Guild Wars 2

I have also been enjoying the story bits in the past few updates. Aside from Scarlet, the Living Story characters are all really well written.

Chrispy.5641:

I liked the story instance, but the conversation between marjory and kasmeer came off as…I don’t know. I didn’t care for it very much.

Ah, they’re in love. Give ’em a break.

PeterThomas.7243:

I have also been enjoying the story bits in the past few updates. Aside from Scarlet, the Living Story characters are all really well written.

Chrispy.5641:

I liked the story instance, but the conversation between marjory and kasmeer came off as…I don’t know. I didn’t care for it very much.

Ah, they’re in love. Give ’em a break.

Its not the love angle, its kasmeer coming off as a fairly whiny self absorbed annoyance. I took his teddy bear weep weep cry cry blah blah. Maybe Im just a cynical street rat who cant relate to her priviledged lifestyle.

Also its kinda like, why is she whining about that now, we got a crazy scarlet dragons bandits and she s crying because she became poor.

phys.7689:

Its not the love angle, its kasmeer coming off as a fairly whiny self absorbed annoyance. I took his teddy bear weep weep cry cry blah blah. Maybe Im just a cynical street rat who cant relate to her priviledged lifestyle.

Also its kinda like, why is she whining about that now, we got a crazy scarlet dragons bandits and she s crying because she became poor.

Or…or it’s because it happens to be her father’s birthday. He’s dead. She’s remembering her father. On his birthday. It makes her sad. People are sometimes sad. Marjory asks why and what happened. Kasmeer answers. Shares a little about herself with the person she’s in a relationship with. I know. Unfathomable.

To everyone who worked on this instance: well done, all! : ) This is the level of story I’ve been looking for. I especially liked how the conversations flowed into each other. Rytlock + Rox leads to Rox + Braham leads to Braham + Taimi and Logan leads to Logan + Marjory. Brilliant! Brill. As for some people feeling like eavesdroppers, yeah—I just went with it. The main character in a movie isn’t in every exchange of dialog. That would be so boring. Just pretend you’re the camera in a movie observing goings on while your character is over there having a drink at the beachside tavern.

Again, good job to ANet. Can. Not. Wait to see what happens next.

ExAstris.8527:

phys.7689:

Its not the love angle, its kasmeer coming off as a fairly whiny self absorbed annoyance. I took his teddy bear weep weep cry cry blah blah. Maybe Im just a cynical street rat who cant relate to her priviledged lifestyle.

Also its kinda like, why is she whining about that now, we got a crazy scarlet dragons bandits and she s crying because she became poor.

Or…or it’s because it happens to be her father’s birthday. He’s dead. She’s remembering her father. On his birthday. It makes her sad. People are sometimes sad. Marjory asks why and what happened. Kasmeer answers. Shares a little about herself with the person she’s in a relationship with. I know. Unfathomable.

^ This. Pretty sure it wasn’t about the money.

Paul Belz.7351:

Hey guys,

You must participate in the marionette encounter in order to progress to the step where you go to LA. You do not have to WIN the fight, only participate. Once you participated that step should go away.

For clarification please (I don’t need a dev reply, just anyone that knows): Is this after achieving at least one of the “Boss Thumper” dailies, or after completing the whole “Origins of Madness” meta achievement?

I have done the former, but had no idea to look out for a yellow star in LA, so the in-game/universe prompting for the player is a bit… lacking.

PeterThomas.7243:

Ah, they’re in love. Give ’em a break.

It still doesn’t justify the Harlequin novel / Twilight – level of writing of their whole relationship (not just in this scene, but especially there). The cheesiness and syrup is off the charts here, people! Any more and we drown in it!

KyreneZA.8617:

Paul Belz.7351:

Hey guys,

You must participate in the marionette encounter in order to progress to the step where you go to LA. You do not have to WIN the fight, only participate. Once you participated that step should go away.

For clarification please (I don’t need a dev reply, just anyone that knows): Is this after achieving at least one of the “Boss Thumper” dailies, or after completing the whole “Origins of Madness” meta achievement?

I have done the former, but had no idea to look out for a yellow star in LA, so the in-game/universe prompting for the player is a bit… lacking.

If you had actually won the marionette thingy, there will be a conversation between the NPCs to head down to LA. It’s hard to catch the conversation in the early days tho, cos everyone is /cheer-ing

I think the story parts of this game are ok. I like most of the voice acting, especially the Charr, they are fun to listen to. Most of this instance was ok too.

But after reading the comments here I got a question: Am I the only one who put off by the Kasmeer and Marjory voice acting? The fake southern vampire TV soap drawl sounds to me like chalk screeching over blackboard. I could not watch True Blood because of that. Why are you assaulting my ears with it in a fantasy game.

Every identifyably american accent in such a game setting is a turn off. It beams me back down to earth in a heartbeat. Escapist fantasy moment over – exclamation point. I think its supposed to be smexy, but it’s just…. fake and grossing out my temporal lobe.

This instance was the most irritating performance for both yet.

- My peeve and I am sticking with it ;-)

PS: I found it strange that it was over so apruptly. No closing words or winding down. I looked at the screen for a minute thinking “was that it?”, “what happens now?”. No instructions to leave or go somewhere else, everybody just stood around looking bored……

Rufena.5671:

I think the story parts of this game are ok. I like most of the voice acting, especially the Charr, they are fun to listen to. Most of this instance was ok too.

But after reading the comments here I got a question: Am I the only one who put off by the Kasmeer and Marjory voice acting? The fake southern vampire TV soap drawl sounds to me like chalk screeching over blackboard. I could not watch True Blood because of that. Why are you assaulting my ears with it in a fantasy game.

Every identifyably american accent in such a game setting is a turn off. It beams me back down to earth in a heartbeat. Escapist fantasy moment over – exclamation point. I think its supposed to be smexy, but it’s just…. fake and grossing out my temporal lobe.

This instance was the most irritating performance for both yet.

- My peeve and I am sticking with it ;-)

.

I know a few more people who don’t like it so I guess you’re not alone :P

I personally think it’s one of the best VA in the game so far.

Traveller.7496:

PeterThomas.7243:

Ah, they’re in love. Give ’em a break.

It still doesn’t justify the Harlequin novel / Twilight – level of writing of their whole relationship (not just in this scene, but especially there). The cheesiness and syrup is off the charts here, people! Any more and we drown in it!

I’m gonna go ahead and assume you’ve never read Twilight because, as much as I’ve been critical of the living story, the writing has never sunk as syntactically low as all that XD Otoh, Twilight managed to immerse enough people into the first person narration that they overlooked an abusive relationship and absolute lack of vocabulary variety, so it must have done something right at least on an emotional level of engagement with the reader.

The romance is a side plot to the elder dragons. Someone upthread, I believe it was phys, looked down his/her nose at the LS for daring to include such such personal elements. I completely disagree. What are these people fighting to save? What in Tyria and the drudgery of the human/sentient condition do they see as worth fighting for? What motivates them on a day to day basis, and what from their past molded them into what they are/what they’re fighting for now? These are things I want to know and this is why I enjoyed the scenes. We will always be working toward the larger goal of the dragons. Always. These personal elements should come along with the bigger battle stuff, to give me an answer to “why do I care if any of these imaginary people are killed by the dragons?” Otherwise, I would probably lose interest in a plot only about taking down the dragons, at the rate we’re doing it at. I feel like this update managed to nail the balance, including doing some deft weaving of the characters’ stories into the battle elements.

Romance is cheesy by nature. You open yourself up and create a bond with someone, and it always feels a little awkward from the outside looking in. We can’t handle PDAs, and I bet people would feel uncomfortable seeing in real time the moment my father spiritually knew he had married my mother, or snippets of the 3-continent spanning romance my boyfriend and I got ourselves into. Glimpsing someone’s unrestrained emotional response to something can be really kitten awkward, especially when the scenes we get are brief ones and we’re not surrounded by their context.

We don’t have half an hour each week to see new cutscenes to develop the characters, or 2-3 hours at a time like we would in TV and film. We have about 5 or 10 minutes every two weeks. It’s a little bit awkward but so is falling in love or opening up about an experience from your past that cut you deep and you tried to bury. I’m just glad there’s no make-up+break-up Ross/Rachel drama and that the relationship seems to be a healthy one. I like that their relationship isn’t the only thing that defines them — we’ve seen Marjory be a fantastic detective at the Dragon Bash, and Kasmeer proved herself by uncovering the Tower of Nightmares, plus she’s getting her backstory filled out. I’d be so much more willing to side with those claiming unnecessary cheesiness if these were characters left with only the little definition being romantically linked would give them, spending all their time fawning over the other person or telling their sob story over and over. Instead, they engage in the kind of intense talks you end up having when you’re really close with someone (friendly or otherwise), and have had relatively numerous moments outside of these drama-heavy ones to be work/dragon/big-bad-oriented.

I’d also like to say, as though you couldn’t tell by my defense of romance, that I enjoy how the writers seemingly dip their toes into different genres. It helps keep things feeling a little fresh. The Dead End cutscene introducing Marjory was intensely noir out of nowhere, but no one seemed to have a problem with that random tonal shift. Insert theory about “feminine” genres getting more flack here.

I’m just so surprised that I like Kasmeer as much as I do. It’s a Rose Tyler thing; I went in thinking I’d hate the character and they ended up being basically my favorite. I don’t know how it happened. I suppose the above is partially me trying to work that out, too.

Rufena.5671:

But after reading the comments here I got a question: Am I the only one who put off by the Kasmeer and Marjory voice acting? The fake southern vampire TV soap drawl sounds to me like chalk screeching over blackboard. I could not watch True Blood because of that. Why are you assaulting my ears with it in a fantasy game.

…woah, woah, pump the breaks, who has a southern drawl? I haven’t noticed that at all. o.o;; My powers of observation are grand, clearly. XD

I think you could just as easily ask: Why are there terrible British accents (Jennifer Hale)? Why does Sayeh have a Russian accent? The answer is, I’d assume, that it’s the easiest way to distinguish regionality or “otherness” in characters (like the Sylvari) without a Tolkienesque level of obsession over creating new dialects/languages.

I’m rather neutral on that story instance. Some bits were good and some were bad. I find Marjory to be rather predatory with Kasmeer and if it was an elder male chasing a younger woman that way it would be creepy. I also don’t believe in Rytlock setting solo tests for Rox before she can join his warband. That’s exactly not what a warband should be about.