Guild Wars 2

So, I’m enjoying myself in this game. Even the personal stories aren’t that bad, and I like to hop in and see what my story has next in store for me.

But dear lord, some of the dialogue is horrendous. I feel like most of the dialogue was written by a rejected high fantasy novelist. The only thing it’s missing is the obligatory “old english” inflections.

The least painful dialogue comes from the Asura and Charr storylines, where the characters actually show a little bit of self-interest. But even they aren’t safe from all the Hero/Villain and Good/Evil talk.

There’s no sarcasm, there’s no sense of irony, there’s very little humor. The conversation text boxes you can read between cutscenes are more believable than the actual cutscenes themselves.

But I kinda feel like I’m the only person that feels this way. Am I?

Actually I disagree. I admit that some of the dialogue isn’t that great but overall I think it’s pretty good. Tybalt Leftpaw (an Order of Whispers character) had some of the best dialogue I’ve seen in an MMO. If you came into this game expecting Mass Effect quality dialogue you’re going to be disappointed. But if you take it for what it is it’s good.

Garrus.9803:

Actually I disagree. I admit that some of the dialogue isn’t that great but overall I think it’s pretty good. Tybalt Leftpaw (an Order of Whispers character) had some of the best dialogue I’ve seen in an MMO. If you came into this game expecting Mass Effect quality dialogue you’re going to be disappointed. But if you take it for what it is it’s good.

If by “Mass Effect quality dialogue,” you mean “dialogue that’s natural and believable,” then yeah, I did.

Nobody TALKS like this. That’s my point. It’s stilted and extremely campy and sounds like something you would expect from amateur hour at your local community theater.

For the record, it’s not the fault of the voice-actors, it’s the script that’s the problem.

BobbyStein.2315:

Greyfeld.7104:

Garrus.9803:

Actually I disagree. I admit that some of the dialogue isn’t that great but overall I think it’s pretty good. Tybalt Leftpaw (an Order of Whispers character) had some of the best dialogue I’ve seen in an MMO. If you came into this game expecting Mass Effect quality dialogue you’re going to be disappointed. But if you take it for what it is it’s good.

If by “Mass Effect quality dialogue,” you mean “dialogue that’s natural and believable,” then yeah, I did.

Nobody TALKS like this. That’s my point. It’s stilted and extremely campy and sounds like something you would expect from amateur hour at your local community theater.

For the record, it’s not the fault of the voice-actors, it’s the script that’s the problem.

In what content is the writing/VO problematic for you? The ambient world stuff? The personal story? The dungeons? They were all handled differently. The more specific examples you give, the better we can understand your feedback. I realize that this post is in the personal story section, but I want to know if your criticism is limited to that.

Thanks!

Sorry. Since this is the Personal Story forum, I just assumed that it was clear I was referring to the Personal Story.

Unfortunately, I feel like I’m not explaining myself very well. Let me see if I can find some specific examples to pick apart. I’ll post again when I have something more concrete.

BobbyStein.2315:

Greyfeld.7104:

Garrus.9803:

Actually I disagree. I admit that some of the dialogue isn’t that great but overall I think it’s pretty good. Tybalt Leftpaw (an Order of Whispers character) had some of the best dialogue I’ve seen in an MMO. If you came into this game expecting Mass Effect quality dialogue you’re going to be disappointed. But if you take it for what it is it’s good.

If by “Mass Effect quality dialogue,” you mean “dialogue that’s natural and believable,” then yeah, I did.

Nobody TALKS like this. That’s my point. It’s stilted and extremely campy and sounds like something you would expect from amateur hour at your local community theater.

For the record, it’s not the fault of the voice-actors, it’s the script that’s the problem.

In what content is the writing/VO problematic for you? The ambient world stuff? The personal story? The dungeons? They were all handled differently. The more specific examples you give, the better we can understand your feedback. I realize that this post is in the personal story section, but I want to know if your criticism is limited to that.

Thanks!

Personal story mission where you tell an asura that her husband was killed in action. She hardly sounds phased by the news. No grief in her voice whatsoever.

It does seem like the human player character never shows any emotion towards anything that happens to him other than cheerful optimism.

I believe the issue is with the genre of higher fantasy that you have the expectations of epicness.

The Norn are all stoic hunters, the humans all heroic, the Charr all powerful, Asura are all genius inventors, etc.

However by constantly applying this same trope to every set of dialogue, you create a feeling of staleness.

After one hundred Norns all talking about glory in the exact same tone of voice, you lose their individuality. The characters become defined by their races instead of colored by them. Yes, a Norn might have been raised in a society that glorifies hunting and power, but would -all- Norn have the same “For glory! They shall sing my songs in the halls of etc etc” sphiel?

Cause currently, they do.

I think ArenaNet has fallen back in to the old trope that everything has to be epic. No character must show weakness. It must all be amazing. They all rise to the occasion and they are all heroes. They never once falter.

Hell, we even miss the one crowning moment of possible moral ambiguity in the series, the defection of Logan.

It’s far too black and white and far too unbelievable. It works in a limited sense, but unfortunately, it reduces the believability of the character as a multi-faceted individual if all of them share it.

So I think a bit more work needs to be done to flesh out your side characters. We don’t want all of them to be simpering cowards, but it’s not bad to hate a NPC. We don’t have to like them all. It’s more believable if there are some we like and some we find insufferable. It also adds to the story immensely if they are redeemed or not redeemed, versus us going in knowing that they are:

A) Either going to be heroes and succeed
B) Going to be Heroes and die trying.

I’ll be completely honest, I really didn’t buy GW2 for the story telling. I love the game mind you, but the NPCs could use some serious work.

EndlessDreamer.6780:

I believe the issue is with the genre of higher fantasy that you have the expectations of epicness.

The Norn are all stoic hunters, the humans all heroic, the Charr all powerful, Asura are all genius inventors, etc.

However by constantly applying this same trope to every set of dialogue, you create a feeling of staleness.

After one hundred Norns all talking about glory in the exact same tone of voice, you lose their individuality. The characters become defined by their races instead of colored by them. Yes, a Norn might have been raised in a society that glorifies hunting and power, but would -all- Norn have the same “For glory! They shall sing my songs in the halls of etc etc” sphiel?

Cause currently, they do.

I think ArenaNet has fallen back in to the old trope that everything has to be epic. No character must show weakness. It must all be amazing. They all rise to the occasion and they are all heroes. They never once falter.

Hell, we even miss the one crowning moment of possible moral ambiguity in the series, the defection of Logan.

It’s far too black and white and far too unbelievable. It works in a limited sense, but unfortunately, it reduces the believability of the character as a multi-faceted individual if all of them share it.

So I think a bit more work needs to be done to flesh out your side characters. We don’t want all of them to be simpering cowards, but it’s not bad to hate a NPC. We don’t have to like them all. It’s more believable if there are some we like and some we find insufferable. It also adds to the story immensely if they are redeemed or not redeemed, versus us going in knowing that they are:

A) Either going to be heroes and succeed
B) Going to be Heroes and die trying.

I’ll be completely honest, I really didn’t buy GW2 for the story telling. I love the game mind you, but the NPCs could use some serious work.

Great post. You said it better than I was able to.

I’d also like to point out that a lack of dialogue options within cutscenes rips players concerned with roleplaying right out of the immersion. There are countless times when I’ve wanted my character to say something in reaction to something an NPC said, and my character says the exact opposite. It just reminds me that it’s not really “my” character, it’s the character that Anet designed for me.

So far I have experience only with the Norn personal story. Early on I thought “oh, this is so cheesy” and then it hit me…the opening intro is cheesy already, so why am I surprised? While in most Bioware games I had issues with bad writing, terrible dialogue options and annoying good/evil restrictions because story is the focus of the game, here I’m not that extremely invested and I don’t take it overly seriously. It’s like watching a decent B movie, you enjoy it, the good and the bad (all hail Solomon Kane!) On top of that I’m a fan of Claudia Christian so I’ve enjoyed it.

A good story requires a great deal of immersion, perfectly framed gameplay without annoying constrictions and a grey, non-numerical system of morals/allegiance. My favourite examples would be the Witcher, Mafia or The chronicles of Ridkitten. This is something not very compatible with MMOs and that’s why I look for singleplayer games with a good story while MMOs draw me with polished sandbox elements and RP is the best found in text based games (or in Neverwinter Nights multiplayer). So all in all, I’m ok with the way it worked out. I love bits here and there, don’t hate the rest.

I’ve been wondering what has been bugging me in the dialogue. I think you nailed it.
Well, that and hearing my own character talk is an immersion breaker for me – I wish there was an option to verbose my own characters voice.

Ok, examples. This is the first one I managed to pull up. I recall thinking how horrendous the Noble human story was when I first tried it. Mostly because of Lord Faren. At one point, I recall thinking to myself, “Do I REALLY have to go save this guy? Can’t I just let the bandits have him?”

Hero: A party, Faren? For me? Or is this just an excuse to get your friends together and see what’s in my wine cupboard?

Lord Faren: Nonsense! Heroes are always popular. These nice people simply insisted on congratulating you and celebrating your brave victory.

Hero: And you insisted on breaking out my finest food and drink for the occasion.

Lord Faren: You deserve no less. Still, I can’t take all the credit. Your household staff was most helpful, even eager, to facilitate the process.

I wish my servants loved me half as much. But then, I am lovable in other ways. Ha ha.

Hero: And the less said about that, the better. Now wipe off that smirk, and let’s go enjoy my best roast duck and brandy.

In this scene, Lord Faren proves to be a shameless, finger-dipping, self-implied “lady’s man.” Not only is he all of these things, but his manner of speaking make him sound like a high-bred twit with more hot air than brains. And the Hero’s response? “Oh, that rascal!!”

Lord Faren is a caricature, not a character. His manner is out of touch with reality, and the Hero just goes along with it. And we, as the viewers, are dragged along with it, instead of getting to laugh in his face. I don’t know a person alive who can deliver those lines with a straight face.

I take back what I said earlier. The voice acting IS part of the problem. I could imagine some of those lines being delivered half-believably by the right person.

Unfortunately, the dialogue just comes out campy and overdone. I thought it was just a joke between friends the first time I heard Lord Faren speak, until I realized that my character was taking him 100% seriously.

I must say, my beta experience with the Norn personal story and general player character dialog was so off putting that i’ve not been able to bring myself to touch Norn story since release. I struggled to even justify making a Norn after that. It is by far the most cringe worthy and unpleasent dialog experience. Myself and my guildie looked forward to playing Norn prior to the beta experience. In fact her main was going to be a Norn, and the backstory of the Norn was how I got her interested in the game.

Beta experience with hearing my own character talk and pretty much wincing and wishing she was mute because the story would be far more enjoyable if she had absolutely no dialog though? Yeah.. left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. My friend.. she has yet to even make a Norn now. We were just that disappointed with the dialog for them.

While I do agree that there are way too many 2D characters that fall on basic cookie cutter personalities with no depth or individuality for the other races, for me the Norn player character dialog was just far, far worse than anything else.

Bobby, you told us during Beta to get further into the storyline and get back to you on how we felt about the writing after that during release. I can tell you that I personally love the Charr story now that i’ve had time to look further into it. I also like the Asura and Sylvari stories so far.

But when dialog can actually put you off of even playing the race because you know you’ll have to listen and see it and you find yourself thinking ‘Hmm, there is a skip button. Game would be more enjoyable if I just hit the skip button every time my Norn opens her mouth’. That.. is not really something that time is going to improve. First impression killed the Norns for me, personally.

The NPC Norns actually say things that I find amusing all the time, but the player character dialog for a Norn is duller than dishwater and really never seems to represent their spirit in any way but a super cornball slant.

The personal story so far, feels vastly different for each race. But if we’re talking about storywriting and emotional quality to the words as they are spoken, I think the no. 1 place you’ve got a bit of a problem is for humans. I personally enjoy the Sylvari and Asuran dialogue much better, and the Sylvari story.

It’s not the actor’s fault, and I cannot bash them, as I know they are qualified and talented individuals who have been doing V/O’s for years. A guildie remarked to me that he found the Eye of the North dialogue to be the best of all Guild Wars, and to some degree that’s kind of true. WiK and HoTN is also well written (it’s a shame there’s no dialogue on this either). The characters in EoTN have good inflections of emotion in their voice. When I pass by characters in GW2 in towns ect, I find they often have more emotion to be found in their voices than anything found in the actual story.

But if you want me to be completely honest, there’s an additional reason why people may have a hard time ‘swallowing’ the dialogue. Human’s are very visual when it comes to story telling. Books need to be very descriptive and engage the imagination to fill in the blanks and emotional states of the character’s voices. When read aloud (book on tape or to someone in the room) the person has to take extra care in getting the points across or else it falls flat. In all of the previous games, we see cutscenes that describes what’s going on for us, and in some roundabout way helps convey what the actors are saying. Perhaps, even more, the actors can get a better grasp on what’s going on around their character and their specific motivations and be able to translate that to us. In this game, we don’t get that. We get two characters on a flat plain, from the side, with occassional stiff arm movements. There’s words and speaking on the screen, but there’s nothing to pull us in and make it believable. It’s empty. No matter how you try and reword it (and you could definately try and do that) there will not be anything visually stimulating — beyond the opening and ending cutscenes.

Everytime Petra says ‘goons’ I cringe inside. Who says that really?

I’m happy that you had Steve Blum and Crispin Freeman and Liam O’Brien. It’s a shame they were not used in the main stories more… but even they cannot work miracles.

Keep in mind that my little diatribe wasn’t saying

“Oh my god, GW2’s story sucks!”

I love the meta-plot. Nor was it saying that I didn’t enjoy the personal story. I did watch it and I found it interesting.

It just could have been a lot better. And I feel like, with feedback, they can work on it in upcoming expansions eventually.

It’s definitely not a deal breaker for me. Just something I kinda chuckled at.

For the record, I don’t have a problem with the visuals on the cutscenes (I’ve played plenty of low-budget RPGs that went the “cardboard cutout” route), but admittedly, I think I’d rather just watch the characters stand around in the real world and chat, rather than cut to a separate screen to do it.

That all said, I’m sure that a lack of movement and facial expression has something to do with the dialogue problems, but I’m not sure exactly how much. The dialogue itself is pretty cringe-worthy, before taking visuals into account.

EndlessDreamer.6780:

Keep in mind that my little diatribe wasn’t saying

“Oh my god, GW2’s story sucks!”

I love the meta-plot. Nor was it saying that I didn’t enjoy the personal story. I did watch it and I found it interesting.

It just could have been a lot better. And I feel like, with feedback, they can work on it in upcoming expansions eventually.

It’s definitely not a deal breaker for me. Just something I kinda chuckled at.

I’d also like to point out that if I had a dime for each time somebody said the word “Hero,” or “Champion,” or any variation thereof, I’d have to give Anet a kickback on the royalties.

Oh god yes, everything said in this thread – yes.
I’m sorry but the personal story writing feels so overly grandiose that the characters become cardboard cutouts, one-dimensional and cartoonish.

a ‘valiant hero’ is just that, a valiant hero, he has no personality and no defining characteristics other than being that same valiant hero, is just one example.

While it seems like a lot of fantasy games nowadays overdo the “serious and dark” narrative, i’d like some of that in GW, less cartoonish good vs evil, and more grey area, more seriousness and moral ambiguity.

As a sidenote, a relatable anti-hero would also be good.

serpentu.4591:

Oh god yes, everything said in this thread – yes.
I’m sorry but the personal story writing feels so overly grandiose that the characters become cardboard cutouts, one-dimensional and cartoonish.

a ‘valiant hero’ is just that, a valiant hero, he has no personality and no defining characteristics other than being that same valiant hero, is just one example.

In fact *spoiler*

hide spoiler

the only character that actually made me smile is the one who really, really loves apples.
when he started to identify with the quaggin i just laughed and finally saw a character
rather than a mindless one-dimensional npc, and then he went ahead and died.
i understand the effect which was intended, the player was supposed to get angry, vengeful, motivated to push ahead and go through the story but the effect was actually quite opposite.

While it seems like a lot of fantasy games nowadays overdo the “serious and dark” narrative, i’d like some of that in GW, less cartoonish good vs evil, and more grey area, more seriousness and moral ambiguity.

As a sidenote, a relatable anti-hero would also be good.

The only character I’ve really connected with like that, thusfar, is Magister Sieran. Her tendency toward quirky curiosity, desire to devour knowledge, and propensity for bucking off the rules to do just that, made me love the hell out of her. Not to mention the fact that she’s the proof that Sylvari blondes actually exist.

Love her.

The best voice actor in the game (so far that I’ve heard) is whoever did Tybalt Leftpaw. Seriously, I loved him! Not just because of his dialogue but because the actor really sold the character.

Pietoro.2014:

The best voice actor in the game (so far that I’ve heard) is whoever did Tybalt Leftpaw. Seriously, I loved him! Not just because of his dialogue but because the actor really sold the character.

This game needs more apples.

serpentu.4591:

Pietoro.2014:

The best voice actor in the game (so far that I’ve heard) is whoever did Tybalt Leftpaw. Seriously, I loved him! Not just because of his dialogue but because the actor really sold the character.

This game needs more apples.

We need a Tybalt mini, too.

Sieran was great, as was Zojja during the opening acts of the Asura story. I don’t think I can remember anyone else I cared about, although the Sylvari Necromancer whose name currently escapes me(Traherne?) is now growing on me as well.

I agree with the Tybalt supporters. After completing the main story, he has been the only character in the game so far to be portrayed and acted well. The Charr stories and interactions aren’t as bad as the others, but it’s still very stale.

Not entirely related to the dialogue, but one thing seriously bugged me in the personal story regarding Tybalt:

I really love the lore and meta-story in this game. It’s excellent. But the characters are so empty, the dialogue so cheesy and bland, and the VO so badly done, it makes me not want to bother going through it with other characters. And don’t even get me started on Trahearne..

I think many of us can agree that Tybalt is one of the most well written characters in this game.

Not overly serious, but serious when he must be so. Natural, spontaneous dialogue with a nice attention to detail (from the writers). No perfect personality, with a healthy amount of strong points and weak points. And a proper character arch that takes them all into account. When everything’s over, I felt like he was my buddy, something that no other character made me feel yet.

My main problem with most of the characters in this game is that, although there’s a lot of effort by the writers to follow certain archetypes and to appeal to several audiences, they are not given by the writers the proper attention to further flesh them out of those templates.

Going back to Tybalt Leftpaw, he is everything the starting human NPC characters wanted to be, at once, and even more. The light, humorous dialogue of Lord Farren, humble and spontaneous like commoner Petra, with weaknesses and problematic pasts like Quinn. More attention to detail than all of them, and most of all, truly a buddy, like all of them tried to be but failed at, because the other three did not have enough personal interaction with the player’s avatar, nor even enough depth to stretch that interaction without making it repetitive, and were discarded by the plot the moment they were not needed.

When I had that key option about Quinn, I kinda couldn’t care at all. But how I would love to have such a choice for my charr buddy!

DiogoSilva.7089:

More attention to detail than all of them, and most of all, truly a buddy, like all of them tried to be but failed at, because the other three did not have enough personal interaction with the player’s avatar, nor even enough depth to stretch that interaction without making it repetitive, and were discarded by the plot the moment they were not needed.

When I had that key option about Quinn, I kinda couldn’t care at all. But how I would love to have such a choice for my charr buddy!

That is a repeated problem with most of the side characters. They all feel like rushed through afterthoughts just shoved in there as filler. There’s no time allocated to develop any of them, so most of the characters scaresly even exist, and no one cares when they die.

ZetaStriker.9142:

Sieran was great, as was Zojja during the opening acts of the Asura story.

I liked Sieran as well. She wasn’t presented to us as ‘here is the great heroine’ but as someone who was flawed – but flawed in an entertaining way.

I liked a lot of the voice acting though some came of kind of wooden (Ill try to come up with examples in the future).

One thing I would say though is that I feel that sometimes the game is too subtle with information of NPCs.

For example Lord Faren:

When I first played him he struck me as just some flop if perhaps a brave one. I kind of fit since he was a noble and a playboy. There was writen dialog you can get if you talk to Countess Anise at the party chapter that suggests he was in the ministry at some point and was kicked out though she wont tell you why.

This changed my opinion of Faren. It made me feel he might have a history. His flopishness started to feel more like a front he hides behind, that he actually is a very closed man. I might have been completely wrong of course but it did both humanise him and more importantly give him depth.

Something as small as that made him suddenly a much more interesting character but you could easily miss a detail like that. A small event that showed a crack in his fasade even if it wasnt expanded on immediately would have added an extra layer to that character and given a hook to allow him to play a role in content later on.

Similarly there is some dialog with Riot Alice which explains her political view and shows a smart young woman struggling to except the reasoning for the death of her father (particularly since she could be right) rather than just some crazy anarchist.

Quinn could also have used this. A little story dialog between Logan and the PC with Logan asking the PC why he values Quinn so much could have allowed for a short but detailed hook into how Quinn was so close.

A story that showed Quinn’s good qualities.

For the first two those details about their lives were too hidden and should have been easier to find out. As for Quinn, who you need to make a major choice over, he really desperately needed that fleshing out earlier.

Compared to them many of the characters that come later like Forgal were much better though you spend alot more time with some of these.

I also would have really liked to see some of these earlier characters turn up again later on at some point if only in a small passing role.

Main character VO work is a bit stilted. I’m thinking of the female Charr in particular. Other characters are a bit more lively and vibrant.

magister sieran totally disagree with this topic

For the most part, I’m really enjoying the Norn personally story. I love the VO, I get that some people don’t. I’ve had some fantastic dialogue – such as when she had to beat up a Son of Svarnir and take his helmet, and then suggested it would make a great chamber pot. Perfection.
My issue with the story is a small one – disconnection. I’ve moved on to the “Sound of Psi-Lance” step (fantastic name, laughed out loud), but the step itself upset me.
I am a member of the Durmand Priory. I am a Norn. I _recovered_ that sonic weapon, yet my Norn woman reacts with complete surprise to its existence. NPC's forget about her.
My room mate is a Sylvari, and we’ve been helping each other with our personal stories. It just seems like, once we’re in the our Orders and stepping up the campaign against the dragons, that our racial identification is erased. He gets exactly the same dialogue with Trahearne and the Pale Tree as I do, and that isn’t right. I really loved immersing myself in my racial identity, as did my room mate. To be given the same dialogue, with no nod as too where we’ve come from, really ruined the immersion for me.
Tybbles (as I call him) and Sieran are the most memorable characters I have ever seen in an MMO though, I’ll gladly agree there! They’re amazing <3

I wanted to RP as an non-intellectual oddball kind of Asura character but it seems like our characters personalities seem kind of pre-chosen for us. =( I feel a twinge of disappointment whenever my little girl starts bragging about her amazing genius or superior intellect. I know that’s the overall character of the race, but I dislike being a cookie cutter stereotype… thats my 2 cents..

I’m going to have to echo the sentiments here. I enjoy the fact there’s actual choice in personal stories which is refreshing and welcome, but the stories are let down by characters that are one dimensional and almost always defined by their racial stereotypes. I think the Norn are the worst offender. The example of Lord Faren coming off as a characiture was a good one. The game seems almost afraid to show too much personality and plot, although I’m sure that wasn’t the intention. The VO is also a strange mixed bag which yanks you out of immersion.

Greyfeld.7104:

Garrus.9803:

Actually I disagree. I admit that some of the dialogue isn’t that great but overall I think it’s pretty good. Tybalt Leftpaw (an Order of Whispers character) had some of the best dialogue I’ve seen in an MMO. If you came into this game expecting Mass Effect quality dialogue you’re going to be disappointed. But if you take it for what it is it’s good.

If by “Mass Effect quality dialogue,” you mean “dialogue that’s natural and believable,” then yeah, I did.

Nobody TALKS like this. That’s my point. It’s stilted and extremely campy and sounds like something you would expect from amateur hour at your local community theater.

For the record, it’s not the fault of the voice-actors, it’s the script that’s the problem.

Me and my group of friends all feel this way. We’re always laughing and going “Who talks like this!?” The only way I was able to describe it was that the dialogue all sounds like it was recorded at different times, in different rooms, and pieced together later after the fact. A lot of it feels disconnected and disjointed, like there’s no flow or transitions, and it definitely doesn’t feel real or realistic. Outstanding, positively great voice actors with terrible lines and writing. I mean I play a Norn female… Imagine the awful I have to put up with in my storyline.

It’s really sad because the rest of the game is great, but the dialogue and script are just poorly written. I feel bad saying it because I’m sure they put a lot of work in their writing and enjoyed writing a lot but it’s very, very B-movie quality. I skip through most of it or when I’m with friends we make our own on-the-fly dubs in funny voices.

For the record, folks, I wasn’t even expecting voice acting until I finally dove into the story and saw there was voice acting. I was like “WOW, COOL!” But then it devolved into jokes and high-pitched dubs of the voice overs by me and my crew.

People actually like Magister Sieran? To me she’s the most flat character ever. Almost all of her dialogues can be summarized with “OMG it’s an adventure!” even til the very end. Usually it’s nice to have an excitable character in the library, but is there anything else at all that she cares about? People who are excitable usually gets inspired by things and people around them, and they like to talk about themselves as well, but that doesn’t happen with Sieran. She only has one objective.

Trahearne’s voice acting is IMO incorrect as well. From the way the story is written and the way other characters spoke of him Trahearne is supposed to be a charismatic person but he doesn’t know about it. So why does he talk in that emotionless monotone voice? One of the features of charismatic people are the way they let emotion out through their voice and mannerisms to infect others with the same emotions they’re feeling. If Trahearne talks like that the whole time I can’t believe everyone would speak so highly of him at all, they’d feel miserable around him. It’ not the case that he’s controlling his tone either since he doesn’t know he is capable of this. From the very beginning he should have had the heroic, bold voice of the player hero, even though his interest is solitary and intellectual. I think part of why people feel bad that he stole the limelight for some part of the story is that it feels out of place. Nobody actually wants to be led by this weirdo.

And then there is the issue of sideline characters that only appear once and then disappear. There’re tonnes of them, and there are also tonnes of characters in the world that are just there as background. This is not immersive. The sideline characters (at least the ones that doesn’t die right away) should take the spot of some of the generic background cardboard cutouts in cities or out in the field. Give them some background, maybe even a job. Heck if that’s too much work just queue them in the cycle of roamers in the cities. As it is you probably only need 1 “before” and 1 “after” dialogue and that’s it. That way they will actually exist as characters, and not just a plot device.

I only did the charr story. There were some cringe-worthy moments, but it was ok most of the time.

To ANet, (since you’re keeping track of this thread), count me in with what they’ve said. In fact, I notice it at the very start of the game, just the first few dialogues in both Sylvari, Human, and Norn.

Nothing there. Just plain, “reading the script” tone as well as general/common ‘speeches’ if you will. As one of the poster said, “no speaks like that”. In other words, it is not natural. Instead of it pulling us further in immersion, it actually pushes us out.

When I noticed this lack of – I don’t know what to call it, emotions? realism in conversion? – right at the beginning of the game (after character creation – you know the tutorial area and right after the tutorial), I immediately set my mind to ignore the script essence and the voice acting, so as not to disappoint myself.

That’s how it is currently. Being a bookworm and bibliophile, it’s something that I noticed immediately, and is going to be part of my GW2 review when I get the time to finish and post it on my blog. But since this thread is here, might as well share it first here.

Well, knowing ANet, there will be improvements. So I’m hopeful there.

Oh, repeat the Tybalt voice acting and script, and improve it further. That should do it. Because in all honesty, so far, Tybalt is the best NPC and cutscenes and script and voice acting I’ve seen in GW2.

^_^

And Trahearne! He’s the most “dead” NPC I’ve ever seen. Even more dead than the undead. He doesn’t excite me when his dialogue obviously tells me I should be riled up “RAISE YOUR BANNERS! FIGHT FOR YOUR FREEDOM!!” type.

:)

I think a major point with the writing in general is that a vast majority of the characters (including the player character) are very much flawless, and the vast majority of them experience little to zero personal growth. Characters like Traherne or Logan have a very shallow insecurity that is quickly forgotten by the storyline in the space of a single mission, and the cast of the personal story in the last quarter too quickly introduces and then steps away from so many characters that you never end up spending enough time with them for them to be memorable.

Don’t get me wrong, the sort of seven samurai feel of the general plot is a good one, but while the overall “epicness” of what’s going on in the world remains intact, we lose the connection and empathy we have for a lot of characters because we don’t get to spend a great deal of time with anyone but Traherne, and Traherne is sort of shoehorned in to a “chosen one” role, never questions it, never doubts himself meaningfully, and never does a whole lot to make us care about him. He’s just a cog in the plot that moves everything forward

Compare this with the heroes in Nightfall, or Even Rurik in Prophecies or the major cast of Eye of The North. All of the above had interesting quirks, insecurities, or flaws that very much defined both who they were and served as a springboard for development of their character. They were different than the majority of the people around them as people, not because they were chosen by some all powerful plot device. The major cast in GW2 with the exception of your order mentor (and the mentors are all quite well done!) just sort of shows up with no fanfare and then is removed from the plot rapidly, leaving us no time to become attached to them.

Meanwhile some of the most interesting characters are introduced to us early on as part of our racial story, and then mysteriously dissappear never to be seen again with no explanation.

Couple that with the fact that everything in the story is just plodding along a predictable path due to an insane amount of heavy-handed foreshadowing and lack of any unexpected plot twists (save one, again, that deals with the order mentor, and is well handled!) and you’ve got a personal story that feels a lot more like just the story of the world you could easily pick up from doing events and walking around.

You’ve built a unique game that does a phenomenal job of characterizing the story of the world at large through dynamic events and ambient conversation, but the personal story seems so adamant about rehashing that same story that it doesn’t feel very personal at all.

That isn’t to say the missions aren’t well designed (though a penalty for failure would be nice.) but the lot behind them in the last half seems like a lot of filler material while simultaneously leaving a lot of unresolved plot threads from the first half of the story. I would have been quite happy to have spent more time with the characters from my home town or my order than to have been promoted to “commander” like every other person in the game.

In future releases, how about making us less important to the world and leaving those plot threads for the dungeon story, and letting our personal story reflect more of our personal lives, contacts, and friends?

My main problem (aside from Trahearne who hijacks the story and doesn’t let go whilst simultaneously being one of the dullest characters I’ve had the privilege to experience), is as a human warrior, the usually exceptional Nolan North produces an incredibly wooden, phoned-in performance. Compared to his work on the sublime Spec Ops, Alpha Protocol and of course Uncharted, North here sounds entirely uninterested and his emotion or rather complete lack thereof serves to so disconnect me from the actions I have chosen that he creates a massive schism between me and my character.

On top of that, I’m not sure if it’s because of budgetary constraints or laziness on ArenaNet’s behalf, but I’m incredibly disappointed at the paltry selection of voice actors providing voices.
For the same actor to provide the voices for all males of a particular race and similarly for a single female actor to provide all the voices for all females of a particular race results in horrifically generic characters. A much better choice that would have provided much needed variety would have been to use individual voice actors for class, gender and race as opposed to just the latter two.
This unfortunately stretches into the main game itself, with the bark of “This rose has thorns. Here they are!” in particular already starting to grate.

But aside from that, the fact the Tybalt dies yet Trahearne lives is a massive travesty.
As many others have noted, Tybalt was one of the only characters voiced with some passion and who was convincing in every scene he appeared in.

Ah, now that I think about it, it’s also massively off-putting that a lot of the Sylvari are quite obviously voiced by Americans doing incredibly bad English accents. There are millions of us over here in the UK, surely it would have been better to hire some actual English talent rather than hire a bunch of poor and almost insultingly bad impersonators?

I’m hoping that over time, as was the case with the first Guild Wars, the voice acting is improved, and indeed in some cases reworked, because as it stands the story comes across as hammy and embarrassing mainly due to poor performances.

I’m bothered by my character’s dialogue after i joined a faction. It just didn’t sound like I was a charr anymore, i’ve heard people say we get the same exact dialogue so i hope this changes in the future.

Another thing I was hoping is that my character’s dialogue would be the same as his/her personality, although i haven’t experimented on it. I feel as if my charr has lost its ferocity after the Blood Legion storyline.

Greyfeld.7104:

I take back what I said earlier. The voice acting IS part of the problem. I could imagine some of those lines being delivered half-believably by the right person.

Even some of the voices done by actors I KNOW can put out an incredible performance have occasionally stilted/awkwardly performed dialogue (like Nolan North as the male human player), so I think the issue may be with the direction, or possibly further than that, the director may not have been given enough information to make the context clear to the actors.

Your comment about Lord Faren is a perfect example of that. I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be a joke between friends, but for some reason either no one made that clear to the director, or the director failed to make that clear to Nolan North.

My experience of the dialogue and personal story has been really up and down. I was beyond thrilled to find my female sylvari had a british voice (I think the voice actress is canadian, but I was convinced she was British) Since I liked her voice I liked my character a lot more. The complete opposite can be said about my female human character. I absolutely can’t stand her, she doesn’t sound how I want her to sound so I instantly dislike my character and I don’t feel as attatched to her.

The way cutscene dialogue is done, it still feels like it has that ‘work in progress’ sticker on it that it did in the Betas. The way the ppicture floods the screen and the characters appear, it’s like sitting down in a theatre, but watching the rehersals not the final show. Possibly this is part of the problem.

I have found the speech bubble dialogue to be so much better, it always comes out more believable somehow, I especially liked the children you bump into before you meet with Destiny’s Edge. Their exchange actually told me considerably more about the characters than I got from watching the characters themselves conversing. It also felt a bit more real and there were no pauses between the exchanges.
In missions I prefer the speech bubble dialogue because you are actually running through a tunnel when someone says “it’s caving in… run!” sort of thing. Watching meetings between characters also feels more lively because you can see what’s going on, you can walk around the space, you can see who is talking to who and the surroundings give context to what is being said.
The way it is done currently feels like we’ve been taken out of context, and we have nothing else to concetrate on except all the things people have picked up on here.

An example for where speech bubble conversation would be better:
In the charr tutorial area, after you’ve killed a few ghosts you come across an obviously important char who’s injured. When you go to a cutscene, and he’s kind of hunched over it looks unbelievably fake. He talks like he’s fine, and the fact that he is standing for the sake of the cutscene ruins the illusion that there’s anything wrong.
It would work better with speech bubbles, with him actually lying on the floor, and your charr crouching to speak to him.

The camera work with vistas is really well done, so possibly you could have a speech bubble dialogue set up, with camera movement. Sometimes the movement of the camera can completely change how a scene feels.

On NPCs, I actually really like Trehearne. I get a lot from him, he seems old and wise, but can’t be because he’s no older than 25. He seems unsure of the role he’s ended up playing. And he’s aware of the amount of people that have put their trust in him, something that weighs him down. The lack of emotions others picked up on, I took to mean cold determination.

With Magister Seiren.. literally what the hell. That was my reaction to her the whole way through. When my character first met her I felt I couldn’t possibly have a mentor so reckless, excitable and uncaring for anyone else. I had no respect at all for her, especially as she then seemed not to take anything seriously. I then felt the claw island mission seemed entirely out of character for her, and I felt quite glad that the story actually went that way. I felt my character would do much better without her.
In this instance, I think something should have happened to make Seiren suddenly take things seriously, she should have had an emotional reaction to the destruction at Lions Arch. Something should have sobered her up a bit.

Apologies if my psot is a bit jumbled. I hope I got my points across.

Dear Annette,
One suggestion for next chapter/extension/story/etc…
You could give us 3 answers to choose from so it would it feel more like “our” story rather than the story you design for us.
Something along the 3 choices we have when talking to Npc Charm/Dignity/Fear.

Of course I understand it woukd mean 3x more line to write, 3x more voice time to pay for.
Anyway, that’s my 2 cents

Greyfeld.7104:

I take back what I said earlier. The voice acting IS part of the problem. I could imagine some of those lines being delivered half-believably by the right person.

Part of the problem with the voice acting is the way it’s done in MMO’s. The actors don’t get a constent story to read through, where they know how the character progresses and feels. They read several possible scenes and do to time limitation the context gets lost.

To add to the OP— I think the problem is that there are NO dynamic reads from the Hero. For my Norn that decided to destroy his family heirloom, it was the only part that REALLY stuck out to me. This was a great part to show the hero torn with the decision he had to make, but he basically delivered his lines with a shoulder shrug. (I didn’t want him to cry, but some hesitation in his voice and rationalization would have sold it)

In addition Eir has got a little annoying (like Drizzt did in later Salvatore books where he whines about everything being “his fault”). She lacks emotions and always talks about her time being over… yet she always shows up?? She needs some dialogue revisions regarding this, and an actual character development part as to why she’s changing. Not like it’s done now— again, it’s like she just decided to exercise more, “You’ve changed my mind, Slayer”. meh

My only problem with the story is that I made an old man, and he’s referred to as young. IMO, there should be a CC option which allows you to describe your character as “about to become of age,” “a veteran who never obtained glory,” or something somewhere in the middle of that. Otherwise, the story is fun, if not reminiscent of an 80s fantasy flick.

First, I didn’t really expect much from GW2 in terms of voice acting or story line. It was pretty obvious to me that ANet didn’t have the resources to pull this off. And as SWTOR proved, you can have a great storyline and top notch voice acting and still have a crappy game. BUT if we are critiquing the personal story aspects…

In general the voice acting is pretty bad and the writing is amateurish. There are a few exceptions. Tybalt’s voice acting is pretty good. Caithe is a bright spot in both voice acting and characterization. More on this under ‘Spolier’.

— Spoilers —

During the undead attack on Lion’s Arch, when you are at the fort and the female lieutenant is reporting on the total destruction of the fort and on the death of her squad… she seemed bored. This was the worst voice acting I have seen in a game pretty much ever. It came off like “Sir, everyone died, total destruction, the end of times as we know it… wait, did I turn off the lamp before I left his morning? Shessshh, I hate it when I forget to turn off the lamp, oil so expensive right now… What is up with that?”

The pacing is terrible. As an example, in Tybalt’s case, in about 5 dialogs totaling maybe two paragraphs of text he moves from a complete unknown to being your best friend of all time. I felt like my character wanted to look him in the face and say “Dude, I don’t know you that well…”

And there are lots of really goofy spots in the story line.

When Tybalt sacrifices himself… seriously, ONE PERSON is going to do anything to delay an entire army of undead, numerous undead ships full of more undead, and a dragon? Unless he is the most powerful being on this planet he would be eaten in 1 second and do nothing to aid in your escape. This plot line was not well thought out.

And Eir comes off as the dumbest person on the planet. Let me make two now arch enemies separated by betrayal and death into friends and make everything ‘happy happy’ by getting them matching swords. If she was really this stupid I can see why Destiny’s Edge failed to begin with. Maybe if the story tried to explain why getting matching swords would have any kind of real impact, it wouldn’t come off as so bad. For as well as the story explains it, she might as well have bought them matching t-shirts and called it a day.

And this is nit picking, but it bugs me… Why is Malyk human? I get that the Sylvari are human because the Tree absorbed the remnants of Rowan’s slaughtered people, and that Ventari and Rowan unknowingly ‘guided’ the tree in its formation, but Malyk is from an entirely different, unrelated tree. Was that tree ALSO planted on a pile of dead people and guided into existence by a human and centaur philosopher?

I could go on and on… there are so many examples of bad voice acting, hurried and cliched writing, and plot lines full of holes.