Guild Wars 2

I am about to discuss the current PvE content in terms of story, all of this is simply my opinion but a believe I’m not the only one who shares it.

Scarlet
- To start off I will be talking about scarlet and her overall character design as well as her personality. Scarlet was a huge disappointment to me because I couldn’t ever take her seriously even if I wanted to. I am not saying that women are bad villains, that’s not the case. But she looks just like a normal sylvari, her voice is as annoying as a teenage girl that is WAY too full of herself. She has a typical very easy to predict psychology of an ’’insane’’ person. You kill her because you HATE her for existing, you don’t kill her because you feel heroic doing so.

Development
- That is not only her sole problem, … she has LITTLE to NO development. We have never seen her do something particularly cruel (closest was the short story release, but I had very little care). If it wasn’t for the story telling us, I’d say she’s incredibly stupid, and has failed to impress me even once.

Twisted Clockworks
- But, while Scarlet was a disappointment, her minions were surely not. As a fan of horror games I can tell you that I am very Impressed. The Twisted Nightmare was quite something to praise. When fighting one alone… the ways it just stares into you while shooting you down and the way it moves is disturbing as hell. And all of the clockwork monsters just felt horrific to closely look at (some of you that don’t agree, its probably because you couldn’t see them properly with the huge zergs roaming around). You know there is a problem when the Minions are a thousand times more threatening than the Villain itself.

What can be Improved
- I’ll start with development as I believe it is the most important. In most games I have played, the bad guy was always behind everything and it portrayed so very well, most of the time he didn’t mess around and did horrible and dark things during cut scenes, it can vary from murdering important characters to destroying towns and villages, to even… torturing your own character. MAKE these villains a BIG and BAD thing that we feel heroic in taking down.

- The shape and form of the villain is always important as well. Just imagine, instead of Scarlet, an : unrelenting, insane, old and tall, dying Norn, with half of his body made out of clockwork machinery that ravages what’s left of his true form, now imagine instead of that annoying teenage voice, a voice that sounds like a ravaged dying man with the sound waves modified by the machinery that is destroying him. I’m not saying this should be it, there are plenty of ways to make someone threatening and that’s just one of them.

That is all I have the time to say today, I hope this thread starts a wonderful discussion!

I think the huge problem with Scarlet is she does not present any real morale dilemma’s. The antagonist presented well is the one that we love to hate. Stereotypically kidnapping someone and tying them to a railroad tracks is a typical way of showing the threat of the “evildoer.” However the question after that (or even before) that should be why are they doing it. If the response is “because I am just evil,” then that is shallow presentation of character depth. If the kidnapping was over some personal vendetta to send message that there is no justice in the world then that’s fleshed out better. Especially if the antagonist can show the protagonist (in some twisted fashion) that it’s not entirely unreasonable on taking up these types of extreme actions.

Many antagonist do things out of personal gains, but they never believe what they are doing is wrong. As a matter of fact in their eye’s they are doing the world a favor in some way, and see the roles reverse where they are just martyr trying to succeed over their arch-nemesis. Scarlet believes this already, but she does not make the people that defy her see this logic. She could try to show the playable character that keeping to the status quo would cause more harm then good to Tyria. Tampering with a predetermined destiny would throw the world a bit off kilter, but it would be for the greater good in the end. For example scarlet could show you a vision of one of many possible horrific outcomes of the future if she did not exist. Considering she has probably stepped into alternate time lines before that probably would not be that far fetched (considering the infinite ball storyline).

The other thing is make her unpredictable. Everyone knew by the time queens gauntlet what exactly was happening from beginning to end. She was going after the queen and to terrorize divinity’s reach. What if you made it where she had another goal during this time, something that people would have not expected. I know she is gathering resources (assimilating other advanced technology) for some grand purpose and testing possible future obstacles to see their resolve. Perhaps she could leave clues to her ultimate agenda that people would have to think about (not too hidden or obvious). Maybe even set up Logan where he would be stripped of his duties and become an outcast.

If there anything I would like fix about Scarlet, its the fact that I want her dead or retcon out of the game as soon as possible. Her very existence is extremely toxic to the game story, the game writing, the game lore, and the game itself. I do not want to find out that they might (read WILL) add in Scarlet into the Thaumanova Reactor Fractal just because there are so many rift of reality in that area and apparently, she causes it.

From what I can tell she is not going anywhere for the next year or so. Look how long it took just to get to her disappointing reveal. Of course they could always add her to the pile of unanswered questions lore we already have (even from GW1). At this point it’s hard to see if they will start from scratch again. I doubt it would be a better antagonist then we are already dealing with. I still think the Karka were pointless and were only brought in because the designers thought they looked “cool.” Yeah, could have used that effort to bring back a past enemy from GW1. At least they got the Mad King right. He had an interesting dark and twisted history that had more character depth in game; versus any other living world characters to date.

@Sindex.9520
You make a very interesting point there, I totally agree with you. But I don’t believe her trying to make the player comprehend the morale of her actions is enough. I’m sure you can agree with me that a plain sylvari for a villain is just unoriginal. I believe scarlet can still be saved, but with lots of work on how the game represents her.

Its not that I dislike sylvari, both my mains are Sylvari (Faithless Spirit, and Ink Spirit)

The only good thing about Scarlet (to me) is her voice actress. We still don’t know what her real goal is besides messing with the world because she can, we still don’t know this “grand design” she’s trying to subvert, and despite trying to avoid the Dream/Nightmare dichotomy, she seems to be Nightmare by this point and either doesn’t realize that or doesn’t want to admit it. Just another “Hey let’s kill everyone while laughing maniacally” villain. We could’ve easily replaced her with Faolain.

I think the disapointment that people feel with Scarlet is related to the fact that we know very little about her, and cannot understnad how her grasp of reality (or lack thereof) is causing her ‘evil’ acts. We want a proper ‘why’ to dislike her. Personally, at this point in the story, I feel that’s uneccessary. Think of it in real life terms. Some crazy leader attacks and begins destroying another country. Many people feel the moral outrage, but none, immediately, band together to protect and rescue the ‘unkowns’…this is where we are in the story currently.

We do not know the reasons for these attacks, so many would be ambivalent about chasing these attacks down and rescuing the locals (if it wasn’t for the phat lewt). So currently many feel that the character of Scarlet is ‘shallow’ and ‘poorly developed’. I agree on both points, but that’s more because we shouldn’t know that much about her and we should be ambivalent, or at least confused.

Now where would I like to see this story go? A reveal that the character of Scarlet has decided that nothing is real, since she understands at some basic level that the world she lives in is completely predetermined, nothing one does matters, and that her goal is to do whatever she wants. Not being evil, per se, just amoral. Or even more perplexing, that with only her partial realization she is out to bring awakening (or death) to NPC’s. Of course if she knows a little more, then a lot of her actions trolling the players, makes some sense also (showing up as a boss numerous times during her attacks to run away and fight elsewhere).

Yes, this would be a twist of ‘The Matrix’, but it also fits with where we are in the story now.

Roybe.5896:

I think the disapointment that people feel with Scarlet is related to the fact that we know very little about her, and cannot understnad how her grasp of reality (or lack thereof) is causing her ‘evil’ acts. We want a proper ‘why’ to dislike her. Personally, at this point in the story, I feel that’s uneccessary. Think of it in real life terms. Some crazy leader attacks and begins destroying another country. Many people feel the moral outrage, but none, immediately, band together to protect and rescue the ‘unkowns’…this is where we are in the story currently.

I understand where you are coming from, and I agree that Scarlet is not lost and can be brought to us as an entertaining villain, but kitten aren’t we far from it.

The current picture of Scarlet I see, I find it absolutely disgusting that even money was spent for making it. I expected much more from Gw2 as it is the best MMO I’ve yet to play.

They can bring it back, but they’re going to need lots to make her interesting, If she’s so smart, I don’t want to predict her, and I want her actions to make absolute sense, not just the current explanation ‘’she is evil’’. If her motives are truly amazing, then the character can be brought back for me, but I have my doubts.