Eye of the Brandstorm - Expanded Criticism/Feedback

I'm aware that there's already a thread for feedback, but I feel that the responses are too limited, and I'd like a place to expand my thoughts, maybe ramble a little bit, and provide some worthwhile feedback on the Story for once. I'll be going through it chapter by chapter, and generally assessing the strengths and drawbacks of each story beat, rounding it off with a conclusion at the end. (Omg, this will be so much effort.)

Eye of the Brandstorm:

It’s clear that after 4 playthroughs of the Story that the Brandstorm was meant to be the anchor of the first episode. Focusing around Amnoon was a brilliant concept; watching the refugees running across the bridge, with individual speech options depending on your ‘speech’s tone’ was a clever and snazzy idea; and the opening segment with Taimi and Rytlock was interesting, but juxtaposed the impending darkness of the Brandstorm itself. However, after this first segment, the entire chapter loses its tension, as you hack and slash through 50 elementals extremely quickly, leaving you to wonder why people are fleeing the Free City in the first place, if you can solo X number of enemies, and Amnoon’s supposed to have an able guard force to protect it.

On the first run-through of the Story, the chapter’s design felt beautiful and atmospheric. Yet, the more I run through it, the more I start to realise how isolated it feels, and not in a story-driven way. Half of the City is walled off by crystals that you can easily jump behind to see nothing but the standard Amnoon model, and it just feels lazily made, as if it was made to just be a set piece, rather than a carefully considered piece of story content. Of course, you have a budget, but if you have a budget, I’d ask: Why not set it in the City as a whole? Why do we need to start outside, if the attack is meant to be so sudden? Instead, it would’ve been better to start in the Civic Center, maybe after the speech? This sudden instance needed to be more emphasised, as the Brandstorm appears to be in place from the moment that you load into the instance, as the purple clouds and lightning are above Amnoon in the distance. A street-level cinematic of the Wyvern destroying parts of Amnoon, while Branded rush through the streets would be an amazing start to the Living World Season, and would really set the Living World Season apart from the ones before it. We’ve seen that cinematics are possible in GW2, with in-game models, and we need more of them in key moments, such as this.

I have to add though, that the differing options for dialogue depending on who you allied with was a nice addition. I’d love to see more of this in the future, especially in key moments, or maybe even down-time moments. Exploring the cultures of the factions is so important in world-building, and aside from reading GW1 information, the Sunspears and the Awakened are a bit ‘loose’ in terms of relevance to a new player. Of course, I know the lore, reading wikis and tracking details is my thing before any release. This is just a side point, but I think it’s so important to at least mention it!

And now, we move on to some people’s biggest issue with the instance due to difficulty, but it’s my biggest issue due to tone and story-telling. The Branded Wyvern fight is everything that I dislike about GW2’s story-telling. It’s bland, repetitive, and kills the mood and atmosphere of a city-wide attack. If my character can defeat a Wyvern alone with little to no difficulty involved, it ruins the story-telling of the chapter’s first half. I definitely believe that the second half of the chapter kills the first half, and the second half is meant to be the more impactful segment. And the irony of the chapter is: We didn’t need a boss fight in this segment. Why couldn’t this Wyvern get wounded by Aurene, while Aurene is gravely wounded in the process? By creating a dynamic between the two, it could allow the thought of potentially seeing a rematch in the future create future hype for a LWS4 Episode. Moreover, this incident would allow us to see the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of Aurene’s impulsive behaviour, as she keeps trying to save us recklessly. All of this builds up, and creates the character of Aurene. But this leads me to my final, and boldest point that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later...

"Aurene isn’t a character. Aurene is a plot device."

The vision at the end of the episode, whilst special and snazzy to look at, didn’t aid the Storyline any more than a conversation between two characters could. What if our meeting was interrupted at the start of the Episode, where we’re discussing formal alliances with the Sunspears potentially, and Kito claims: “Well, it may be difficult to convince them to abandon the Astralarium for Amnoon.” And then, when it’s interrupted, and the dust has finally settled, Kito can make a remark like: “After this, I think the Sunspears are the only option that we have.” And this is the issue, I don’t need a writing degree to understand how to weave dialogue into story beats, and create circumstances where threads can develop.

But I’m straying too far from the point now. Returning back to Aurene, she has the same issue as the Dragons. I don’t relate to her, unless she’s forced down my throat. She doesn’t speak to me, and she only communicates through vague visions, and flies off. Apart from the instance in LWS3, in Tarir, I’ve had little to no interaction with this ‘character’, who’s flying around and dropping exposition and story beats without uttering a line of dialogue to support them. Aurene needs to become a character, and not a flying plot device that swoops in to either save the day, or drop a story tease. I need more down-time with Aurene, to learn more about her and develop a bond. A whole instance with Aurene, training her dragon abilities whilst speaking to Rytlock would be an amazing change for GW2’s story-telling. A whole instance of just dialogue with a few actions here and there. This is what made Eir’s Funeral really snazzy in LWS3, but it just needs more character development, and less character reflection.

Overall, Eye of the Brandstorm is just an average chapter. It’s an amazing concept, with so much potential to introduce a Living World Season, but it’s plagued with what appear to be small, but extremely important flaws that could impact the rest of the Episodes in the future. If the trend of ‘starting strong, and then the wheels come off’ continues throughout the Season’s Episodes and Chapters, it could become lazy and not pay-off on the established story beats.

I’ll look towards the next Chapter: Under the Stars, which definitely fixes some of my issues from Eye of the Brandstorm, once I have another free moment to write an ‘omg’ post that’s this size. Have fun and understand that this is opinionated! <3

I want to quickly add: I appreciate what Anet tried to do with the opening chapter, but this is just feedback to maybe improve a future Episode if they're experiencing writer's block or a headache with a story beat. ;P

If you're aware there's already a thread, doesn't that make this thread spam? What did you do here that you couldn't do in the thread you're aware of?

@DarcShriek.5829 said:If you're aware there's already a thread, doesn't that make this thread spam? What did you do here that you couldn't do in the thread you're aware of?

It's too long of a feedback post to put in something that's meant to be in 100 words or less, and I wouldn't want to clog up that thread with a huge essay.

So, first thing is the reason the episode is called Daybreak is because that storm is brought down upon Amnoon either the very next morning after the speech or within 2 or 3 days afterwards...at least that is what I gathered from the conversation with Taimi and the mentioning of Jory and Kas watching Kralkatorrik sitting on his mountaintop. With that in mind there's no way it could've been done as being right after the speech...as a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure a few days of relative peace and quiet have gone by hence why the situation ends up being so chaotic. With peace and quiet the local defenders would relax and be not quite prepared for a sudden Brandstorm that also dropped Branded amongst their midst.

@"Zaklex.6308" said:So, first thing is the reason the episode is called Daybreak is because that storm is brought down upon Amnoon either the very next morning after the speech or within 2 or 3 days afterwards...at least that is what I gathered from the conversation with Taimi and the mentioning of Jory and Kas watching Kralkatorrik sitting on his mountaintop. With that in mind there's no way it could've been done as being right after the speech...as a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure a few days of relative peace and quiet have gone by hence why the situation ends up being so chaotic. With peace and quiet the local defenders would relax and be not quite prepared for a sudden Brandstorm that also dropped Branded amongst their midst.

I appreciate your stance, but the title of the Episode is basically semantics. In hindsight, you could argue that they could've changed the title to suit a different vision. It's all relative to the vision of the overall Episode. In addition to that, the sudden Brandstorm should be just that: Sudden. It shouldn't, in my opinion, happen in a time of peace and quiet, because that contradicts the critique that you've given to me about my concept, and it's predictable.

Quotes: "With peace and quiet, the local defenders would relax and be not quite prepared..." & "There's no way it could've been done as being right after the speech."

In relation to the above, there is a way that it could've been done, but Anet chose a different vision. And they're the company that makes the game, I just disagree with the vision. <3

I'm pretty sure it was called Daybreak as a reference to GW1's Nightfall, since this episode is a callback to that release. So it's a play on words, not a reference to in-game time passage.

@Donari.5237 said:I'm pretty sure it was called Daybreak as a reference to GW1's Nightfall, since this episode is a callback to that release. So it's a play on words, not a reference to in-game time passage.

It's all of that, a reference to Nightfall, a play on words and what should be the time in game, at least that's my opinion.

I've played it on my mirage mesmer, weaver elementalists, base necro, scourge necro, and soul beast. Each was a different level of difficulty, but each was fun.

In terms of story, setting, cinematic, timing, voice acting, commentary, plot setting, character being driven, etc, I found it all wonderful.