Guild Wars 2

Eleri Tezhme.3048:

Being forced into the position of killing an entire village was just… distasteful. Even though it was a ‘memory’ and we were supposedly acting as another person, having to physically participate in that fight left everyone on my team feeling very sick.

Maybe that’s what you were going for, I dunno, but it marred the storytelling for us. It is one thing for a player to make choices that are less than ‘heroic’, it is another for a game to force a player to act like that.

(Tack on that the PC and Jory’s reactions completely missed the maipulation that was happening, and just described it as Caithe being in some ‘dark places’, and it really felt, well, yucky.)

Agree.
If we can’t change anything anyway – just show us cutscene
Period

/facepalm

First time in months I’ll protect ANet.

Cmon guys really? So childish! Grow up! Bad guys, huh? I doubt anyone here wasn’t playing bad in some other game and didn’t enjoi it. I suppose here are alot of gamers that prefer wide variety.

To cut it short if I ought to do dirty work I like to be payed for it (SWTOR, APB:Reloaded, Skyrim etc). And payment must be real’ good. Otherwise I don’t see point (arrows and bullets cost money ye know). And thats my only complain here. There were a hell load of those four-hoofed so I havent’s got enough (loot aside). =)

Eleri Tezhme.3048:

I’m not disagreeing with the story or the memory, or that there was information there that we needed to know. I’m disagreeing with making the players actively participate.

How else would you properly convey the wrongness of the situation? That was the smart part of it, that we had to do it. It really conveyed the intention to the player.

Carighan.6758:

Eleri Tezhme.3048:

I’m not disagreeing with the story or the memory, or that there was information there that we needed to know. I’m disagreeing with making the players actively participate.

How else would you properly convey the wrongness of the situation? That was the smart part of it, that we had to do it. It really conveyed the intention to the player.

Requiring us to re-enact Caithe’s idiotically murderous behavior was not, in my opinion, particularly smart. Obviously, anet wants us to repeat these things. Achievements unlocked, now go back and get ‘em all! and all that silliness. This one, however, I won’t be repeating (unless a guildie asks for help, of course). To hell with the achievements.

I didn’t need to be put in past tense Caithe’s shoes to have past tense Caithe’s intention properly conveyed to me — she had none, beyond pleasing eeeevil Faolain, whose name, appropriately enough, seems to be pronounced failin’ — and I didn’t need to be put in past tense Caithe’s shoes to understand that past tense Caithe was an idiot, and that what past tense Caithe did in the centaur camp was horribly, tragically wrong.

A cutscene — in the form of a vision, generated by the memory seed when planted in the appropriate spot, which my character and Marjory could have witnessed together — would have sufficed. For me, anyway.

It would have been extra cool if, when generating these visionary cutscenes, the memory seed also generated some popcorn.

Scene plays…

Character: Okay, the seed’s planted, let’s see what — oh, look! A centaur camp. Cool. /e munch popcorn
Marjory: I like centaurs. They remind me of horses. I like horses.
Character: There’s that eeevil Faolain. I just don’t see what Caithe sees in her.
Marjory: I hate Faolain. She reminds me of sauerkraut. I hate sauerkraut.
Character: No, Caithe! Don’t — oh, you idiot! /e throw popcorn at vision
Marjory: I hate past tense Caithe. She reminds me of present day Caithe.
Character: You hate present day Caithe?
Marjory: No, but she reminds me of past tense Caithe, and I hate her.
Character: O-o-okay then.

Iason Evan.3806:

I think the deeper question is why is Caithe attracted to Faolain? Nothing that came out of Faolain’s mouth that entire episode was redeeming in any way, shape, or form. It was all either lies, harm, wrong, violent, or speculation on a conversation that was none of her business. Caithe has awful taste in romance and treats her “friends” even worse.

It reminded me of how bad the Padme/Anakin romance was in the prequels. What did Padme see in Anakin? None of his actions or words had anything attractive in them. There is a reason people find the prequels deplorable: Jar jar and the relationship between Padme and Anakin lacked anything of worth.

As I was rereading the thread, I noticed you also made the Anakin parallel. Actually you posted it before me :P

It’s really a testament to what happens in storywriting between the lines. There’s only so much you can do with exposition. Love is weak in words and strong in character.

Evil is the same way except that you can say: Evil is weak in actions but strong in character. You can easily write out: “A mindless alien overlord who forces every living being to die a million painful deaths.” It’s a terrible action on mass scale. It’s also very boring.

So we can compare a pretty good example to our two “bad” examples.

Good:
Mr. Freeze from Batman. He does the stuff he does because his company, in a way, kidnapped his wife without any intent of returning her. The important part is that we as an audience first see that part. We learn to hate the company and THEN we see Mr. Freeze doing bad things. While we’re still rooting for Batman, we feel bad for Mr. Freeze.

Bad:
Anakin: “Obi Wan is mean to me!” “No one will ever understand me!”

-Well. Since we all agree with Obi Wan, and we’ll never understand you. You suck.

Faolain: “Wynne won’t tell me her secrets!” “Let’s go beat it out of her!” “Look at these filthy animals!”

-She seems nice though. How about we don’t beat up the nice lady? The centaurs are nice too. What’s your problem with them again?

So we have Mr. Freeze who loved his wife. Then we have Anakin who can’t take a little criticism and Faolain who … hates centaurs?

In CoD you had to shoot up an airport as terrorists. I might add that it was very realistic. Now that was messed up ..

Faolin was the only “bad guy” Caithe and the other silvari were just defending themselves.

we see the events through kaithe’s eyes she doesn’t know the centaurs and trust her friend’s judgment regarding them. Yesterday i helped a friend with this quest and i decided to stand near the location of the initial centaur attack, what iv’e seen was that Faolin attacked the centaur and screamed she is under attack and then all the other sylvari came to her rescue. She used their fear of the unknown as means of manipulation, she used caithe love and trust as means to do things she will never will do on her own, things that she regret about 20 years later.

In my opinion this is one of the best chapters in the living story, it feels like reading a chapter in a book telling me something about one of the main characters. until this chapter caithe was a bland and shallow character, this chapter gave her some depth, she is not perfect she made and probably still making mistakes, maybe the incident with the centaurs was the reason for joining Destiny’s Edge.

Truth be told (even though I have not gotten this far in the LS due to long hiatus but seen the videos) I would actually like to see more content like this but instead of you playing another character you can have an option to become a villain. I know me and a lot of other players would love to play on the side of Inquest, bandits, Aetherblades, Nightmare Court, Separatists, other darker side paths and even dragon minions or an effing Dragon Champion.

I would love to see more content like this added to the game heck even add dark factions to the living game world. Would give a lot of us more a reason to buy more character slots to have good and evil versions of our class roles.

I am divided on this. Part of me wants to point out the hypocrisy of being happy to wipe out thousands (literally) of other creatures in game whilst hating the feeling of doing it here, but the other part of me is reminded of the No Russian scene in whatever spunkgargleweewee it was in.

I didn’t so much dislike the forced killing as hate the fact that I was forced to do anything which goes against my very nature. Self defence is usually a justifiable reason to fight in the main game, but this was being forced to act as another would which felt wrong to me.

Just as much of the dialogue, I would not agree with saying as my character (e.g. hating Canach when I actually consider him a dark hero), I dislike being forced into another persona, especially when nefarious deeds are being carried out.

It also makes me wonder why and how Caithe gets to keep the Sylvari equivalent of a mansion in The Grove when she is such a hateful, evil character. I never liked her before, I despise her now.

I agree the scene was uncomfortable, but that was why I felt it was well done. I do wish the game had done a better job of setting up why Caithe was attracted to Faolain in the first place, because we never got to see any of the (I assume) positive things that drew them together, but I thought it was a pretty effective way of showing the relationship spiraling out of Caithe’s control.

Like many, though, I was displeased that my character was forced to give such a muted reply. Caithe might not have known how bad Faolain was, but by that point the PC definitely should, and the dialog not indicating that was bizarre.

I’ve been finding the lack of choice in dialog hugely immersion breaking. The fact that my player character has no choice but to rake Canach over the coals over and over even though he’s arguably no worse than half the characters we come across, or to justify to Braham why his mother abandoned him as if being a neglectful parent is a prerequisite of making a difference in the world, or this… every time it’s just a reminder that this is only a game and not a real world. In my mind I just ignore my PC’s dialog and imagine she said what I wanted her to say, but that kind of defeats the purpose a bit.

This problem could be fixed for me by just having more opportunities to choose my PC’s dialog myself. If the writers would give me a couple of options – even if they are unvoiced and were generic enough to yield the same response from the NPC – I’d feel more in control of my own character and thus more engaged.

(At the very least can the PC please stop bullying poor Canach? Seriously, he has more than atoned by this point.)

In this instance ,I had a weird experience which left me with mixed feelings :

When Faolain attacked the centaurs (and making it look like the centaurs attacked first), i was like: "-What is she doing ????!!
- NO !
- Bit*h! STOP!
i refuse to participate in this . this in bs . "

and i let Faolain die as i though and hoped this will change something …. but it didn’t .

I was kittened off at first .
I knew it was a memory but this is conflicting with the fact that i had the illusion that i can do something about it( thinking this is why it’s playable and not a video )

Seeing that i cannot go forward through instance, i had to kill the centaurs against my will . Shame on me !

See the difference between this and the No Russian scene in whatever spunkgargleweewee it was in, is that the spunkgargleweewee allowed you to skip it…

Tactu.4867:

In this instance ,I had a weird experience which left me with mixed feelings :

When Faolain attacked the centaurs (and making it look like the centaurs attacked first), i was like: "-What is she doing ????!!
- NO !
- Bit*h! STOP!
i refuse to participate in this . this in bs . "

and i let Faolain die as i though and hoped this will change something …. but it didn’t .

I was kittened off at first .
I knew it was a memory but this is conflicting with the fact that i had the illusion that i can do something about it( thinking this is why it’s playable and not a video )

Seeing that i cannot go forward through instance, i had to kill the centaurs against my will . Shame on me !

In my opinion this aspect make the episode so great, we are participating in a dream we are reliving caithe’s history and getting to slowly understand her. In this dream we don’t have any control, we can only get carried by the waves, we are yearning for control to let our knowledge change the outcome of history but we can only observe it.

This is a bad example, but think about PvP observer mode in GW1 you could leach on a character and see the game from their eyes but you can never change anything there, even if you see a huge mistake being done.

It’s just a video game dude, it’s not real.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

It’s just a video game dude, it’s not real.

That would explain why my character keeps respawning when it dies, instead of going into a box in the ground.

It all makes sense now.

I didn’t mind it. But like a lot of people my initial reaction was “I’m not helping Faolain dig herself out this hole” but since it would be in Caithe’s character to always defend Faolain till the very end so I had to do it.

But I think the dirty feeling you get from it is the point. That and I had to redo that instance like 20 times to get the dodgy achievement cause I get antsy at the end. (Wtb more checkpoints ANet. ) Don’t want to hear that conversation ever again. lol

Overall as bad as it seemed. It does make me very curious to what will be up next.

I would love to continue to being ’’the bad guys’’ again!
Finally something different, I just keep getting bored of being the ’goood guys’ all the time and I LOVE the idéa of the flashback(s) of the Firstborns, Asuras capture the Secondborns to experiment on them.
Really love how you can see Caithe and Faolain’s love-backstory.

Although I don’t really see why Caithe and Faolain (+ us players) are being the bad guys... for real.
Remember this was years ago, the flashback were about when the Firstborns were basically had their task to help newly awakened sylvari understand what they have seen within the Dream of Dreams, etc.
There was no alliance between the races over the Tyria.

And for all who is crying about killing those stupid man-horses...
They’ve always been enemies?? I don’t get WHY this is different??!
I enjoyed being at Faolain’s team, along with her Nightmare Court’s members, aka Shadow friends to kill these foul man-horses!!

Hopefully we’ll get to see more about Faolain and Nightmare Court.. ohh and Caithe of course..
And I almost forgot about Rytlock and Ascalonian army!

ZudetGambeous.9573:

If Caithe isn’t immediately executed for this series of crimes upon capture then I probably will not continue playing this story.

Don’t forget that Emissary Vorpp also has some crimes to answer for.

I would love a path to take bad actions on the game >_&gt and set caoson tyria.

Stormy Dragon.9210:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

If Caithe isn’t immediately executed for this series of crimes upon capture then I probably will not continue playing this story.

Don’t forget that Emissary Vorpp also has some crimes to answer for.

There should be consequences for her actions yes in light of all the good things she has done for Tyria I’d say execution is a bit too far.

Labjax.2465:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

It’s just a video game dude, it’s not real.

That would explain why my character keeps respawning when it dies, instead of going into a box in the ground.

It all makes sense now.

I guess I just never understood why people can make a huge deal about killing innocent people in video games. For example that massacre in CoD mw2 or that little girl that got blown up in mw3. That sparked an outrage and became a major controversy. And I’m like.. “seriously? You know it’s not real right?”

The weirdest thing is that killing innocents is somehow generally accepted if you don’t actually see it. Blowing up cities with millions of innocent people in an rts game and nobody bats an eye, see 1 child die and everybody looses their minds.

This episode had a strong affect on me.
I hate Caithe even more now.
Will Anet let me kill her as an obvious threat? Probably not.
Anet certainly isn’t making me like their favored Sylvari more.

Sytherek.7689:

Anet certainly isn’t making me like their favored Sylvari more.

Anet sure does everything in their power to make the Sylvari look bad.

Scarlet – mad psycho, mary sue and probably one of the most hated video game villains.
Aerin – A second mad psycho
Nightmare Court – Even though the other races have evil factions too,
this is the only one that’s evil just for the sake of being evil.
Faolain – Same as above, pure evil for the sake of being evil.
Caithe – Once seen as one of the few good sylvari main characters now being portrayed as a murderer of innocent centaurs.
Trahearne – Not evil or anything, but simply ill recieved by most of the community.

OP goes in the top 10 most kittening kittened things I’ve read on this forum.

Of all the problems with the living story, I cannot believe some SJW has the nerve to complain about this and detract attention from the real issues (that is, LS is crap).

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

I guess I just never understood why people can make a huge deal about killing innocent people in video games. For example that massacre in CoD mw2 or that little girl that got blown up in mw3. That sparked an outrage and became a major controversy. And I’m like.. “seriously? You know it’s not real right?”

The weirdest thing is that killing innocents is somehow generally accepted if you don’t actually see it. Blowing up cities with millions of innocent people in an rts game and nobody bats an eye, see 1 child die and everybody looses their minds.

It’s human nature man. Faceless millions vs. single innocent and all that.

Labjax.2465:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

I guess I just never understood why people can make a huge deal about killing innocent people in video games. For example that massacre in CoD mw2 or that little girl that got blown up in mw3. That sparked an outrage and became a major controversy. And I’m like.. “seriously? You know it’s not real right?”

The weirdest thing is that killing innocents is somehow generally accepted if you don’t actually see it. Blowing up cities with millions of innocent people in an rts game and nobody bats an eye, see 1 child die and everybody looses their minds.

It’s human nature man. Faceless millions vs. single innocent and all that.

Also people are REALLY protective about children and REALLY negative about adults.

Adults are people too!