GW 2 Story - The Game's Greatest Flaw

I was going to post this in the Official LW 4 Ep 2 Feedback Thread, but it's too long and I also think it needs a thread to address the GW 2 story as a whole.

There were some things I liked about LW 4 Ep 2, but far more things I disliked and this speaks not just to this episode, but the entire direction of the game overall.

SPOILERS AHEAD

I like that there was more exploration of both the Charr and Asuran races and I liked the logic puzzles. What I didn't like was seeing the game continue to get further into these repetitive habits that started during LW S3 and partly before that as well.

Style:

The constant polarization of the story's style shifting rapidly between overly emotional/melodramatic and forced humor/sass/sarcasm is on overload here. Having that in the background is tolerable. Making it the forefront always takes me out of the story.

Up until LW S3 they had a decent balance between their comedic and serious style. It used to be engaging and exciting to hear what a char would say and see what they do. But just like any other series, when it goes on for years and years the style changes, quality drops, and things get forced-in rather than happen naturally. This is an example of trying to evolve and be something else instead of properly advancing what made GW 2 amazing in the first place.

Dialogue:

Why are we constantly stopping to talk about feelings? There is way too much exposition and no option to skip it. It slows down the pace of the story too much.

The dialogue has too many pauses to sound more dramatic such as "I... I...." and characters cutting off their sentences and changing what they are going to say. It's meaningful when it's used once in awhile. When every char does it in almost every dialogue, it's just forced and another sign of rushed or amateur writing. The dialogue has become tedious to get through and it's incredibly cringy to listen to.

Plot:

In the base GW 2 story, every story step was geared around your character's development and Zhaitan's effect on the world. It was mostly all connected. Now we're going on detours, starting and quickly ending the few relevant plots that did exist, changing character's personalities and making them unbearable, forcing outcomes, and stretching story points instead of developing them when they're most relevant.

Joko was interesting as a side/background story. He should NOT be taking up 2-3 episodes of LW especially if we have even fewer episodes this time around.

Of all the stories we could be exploring, why is this one char who we are introduced to in a cell in the afterlife now taking up our time when Kralkatorrik, a danger that affects everything and can easily turn the direction of the story, is out there and is not the main antagonist? Joko's story should have been handled completely in this episode. It should have been finished here. There is a massive Dragon on the loose... and we're messing about with the dead in the desert.

Design Formulas:

They've established these formulas and repeat them over and over again with each new content addition. Same stuff, different setting. The same lines of dialogue and plots and scenarios recycled. We meet a new group of chars. One of them dies. We all have to gather around and listen to a repetitive, empty speech once again. Why is there always a character dying? Killing off a char every few story beats doesn't mean your story is more serious and heartfelt. Perhaps try building up a character and make us care about them before making a natural and surprising or fitting outcome that actually impacts us on an emotional level. Your character actually saving an NPC in an intense battle would be far more memorable than just moving from NPC death to NPC death.

Each new episode there is a new, special material or object we have to find and then use it to weaken the boss. Such as bloodstone or the solar cores. We have to run to 3-5 areas to pick up 3-5 things to unlock one thing. We have to memorize a sequence pattern to defeat a boss and memorize their rinse and repeat combat mechanics making the battle tiresome and mechanical instead of fluid and unpredictable. What is wrong with an AI or RNG combat boss that you can't always predict?

Unnecessary Content:

Unlikable and nearly useless chars are STILL around, thin storylines are stretched out, there is too much filler and no way to skip, there are uninteresting and random plots, and there is no real focus or direction. Plot solutions are thrown in based on whatever works at the time.

That is the nature of game writing especially when it's shaped by multiple visions instead of one strong, focused vision for the story. But even within these limits, you can still write and execute creative decisions far better than this.

Solution:

I think the game director, the departments, and especially the story team need to step back out of the tunnel vision of these formulas, and really conjure up and develop NEW ideas, new ways, and work with less is more. Make smaller scale content that focuses on quality and substance. Because that is what will last. A bloated episode of repetitive, seen-it-before content becomes old news very quickly. And all that work put into creating it and time spent anticipating it starts to feel meaningless when players try it a few times and head back to their usual maps and routine.

For all I know the GW 2 team is well aware of this and have new features and things planned ahead as mentioned by Mike Z in a recent interview. Maybe this is what we have on the immediate front and Expansion 3 intends to bring us in a new and better direction. I really hope so, because these formulas do not last forever and I've seen plenty of player feedback that suggests that GW 2's story is growing increasingly unsatisfying.

I like the story, I quite enjoyed the recent chapters. Sure it is not perfect and it wont ever be, since opinions will vary regardless.I do think you underestimate the threat that Joko is and can be... sure he is not an elder dragon, but for the moment he does seem to be the more imidiate threat.I think the "talking about feelings" in this most recent chapter made a lot of sense and I actually do care about the characters around my character.

I will give you though that I don't feel like replaying it all, but I don't think it is all that bad a thing... I don't want to read the same book I just read again untill some time has passed if at all. Even if it was a really really good book.

I agree. The story just doesn't draw me anymore, and story is important to me in a video game. It feels like the video game version of a "popcorn movie". Maybe there's a cool scene or two, maybe a joke makes me chuckle, but there's no depth.

I think you made many good points. I would love it if the writers took even some of your suggestions.

@Cyrin.1035 said:

The constant polarization of the story's style shifting rapidly between overly emotional/melodramatic and forced humor/sass/sarcasm is on overload here. Having that in the background is tolerable. Making it the forefront always takes me out of the story.

I agree, it's bad enough that I am being taken on a linear path that I have no control over, having to listen to a story that has been determined for me, having no input into it, unable to add my own personality to it, or take it in a direction that I want, and then I have to endure this cringefest of attempted humor which is basically one cliché after another, I literally switch off when the npcs are speaking, including my own character, it's almost painful to endure, and extremely far removed from immersive or enjoyable. I guess I am just used to better writing and options, having played Bioware games, so this story style just does not cut it for me. If they stopped trying to be funny/snarky every 2 minutes it would be more bearable.

It was a bit strained during HOT, because they let so many foreshadowed things slide away unnoticed, but ultimately the experience was good, it built up to great fight, and had a good crowning moment. I was still invested by the end.

Then it detoured into shining blade/cadecuss stuff, when I really wanted more of the dragon stuff. Why did they go there? No idea. It was boring. Then came Braham's manbaby moment, and I lost all interest. He should have been drinking and celebrating his mothers noble death in glorious battle, like a true Norn, but instead they turned it into a ham-fisted "stuffed into the fridge" moment. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Fighting a god in POF was alright, and at least they tied the dragons back in at the end, but now they are back to to going wherever again. Also, Braham is back, which is probably the worst part

Yeah, the story is pretty much dead. This is what happens when you write a story by committee. Everyone's pet plot thread gets way to much attention and the core storyline gets forgotten. Like the rest of the game, they have no focus as they bore straight ahead at full power, valiantly snatching mediocrity from the jaws of greatness.

@Rhyse.8179 said:manbaby moment

@Rhyse.8179 said:valiantly snatching mediocrity from the jaws of greatness.

I could not decide which one of these quotes made me laugh the most, so I quoted them both :)

Apparently someone hasn't been paying attention to much...Joko at this point is a more serious threat to Tyria than Kralkatorrik(who sits on top of a mountain in Elona). At this very moment it appears he has the means to bring the ancient Scarab Plague to "modern" day Tyria(and that wouldn't just be humans, but also Asura, Norn, Charr and Sylvari I presume, based on the specimens in the Inquest base). He manages to let that loose and it's game over for Tyria, there'll be nothing to stop the Elder Dragons, which we no longer must kill, but instead have to figure out how to make impotent. Furthermore there was some serious character development in this episode, whether anyone noticed it or not, for both Braham and Rox(who I think is going to end up joining the Olmakhan charr(of course that's just my opnion), and it was only two(2) lines spoken by Braham but they're lines you would think he would have said previously. As for the direction, it was mapped out years ago, do you think they'd really change the direction of the story half way through?

The Story is pretty much the major Asset for this game. Everything else is pretty great, but without the story, without the episodic LW stuff, this game would have died in 2014.

@"Cyrin.1035" said:The dialogue has too many pauses to sound more dramatic such as "I... I...." and characters cutting off their sentences and changing what they are going to say. It's meaningful when it's used once in awhile. When every char does it in almost every dialogue, it's just forced and another sign of rushed or amateur writing. The dialogue has become tedious to get through and it's incredibly cringy to listen to.

Haha, thank you for calling this out. Dramatic pauses rarely work, and whoever wrote the recent expansions went completely ham on them. ANet needs their license to use ellipses revoked.

Seriously, it's like:"This toast... this toast reminds me of... the toast that I ate when...""No... no... you don't need to... I'll talk about it with you when you... sigh. Would you... would you like some... butter?""How... how dare you! I'm going to... sigh. Forget this toast!""But... sigh."

I agree that sometimes you should have the option to skip some dialogs, but those characters are being funny and talking about their feelings because now you are more than "brothers-in-war", you are friends and this friendship has grown up a lot since LW S1. This brings immersion to the game, same for those dramatic pauses, it brings more life to the narration, giving more personality. For example, sometimes in real life, you want to say something but then you think twice and end up not saying.

Although, when you say Joko should be a side story, I will have to say that Joko's Arc has been better than the Dragons' Arc, which has been very repetitive and obsessive. Joko is much of a threat as Kralkatorrik, he might not have the same amount of magic but we don't know how to kill him, we don't even know how powerful he has become in 250 years and now he has the Scarab Plague. Guild Wars Franchise has not always been about the dragons and in fact, we are not supposed to kill Elder Dragons until we find a way to restore balance.

@ReaverKane.7598 said:The Story is pretty much the major Asset for this game. Everything else is pretty great, but without the story, without the episodic LW stuff, this game would have died in 2014.

I don't believe that's true, if they didn't make story they would have time to make other content, which I would prefer, since I am certainly not playing this game for it's story...

I find the elder dragons to be an extremely weak point if the story so what ever chance we get to go up against other villians is good imo. I hope Joko tho end up being more than wjat Balthazar ended up being.

@Vavume.8065 said:

I agree, it's bad enough that I am being taken on a linear path that I have no control over, having to listen to a story that has been determined for me, having no input into it, unable to add my own personality to it, or take it in a direction that I want, and then I have to endure this cringefest of attempted humor which is basically one cliché after another, I literally switch off when the npcs are speaking, including my own character, it's almost painful to endure, and extremely far removed from immersive or enjoyable.

I completely agree with this. It'd be quite a bit more tolerable if they didn't put words in my character's mouth.

I guess I am just used to better writing and options, having played Bioware games, so this story style just does not cut it for me. If they stopped trying to be funny/snarky every 2 minutes it would be more bearable.

Are we talking about the same Bioware? Post-DA:O, I had the same problem with Bioware games that I am now having with GW2's story. They wrest control from the player to tell their own tired narratives.

@ReaverKane.7598 said:The Story is pretty much the major Asset for this game. Everything else is pretty great, but without the story, without the episodic LW stuff, this game would have died in 2014.The story was the final thing that made me uninstall the game back around 2014. Not that I didn't want to follow the plotline, I just had become sick of being made to jump through hoops of mostly bug-ridden timesinks just to turn a page. And don't even mention the NPC AI scripts. There were other issues why I uninstalled, but the story content design was a big part of it.

I have returned to the game to see the mount mechanics and these are as entertaining as I have heard. I also wanted to see the evolution of the game and there are many worthwhile improvements. But the first few chapters of the PoF story made me stop playing that part of the game.

The instanced story needs the same basic mechanics that have been standards in RPGs for decades - the ability to Save Progress at will (or something close to it) and variable Difficulty settings. MMOs have clung to the idea they can be different from other RPGs because of their online element, but companies have been making single player games requiring online connections for years. A modern MMO should offer solo instances with these basic mechanics that are expected in any single player RPG.

The one thing I hate the most is when they establish something within an episode and all the characters (and writers) act like I should care. Like this cyborg asura from this episode. It was directed like it's heartbreaking moment, like anyone feels sad etc. Bois, we just met these guys, we didn't even know they existed before this episode. Why the melodrama? As always anything related to Taimi is breaking good things that happened storywise within the episode.

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:The one thing I hate the most is when they establish something within an episode and all the characters (and writers) act like I should care. Like this cyborg asura from this episode. It was directed like it's heartbreaking moment, like anyone feels sad etc. Bois, we just met these guys, we didn't even know they existed before this episode. Why the melodrama? As always anything related to Taimi is breaking good things that happened storywise within the episode.

I don't think we care for them so much as we care for Taimi. She's been spending the WHOLE episode painting them out to be decent guys... and when we find them, we find one of them is a golem. As far as we know at the time, said golem is no different from any other golem we've met in the game and the brother just went loopy from the stresses of a Joko invasion.

Personally, I like how Anet tries to create the illusion of "personal" stories that don't revolve around us, or aren't part of some grand over arching plot. It makes the world seem more alive.

I like that we get more stories than just “Elder Dragon! Noooooo, we must stop it”.I will agree with one point you made, the dramatic pauses are too much, the... breathy pauses... are too much to... handle. This doesn’t add anything to dialogue. There’s also nothing wrong with speeding up the regular voice acting either.Braham, as few lines he actually got in this episode, was my biggest annoyance. Writing him as this melodramatic whinger that’s being told to heel like a puppy is getting a bit annoying. I wish our PC would grow some and tell him to grow up or go away.

@Haleydawn.3764 said:Braham, as few lines he actually got in this episode, was my biggest annoyance. Writing him as this melodramatic whinger that’s being told to heel like a puppy is getting a bit annoying. I wish our PC would grow some and tell him to grow up or go away.

... Did you finish the episode? I found the moment the PC had with Braham at the end to be quite touching.

@Westenev.5289 said:

@Haleydawn.3764 said:Braham, as few lines he actually got in this episode, was my biggest annoyance. Writing him as this melodramatic whinger that’s being told to heel like a puppy is getting a bit annoying. I wish our PC would grow some and tell him to grow up or go away.

You mean between the overused dramatic pauses? Sure. But we'll see how he behaves after this arc.

Thank you for your post Cyrin, it expresses most of my feelings towards the latest episode. These things are the reason for me to not follow the plot and not listen to dialogue anymore when playing the story. It is too shallow to catch me really and you don't really miss anything if you go grab a coffee while they are talking. I still don't know who Blish is and why I should care about him, only that I was supposed to send some signal to him in the last boss fight.

I want to add that I'm sure it's definitely not me who's the problem here (for once ^^). I love reading fantasy and science fiction books, I love to feel with the characters and picturing them while reading. I'm also willing to endure episodes of boredom and can overcome resistance when things are repeated way too often, who ever read the A Wheel of Time series knows what I'm talking about.

It's not only the repetition of stuff and over-usage of the same formula, it's also that these things are borderline annoying instead of adding fun to the game. The most annoying thing Anet keeps using these days is mechanics that heavily influences your movement and mobility. At some point they added the possibility to make players swirl around, and they love it! You find these things everywhere now, in fractals, open world, events, champs, story bosses. Let me tell you Anet, this is not a thing that creates fun, it creates loath, players are annoyed by it. The most crazy implementation of this mechanics can be found in the arena of the heart vendor on the new map, where you have to destroy Inquest stuff while floating around with some hammer. This quest uses forced movement so heavily, you can basically forget about deciding on your own where to move. I ended up on the ground swirling around and cleaving golems with the hammer until the heart was done. I was not able to get out of the swirl at all. I play thief and had unhindered combatant, which usually gets me out of any movement impairing situation, nothing worked. I let them kill me so I could spawn at the waypoint, then ran back to the heart vendor to buy currency for karma. I will never visit that place again. There is nothing worse in gaming experience than taking away a player's initiative, especially when moving around. Second worst offender of this is Hamstrung in fractals.

Oh and while I'm at Hearts. Guess what the quests are: go fetch stuff, go kill some Inquest and destroy their equipment, go and destroy Inquest machinery, go and kill some poor wild animals and feed some goats. I think they use a very poorly crafted AI that creates those heart quests. No real human being would dare to provide that low quality content.

@Westenev.5289 said:

@Haleydawn.3764 said:Braham, as few lines he actually got in this episode, was my biggest annoyance. Writing him as this melodramatic whinger that’s being told to heel like a puppy is getting a bit annoying. I wish our PC would grow some and tell him to grow up or go away.

yeah too bad we never finished that talk

@"Faaris.8013" said:The most crazy implementation of this mechanics can be found in the arena of the heart vendor on the new map, where you have to destroy Inquest stuff while floating around with some hammer. This quest uses forced movement so heavily, you can basically forget about deciding on your own where to move. I ended up on the ground swirling around and cleaving golems with the hammer until the heart was done. I was not able to get out of the swirl at all. I play thief and had unhindered combatant, which usually gets me out of any movement impairing situation, nothing worked.

Use the 3 button on your hammer, it "discharges" you so you can move to another spinny generator thing. There's also a door on the south side you can exit from - it opens as you approach it.

Personally, I liked this heart, and think it would make a fairly cool PvP setting or even an addition to the guild hall. It's probably the quickest and funnest heart on the map (besides killing those cute little pierie dogs...)

@"Westenev.5289" said:Use the 3 button on your hammer, it "discharges" you so you can move to another spinny generator thing. There's also a door on the south side you can exit from - it opens as you approach it.

Trust me, I hit all buttons, I had enough time wirling around on the floor to read the descriptions. But after experiencing several bugs in this patch, it would not surprise me that my bad experience was caused by buggy mechanics. Thing is, players usually don't care why something doesn't work, they just get frustrated. I had a bugged last boss fight, I couldn't get anything but ruined wood logs from eerie driftwood with my purchased gathering tools, my stealth (thief) didn't help with the prairie dogs at all. I hit an invisible wall while climbing up some mountain to get to a POI. I finished the Subject S escort and we killed all 4 golems in the event afterwards, but the event stalled and we left. After about 15 more minutes I got a pop up about a failed event.

The quality of this episode is low, sad but true.

I liked the new LS4 episode. Braham seems to be moving torward a redemption arc. Taimi didn’t seem like a kid and ended up with her own crew of genius misfits. Even Rox has a tribe of shamany char that she is drawn to. The living story is definitely formulaic but not without its entertaining moments. Anyone that remembers LS1 would consider the current writing Shakespeare by comparison.

@DoctorOverlord.8620 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:The Story is pretty much the major Asset for this game. Everything else is pretty great, but without the story, without the episodic LW stuff, this game would have died in 2014.The story was the final thing that made me uninstall the game back around 2014. Not that I didn't want to follow the plotline, I just had become sick of being made to jump through hoops of mostly bug-ridden timesinks just to turn a page. And don't even mention the NPC AI scripts. There were other issues why I uninstalled, but the story content design was a big part of it.

Are you talking about season 1? Because season 1 wasn't in 2014... 2014 was the start of Season 2, and that's what pretty much kept this game alive. I also unninstalled in 2013 because Season 1 was crap. But they turned a new page, and you can't say that Season 3 and 4 aren't the best quality content they have provided so far, superior to expansions even.All pvp modes are riddled with poor mechanics and balance. Open World has obviously already peaked. Raids are fun and all, but it's not really enough to keep the game afloat, nor are fractals. Without Living World story the game would be dead.