal Alchemy
And you want to bend this character to became sad? For what reason? It’s not how naturally this character would behave. Everyone else is sad, she is not, until someone close to her dies.
Did not you have noticed how other asura behave in such situations?

M*A*S*H was a great show, a comedy set in a war. Sometimes one has to hold onto a sense of humor to keep going and remain sane in the face of huge adversity.

For Taimi I don’t see her being comic so much as very narrowly focused, obsessed even, about Scarlet and her works. Yes there’s some humor ( I love how she says “I know” in a soft voice when replying to Brahm at one point, and “A cave” to Kas) but I wouldn’t call her a comedienne. She’s a very excitable, arrogant and enthused Asura who was willing to enter the machine that made Scarlet insane, for science!

People have different coping mechanisms and I think we’re seeing a bit of that with how the others react after the PC sees the Eternal Alchemy. I took that to be nervous joking at what might have been a much worse situation, humor borne of the giddy relief that “the boss” didn’t die or go (visibly) insane as a result and strangle every last one of them.

Vespertilionidae.5018:

M*A*S*H was a great show, a comedy set in a war. Sometimes one has to hold onto a sense of humor to keep going and remain sane in the face of huge adversity.

I just began typing a reply about M*A*S*H but I see you’ve already mentioned it. Thanks. That’s a great example.

Taimi probably doesn’t really understand what’s going on despite her intelligence. It’s like how human children are incapable of thinking in abstract concepts until about age 11. I wouldn’t mind seeing something horrible happen to Taimi that sort of snaps her into reality. Like Braham loses an arm or something trying to keep her out of trouble she dived in to head first.

I wouldn’t say comedic, as the content itself isn’t. However it does have an air of.. an elementary play school skit by kids.

I, as well as others, have described it as the plot of a Saturday morning cartoon. Villains are evil for the sake of being evil and good guys are often kitteny in the face of danger. I found it annoying in season 1 but understandable as I thought they were aiming for a general audience. Then Kas and Marjie happened and I’m left… confused. You have to aim for PG to get away with that so I don’t understand why the plot elements aren’t more mature.

To be fair, things are a bit better than season 1 but not enough for my taste. I want the Inquest to have an understandable reason for harrassing the Zephrites. I want to see some arguing between Rox and Braham. I want dialogue choices that allow me to affect the moods of those around me. Most of all, I want elder dragons that can talk (at least through their minions) and tell me why they do what they do.

I don’t want to fight people because they’re generically labeled as evil. I want to fight them because their views and/or goals make sense but are in conflict with my values and/or responsibilities.

I actually liked the mood. When they are laughing at the end of Entanglement I felt it was more of a bitter laugh trying to soften the mood.

I like how Taimi is, probably my favorite, she is really smart but at the same time is just a kid, an orphan kid, and orphan sick kid. It’s like her moral code were incomplete/broken, because she knows what is right or wrong but still feels excited about wrong doing and she doesnt hide it. That’s why Bram is constantly reprehending her, besides he is always trying to protect her. Rox, in the other hand, doesnt feel that emphaty and I think she may be a little jealous of the relationship that Bram and Taimi have developed.

But even then I do feel the importance that the rest of the team is giving to the matter. If you start looking Taimi as the kid she is, you may start enjoying and reading the mood correctly.

TL; Taimi is an overcondifent genius sick orphan KID asuran with a broken/incomplete moral code. I think her personality/dialogs are the best developed and fits almost perfectly in conjuction with Brham.

Vespertilionidae.5018:

M*A*S*H was a great show, a comedy set in a war. Sometimes one has to hold onto a sense of humor to keep going and remain sane in the face of huge adversity.

For Taimi I don’t see her being comic so much as very narrowly focused, obsessed even, about Scarlet and her works. Yes there’s some humor ( I love how she says “I know” in a soft voice when replying to Brahm at one point, and “A cave” to Kas) but I wouldn’t call her a comedienne. She’s a very excitable, arrogant and enthused Asura who was willing to enter the machine that made Scarlet insane, for science!

People have different coping mechanisms and I think we’re seeing a bit of that with how the others react after the PC sees the Eternal Alchemy. I took that to be nervous joking at what might have been a much worse situation, humor borne of the giddy relief that “the boss” didn’t die or go (visibly) insane as a result and strangle every last one of them.

are you being serious? MASH was at its core a comedy show. They had serious parts included but mainly it was lighthearted and humorous. Sometimes they darken the tone for one of those rare serious themes. But it wasn’t based on the fact actual doctors and soldiers during the Vietnam war used comedy to get through the war. In fact the show received backlash for using comedy to portray what was a serious period.

What the Anet writers lack is a sense of tension. Because jokes are being cracked at inappropriate times you never feel a shift in emotions. Unfortunately when they do try it’s awkward and cringe worthy e.g any conversation between Jory and Kasmeer.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Vespertilionidae.5018:

M*A*S*H was a great show, a comedy set in a war. Sometimes one has to hold onto a sense of humor to keep going and remain sane in the face of huge adversity.

I just began typing a reply about M*A*S*H but I see you’ve already mentioned it. Thanks. That’s a great example.

Always love whenever people complain about jokes in a serious area, and it’s almost always “It’s so they don’t think about how truly and utterly terrifying things are…”

Fluffball.8307:

Taimi probably doesn’t really understand what’s going on despite her intelligence. It’s like how human children are incapable of thinking in abstract concepts until about age 11. I wouldn’t mind seeing something horrible happen to Taimi that sort of snaps her into reality. Like Braham loses an arm or something trying to keep her out of trouble she dived in to head first.

Kiba.9701:

I like how Taimi is, probably my favorite, she is really smart but at the same time is just a kid, an orphan kid, and orphan sick kid. It’s like her moral code were incomplete/broken, because she knows what is right or wrong but still feels excited about wrong doing and she doesnt hide it.

TL; Taimi is an overcondifent genius sick orphan KID asuran with a broken/incomplete moral code. I think her personality/dialogs are the best developed and fits almost perfectly in conjuction with Brham.

Taimi did change during the battle of LA. After talking to and interviewing the refugees, she did go “Is it true, Scarlet did all of this?”
“yes”
“Then tell Scarlet that I WILL become better then her, and I’ll make her pay.”

Something akin to that. She FULLY understands what Scarlet ended up doing is horrible and wrong, BUT, she at the same time looks at Scarlet’s earlier years, development and research and notes how it can be used for GOOD. Aka “Hey, this guy ended up using robots to destroy a town… but these earlier models could REALLY help out in construction zones!”

“Hey, her research into ley-line hubs can seriously help us out, especially in future developments and with the waypoints!”

Why did they make jory’s sister into a red shirt? I knew she was doomed from the moment I seen her. She seemed a bit cold to Kas also, which I was like neat! (Dislike blonds myself :P )

Wait, it’s not realistic to be able to laugh after someone dies?

That’s funny, since every funeral I’ve gone to has had receptions afterwards where most people are quite sociable and light-hearted and are able to laugh with each other. And that’s after people they were related to died.

Belinda was, to everyone there, a stranger. A face they only could pick out because of a relationship to someone who wasn’t there. Why should they be overbearingly sad that someone they only met for a couple minutes in total died?

That’s a good point, Filaha. Remember, current Tyrians have gone through an enormous disaster, 40K people wiped out in a day, and that on top of a dangerous world with a lot of death and destruction happening quite frequently. They’re not insulated from death, they’re immersed in it, and anyone who can’t see it and keep coping isn’t out adventuring.

That being said, I do hope the story can move into more depth and shades of grey. Just because the game has to allow for younger participants doesn’t mean it can’t go deeper. I read an author’s comment once that Young Adult fiction is done well if you write an adult’s book with young protagonists and no sex … just look at Diana Wynn Jones’ young adult stories such as Fire and Hemlock or the Christopher Chant/Chrestomanci series to see compelling tales with very dark moments that are nonetheless suitable for young teens to read.

To those that disagree with my original post, like someone else mentioned above, it does feel very Saturday-morning-cartoon-like. Obviously, everyone is entitled to their own opinion but I just feel a bit confused with the story vs. the emotion/tone. The story itself is quite dark but the tone that comes with it just doesn’t quite suit it. Simply put, it’s like I am watching a horror or thriller movie only to be dubbed with the Saturday morning cartoon voice over.

weskay.9217:

To those that disagree with my original post, like someone else mentioned above, it does feel very Saturday-morning-cartoon-like. Obviously, everyone is entitled to their own opinion but I just feel a bit confused with the story vs. the emotion/tone. The story itself is quite dark but the tone that comes with it just doesn’t quite suit it. Simply put, it’s like I am watching a horror or thriller movie only to be dubbed with the Saturday morning cartoon voice over.

wait for livingstory 3 – than this npc will even sing like they do in disney movies^^

weskay.9217:

The primary “issue” from my perspective rests with Taimi. She is too happy-go-lucky with the way things are acting and it sets a completely different mood than what I would believe the setting to be.

She’s a child, an Asura child (and a gifted one at that) so that makes her pretty smart, but being a child she’s also pretty dumb too.

weskay.9217:

Rather than our heroes being a bit scared or brave or determined to vanquish this threat, I feel like our heroes are making this threat out to be a joke. I feel like our heroes are not actually determined to kill this threat but instead would much rather sit around a campfire with a keg of ale singing Kumbaya. (Spoiler here) So Marjory’s sister dies, lets go into a cave and start giggling and laughing! That doesn’t seem very realistic.

Pretty sure they weren’t giggling and laughing. Also it’s called gallows humour, it’s actually realistic. Far more realistic than everyone batman-ing it the whole time.

Crossplay.2067:

You have to aim for PG to get away with that so I don’t understand why the plot elements aren’t more mature.

Just to get on the same page here, what does mature mean? Clearly not what it means to me (having to pay bills and go to work).

The comedy feels REALLY cheesy. Then again, Destiny’s Edge 2.0 is really cheesy. So while Destiny’s Edge 1.0 are acting like a bunch of high school drama queens, version 2.0’s dialogue sounds like a bad fanfic. I don’t like either groups.

Good thing I most everything else about the game, because I couldn’t be less interested in Living Story because of that group. I’ll still play it though, just so I can be informed.

Apart from everything being excessively cliché’d in terms of plot, LS Season 2 isn’t that bad. I find the jokes enjoyable as long as they are within context.

I will have to agree with the OP in the sense that that felt fairly out of place, except if you were to be ‘blessed’ with Manic Depression, where mood swings in this order of magnitude are generally the giveaway for this kinds of illness…

I would constitute this to ‘pacing’ issues, and perhaps the short timespan available to realize these LS instalments. From my point of view going from one end of the emotional spectrum to another is almost always to raise an eyebrow… I think that if the initial reaction would have been anger, and Marjory were to run off killing (newly spawn) vines, to then not lead to any results, and thus reaching the conclusion we need to learn more, and Marjory decides to take her sister home first… Then all the emotional impact of Belinda’s death (of which ever magnitude) would have had an outlet, b4 reaching the next laughing bit. Now you are left with all this emotional baggage and the laughing bit feels entirely out of order…

Yet, if you look deeper into this issue, I seem to run into these things a bit more often, and part of me feels like sometimes Anet doesn’t take the world they created as serious. Now, true, it may be that they are just having a problem relaying humour into the game, and not all humour is for everybody…

Then again, a fair deal of the game seems to indeed be geared towards teens. As if in the early meetings it was concluded that GW2 might not survive based upon the numbers of GW1 ‘regulars’. And that other games would certainly draw away customers as well, and that older gamers were to turn their backs to gaming as family life started to take hold, combined with a sort okittennowledgement that drawing invested players away from WoW would be impossible… Thus, they would have to appeal to the younger audiences, as to yield more player influx. Seeing GW2 is not a subscription base, it’s also a ‘family friendly’ game (as in, after being put on the family computer there are no further monthly bills to pay).

Now while this is all true, I were to still wonder why trivializing situations, or making things more ‘kid-ly’ is doing anything for the actual game, nor might it be taking these younger players as serious… (btw. I’m now not so much talking about Taimi, but more in a general sense of the game as a whole)… these kids have to grow up in an adult world, and part of gaming is that it offers a fairly save place to be confronted with all the things that life can throw at you. Making a game ‘pre-teen friendly’ isn’t doing them any favour, actually, it send the wrong message about gaming as a whole…

And here we can go a layer deeper still. Gaming is trying to get a foothold as a serious past time, as well as gaming as a sport. At the same time there are still droves of people that consider gaming to be a ‘thing for kids’, not to be taken serious at all. And while GW2 in all it’s beauty seems to certainly want to convey a ‘games can be considered a form of art’. Various ‘pre-teen’ adaptations seem to convey, NOT to take the game serious, nor the world, which well, basically says: ‘these people that say games are for kids are totally right; see we make these games and we don’t take anything in it serious really’.

Now sure, to get a teen-approved-rating, there are certain things to consider, I think it’s something like ‘swearing, nudity/sexual acts, blood’. But it says nothing about taking your world and the events in it serious. Not wanting to ‘scare’ people with overly bright nights, making all the somewhat important characters an over the top personification of a single character trait. Having the need to ‘wisp’ away anything serious with making fun of it. It’s like treating kids for the sake of treating kids like kids, while there hasn’t been any kid in the world that didn’t just want to be taken serious, especially in the pre-teen and teen age…

Now I will acknowledge this is an inherent ‘problem’ with fantasy in general. Your fantasy might not be mine. And a lot of things in GW2 strike me in a sense that Anet takes a broad and light view of how serious the world should be, and which kinds of fantasy can have a place in it. But, there is a thin line here, if your world becomes a persiflage of itself, then it all just becomes one big joke, and who wants to be at the receiving end of a joke…

I’ve still not decided what it is, and it’s hard to give entirely exact examples of the things that I find over the top, or just out of order or sense. Maybe part of it has to do with learning how to implement certain things, and in hind sight there are hits and misses. Still though, I think being aware of this is important for GW2 as a game, and it wanting to be at the forefront of gaming development and maturation.