I’ve copied and pasted from the thread about Reddit quotes to generate a critical (positive or negative) discussion on the story and how it came to be so short and missed out so many key details for many.
It’s an interesting clarification, however it sounds like they boxed themselves in either by constraints on resources or by putting so much into a cliffhanger ending for S2, they felt they had nowhere else to go, but follow through with a rapid fire plot which left a rushed HoT ending and added many unanswered questions. I also think they seem intent on either delivering as a “summer blockbuster” or as a tv serial in presentation – neither of which are appropriate in my mind for a video game medium. Continuing on the good work in Nightfall, EOTN and Beyond is perhaps where they should be going in my opinion instead of emulating styles from different mediums – something which rarely works.
There were of course improvements to instance length, dialogue, characters. It seems to be the narrative, lore inclusions and actual plot which is the sticking point for many (from what I can ascertain).
If we want to improve the story going forward, this is place to pull together ideas, point where it went right and crucially where it specifically went wrong and how it could have been improved.
This is not the place to insult, bash or mock the devs so I ask please keep it civil (for as long as possible anyway..)
Yeah, our story teams are smaller, more tight-knit groups of devs…a combination of narrative designers and gameplay designers are the core of the teams that implement story. But you pretty well described how we work – lots of meetings and discussions that focus on character and plotting at the front, then we prototype/rough in the major beats and fill out details as we go. Story in particular goes through a LOT of iteration.
It’s easy for people not in the trenches to think that “higher ups” dictate things from on high, but that’s just not been the case at Arenanet. While yes, there are always certain constraints that we have to work within, the team is as involved in those decisions as anyone at the top. I honestly can say that we made the best story that we could given the team and the resources that we had. It’s easy to look back on it now and say “we should have done this” and “we could have done that”, but at the end of the day we had to believe in what we shipped, or we wouldn’t have shipped it – that is the bottom line. I can say that we’ve read all the feedback, both positive and negative, about the decisions that we made as a team, and we’re committed to continuing to improve our story-telling the more that we do.
I appreciate the clarification. And the honesty, so let me be honest back. From a player’s POV, I definitely prefer games that take their time to develop a rich world and story and I personally strive to deliver that as much as possible in the content I’m responsible for.
Heart of Thorns however, was a very peculiar case for us in that the story’s pacing from the get go just never felt right to us whenever we stopped the action to go into the deeper lore behind everything. When your game’s story begins with a tragedy of epic proportions and there’s a need to maintain the time pressure of the drama we’re working within, any stops along the way felt artificial to us during development. We did have plans to delve more below the surface with some areas, but because of the concerns we had with maintaining the narrative momentum, we opted instead to let those tales be told outside of the instances and through open world exploration (the “story” of Guild Wars 2 is not just about the chapters you see in the journal, or at least, it’s supposed to be) so that the story would be more focused on finding and rescuing your allies. Clearly, that decision was not popular with some of our players, and we’re taking that feedback as a learning experience. I guess the way I have come to think about it looking back is that I think we approached HoT story more like a “summer blockbuster” than a 13 episode run of your favorite TV show – which was a departure for us and quite possibly too far outside the comfort zone of many of our players who are invested in the GW2 story.
Looked at through that lens when answering the question “Was I happy with the pacing?” I would say that yes, with some notable exceptions, I was happy because we met the goals we set for ourselves and delivered a “blockbuster” ending – of course it wasn’t perfect, and there are always things I can look back at and say we could have done better, but I would disagree that there was a lack of any kind of emotion (and I realize that’s my subjective opinion, but it’s my honest opinion).
The exceptions where I might have done things differently with would have been: 1. It would have helped for us to have re-framed or spent more time on the discovery of Mordremoth’s weakness and 2. I would have wanted to go back and add non-VO text conversations on the PC’s allies throughout the story so that we could have given more optional background information or additional context that was lost by us choosing such a deliberate pace.
(quotes are from Lead Story writer Matthew Medinas replies on Reddit – I didn’t add in the questions since the answers should provide enough context and there is some toxicity from Reddit questions I didn’t want to bring across)
I already had the other one open