Does the storytelling get better in late base game and the expansions?

[Howluffu.7259]

For me I don't like the story nor characters. But that's for me.

[Teratus.2859]

I'll try to answer as best I can.

@"Athri.3780" said:Story:This might be because I haven't played Guild Wars 1, but I remember that when I got into the Order stuff on a human character, I got bombarded with all this stuff about Elder Dragons all of a sudden, without knowing what that was or what role those dragons played. My human character did know about those dragons though, and the game just continued on never actually explaining what that was. I thought I'd paid attention up until that point - I'd read all the heart quests, talked with the scouts, and so on, but even so I continued on with the main quest being confused and not really knowing what these big terrible enemies were. It's been some years since I played Norn and Sylvari last, but I can't remember those being any better. Basically, the way the exposition was laid out wasn't all that good and stuff just felt poorly explained. (and like... I do get that they're big evil dragons that needs to be defeated, but that tells me very little. Does that make any sense?)

Gw1 never dived much into the Elder Dragons so you're not missing out much in that regard from not having played the first game.Most of what Gw1 contributes to Gw2 is world building, the History of Tyria, it's races and countries etc.The only part Elder Dragons played in Gw1 was essentially a setup for this story to be the focus in Gw2, We never fought them and we only ever saw a couple of them in their dorment sleeping forms.We only fought Destroyers in Gw1 and couple of Dragon Champions all without any knowledge of them being Minons of Elder Dragons.

As for the Personal story in Gw2, Your early missions based around your home region are more about your character making a name for themselves.You don't really start to get into the Elder Dragon storyline until you join one of the Orders, The Orders at that point in time are the only ones focusing on the Threat of the Elder Dragons and trying to wake up the rest of the world into dealing with them.

The Elder Dragons themselves are at this point in the story quite an enigma.. The Orders are fighting them but none of them really understand them all that much and see them as big bad evil thing.This has been something that we have explored in part over the many years of new content added to the game.We've learned a fair bit about them since the personal story but you'll have to play that for yourself since I don't want to spoil anything for you.

I generally tend to care about characters and worldbuilding the most in these kind of games, so if the plot itself gets kinda contrived at places I don't really mind. As long as it is overall consistent.

I would say it's somewhat consistent..At least in terms of us always focusing on the most immediate threat at the time.As far as Characters go there's quite a lot of growth over the years and I personally have come to like pretty much all of them as a result.There are no main characters I really dislike anymore.As for World building well Gw1 did build this world but you don't need to play Gw1 to enjoy Gw2.that said I would still highly recommend it because Gw1 is still a great game even today.

One of the main reasons most of my characters have been humans though, is because the whole political intrigue thing in Kryta conceptually sounds really interesting, with Queen Jennah being at ods with the nobility, making many reforms, and so on. But, from what I understand, after the personal story is done, the main plot moves to focus on the fight with the Elder Dragons, with the PC becoming a commander of something. So does this ever go anywhere?

Well it's hard to really give specifics without spoiling stuff..I guess the final words of your character creation into really says it all, "This is my Story"The Elder Dragons are the main antagonists of Gw2, that much I can say but they are not the only threats in this world you will deal with.As I said above our story always focuses on the most immediate threat and that's not always an Elder Dragon.There are a lot of smaller stories going on in Gw2 and many questions that sometimes go on for a long time before they get answered.But our character does play a very prominent role in this world, as do our allies.

Characters:I thought the mentor character for humans, sylvari, and norn were fine for the most part - they were tropey and fell a bit flat, but they were ok. Everyone else was kinda dull. I'm assuming they get more depth along the way. Does the Destiny's Edge members have any role to play once you get into the expansions?

I would certainly say they do evolve over the years.Destiny's Edge members do play some pretty prominent roles as well though again I can't get specific due to spoilers so you'll have to play the story for yourself to find out.

Dialogue and presentation:This ties into characters, but the way that everything was presented is one of the main reasons why I feel like the early story is so very dull and atleast partly why the characters felt flat to me. Everyone just... sounds the same. Regardless if a character were human, sylvari, or charr, lowborn thief or nobility, it feels like most of the important characters has basically the same vocabulary and speech patterns. All joke/comic-relief charcters also pulls the same kind of jokes, and that gets kinda grating after a while - maybe GW2's type of humor just doesn't work for me. But anyway, while the voice actors does a fairly decent job of making the characters stand out somewhat, the actual writing, in my admittedly limited experience, does not in the early base game.

To be fair, this is also about immersion as much as it is presentation. Final Fantasy XIV is an example of an mmo that does dialogue and immersion very well. In FFXIV's "main cast", there is no character that speaks in the same manner, and their various speech patterns says much about their backgrounds and region of origin. You can infer much about any character in the game - including random npcs that you get fetch quests from - simply by the way speak, what idioms and slurs they use, what gods they swear by, and so on. If you pay a bit of attention you're never going to confuse an npc from one city-state with another, because the writing and the attention to detail when it comes to language is so tight.

So basically, when I ask about the dialogue and presentation/storytelling I don't strictly mean whether the game show conversations through cutscenes or people just talking out in the world, but does the writing and language get to the point where the main characters stand out from each other?FFXIV is just an example of dialogue done well (imo), and I of course don't expect that level of detail.

I realize this might come off as excessively nitpicky, and yeah to a point it is, but I hope this gives some clarity as to what I mean.

Thanks to everyone who's answered this thread, it's been fun reading your comments ^^

This is one area of the game I think has seen significant improvements over the years.Getting rid of that cutscene style dialogue in the personal story and replacing it with fully voiced open world dialogue was a massive improvement for the game, I honestly wish they'd go back and essentially remaster the personal story with this same setup and get rid of that cutscene dialogue stuff.Voice acting has improved as has the dialogue writing for the most part, some of the later introduced characters in Living World/Expansions are among some of the most entertaining in the whole game and have some of the best moments.

How different the dialogue and delivery is though between the player characers I am not 100% sure on that, I have largely only played a significant amount of the game on Humans so for me it's all been the same voice actor and dialogue.That said the voices are different enough to me so this has never bothered me all that much tbh.

But if your referring to other characters we interact with in the world then I would say there's a definite improvement there.Each one of our allies feels pretty unique to me.

[voltaicbore.8012]

In my opinion story telling gets better, both in terms of the writing itself as well as the delivery. However, the core game sets a very, very low standard for storytelling, and I still think all the Living World, HoT, and PoF stories are quite weak. Perhaps it's standard fare for an mmo, but I still don't play GW2 for it's story. I stick with this game for the gameplay, and just poking around all the interesting places the devs (used to) hide in maps.

[mindcircus.1506]

The storytelling in this game is borderline awful until Heart of Thorns. The story itself is mediocre, the worldbuilding is superb, but the dialog and delivery... the side by side cutscenes, the story instances that lack anything entertainign made it an awful slog.In Heart of Thorns, the game learns how to start delivering it's mediocre narrative in a far more compelling way than before.It's still not great, but it's easier to deal with.Season 3 starts to pull the elements together much better. The story and dialog get much stronger and it starts to feel like the experience it should have been all along.Path of Fire is just good stuff. Nothing awful, nothing amazing... but a whole bunch of good stuff.Season 4 is probably the strongest in terms of quality of delivery. The story meanders a little and it pulls some cheap shots for shock value.Icebrood Saga has been strong for story. It's probably the most true to the series roots since Core and delivers it competently. It also avoids a few of the tropes that marred the series from HoT to S4.

If you want story in an MMO there are much better alternatives. But as a package of Story, Lore, Worldbuilding, and explorable environments, it's unmatched and drastically improves in quality as you work through it.If story alone is what you care about, play SWTOR or TSW:L they are much higher quality.

[Batdogi.7142]

It's not terrible. I'd grade it as what, in an earlier century, we used to call a "gentleman's C". i.e. average quality in a weak field. MMO story telling is difficult to do and never seems to compare with single player story telling let alone books or movies.

[SexyMofo.8923]

The story is bad all the way through. It gets worse at the end when none of them have voices.

[maddoctor.2738]

On a side note: there are 15 racial storylines in the game (it's actually more combinations, but with 15 you can experience them all), some of them are god awful but there are some great gems. For example I liked the Infinity Ball Asura story for how unique and original it was and the Circus Human story because it had some form of mystery. Once you join an Order the story becomes from bad to absolutely terrible with some few moments of joy around. Trahearne is number one reason for the story's low turn, he is annoying and loves stealing the spotlight. Lionguard Mira in Claw Island makes me want to turn off the sound while playing that part. She isn't as bad as Togo in the original Guild Wars, but she is very very close.

As for the last part of the personal story (Orr), it's by far the worst because you meet "new characters" that you are supposed to care about, and then watch them die in the next instance. The main issue here is that most of the characters DO have a background and story, but you either meet them in a specific order story or one of the 15 racial ones. For example near the end of the Personal Story you meet Crusader Deborah and for anyone other than a Human who chose the "lost sister" background she is a random nobody.

That was the main problem of the core storyline for me, way too disjointed and requiring knowledge of many different past stories to get the full of it. I guess if you make 15 characters and play all the starting stories, then the later parts will make much more sense.

[Yggranya.5201]

@Athri.3780 said:Edit: What is your opinion on the story?

They story was never anything special, just your average hero story. Now, after aurene, it is the worst kind of garbage and considering how important they made that wannabe dragon, it's never going to go away, which is sad.I think i said this somewhere already but, now that aurene is undead, when are its scales going to lose their luster and turn sickly green?

[Shadowmoon.7986]

Story telling was go good until the balthazar arc starts. Then the entire story poops the bed. The plot point of killing or not killing a dragon makes no sense. Honestly i feel like a living story chapter where we restored the balance between zhaitans and mordimoths energy was cut from ls4. Ask your, why if balthazar absorbed krait energy the world was doom, but if aurene absorbed it everything is alright? Or why are we targeting jormag when if either jormag or aurene is destroyed, the world should be destroyed as well. But i dont think anets writers want you to think to hard about the story.

[Batel.9206]

@Yggranya.5201 said:They story was never anything special, just your average hero story. Now, after [LWS3 / 4 plot points]

! aurene, it is the worst kind of garbage and considering how important they made that wannabe dragon, it's never going to go away, which is sad. I think i said this somewhere already but, now that aurene is undead, when are its scales going to lose their luster and turn sickly green?

@Shadowmoon.7986 said:Story telling was go good until [Path of Fire / LWS4 plot points]

! the balthazar arc starts. Then the entire story poops the bed. The plot point of killing or not killing a dragon makes no sense. Honestly i feel like a living story chapter where we restored the balance between zhaitans and mordimoths energy was cut from ls4. Ask your, why if balthazar absorbed krait energy the world was doom, but if aurene absorbed it everything is alright? Or why are we targeting jormag when if either jormag or aurene is destroyed, the world should be destroyed as well. But i dont think anets writers want you to think to hard about the story.

Guys, watch the spoilers/add spoiler tags, please. OP said they haven't gotten past the base game's story yet. :)

[Blockhead Magee.3092]

The story feels as though it should be better each living story. Their reliance on plot devices and tired tropes take it down several notches.

Just do what Taimi tells you in every episode she's in. You do not get to tell Caithe to leave and you must care about the charr killing each other off. Tolerate those things and the last few stories rise to mediocre with some occasional inspired dialog.

[Deedrick.4372]

The story in this game is horrible. While everyone worries about voices, instead they can use their time to make it skip-able.

[dandamanno.4136]

Story suffers from "It's the end of the world...again" syndrome that many mmo's suffer from. After a while the end of the world doesn't seem like a big deal anymore.

[Rong.5470]

Best part of the core story is that you can skip dialogs. After that it only get worse. From all this crap narrative and dull dialogs path of fire is quite enjoyable so you may want to play it, although you will get some spoilers if you skip whole expansion

[Yggranya.5201]

@Batel.9206 said:

@Yggranya.5201 said:They story was never anything special, just your average hero story. Now, after [LWS3 / 4 plot points]

! aurene, it is the worst kind of garbage and considering how important they made that wannabe dragon, it's never going to go away, which is sad. I think i said this somewhere already but, now that aurene is undead, when are its scales going to lose their luster and turn sickly green?

@Shadowmoon.7986 said:Story telling was go good until [Path of Fire / LWS4 plot points]

! the balthazar arc starts. Then the entire story poops the bed. The plot point of killing or not killing a dragon makes no sense. Honestly i feel like a living story chapter where we restored the balance between zhaitans and mordimoths energy was cut from ls4. Ask your, why if balthazar absorbed krait energy the world was doom, but if aurene absorbed it everything is alright? Or why are we targeting jormag when if either jormag or aurene is destroyed, the world should be destroyed as well. But i dont think anets writers want you to think to hard about the story.

Guys, watch the spoilers/add spoiler tags, please. OP said they haven't gotten past the base game's story yet. :)

I don't even know how to do that and it's propably too late now.

[Kulvar.1239]

As long as you avoid LWS3E6, it's better.

[Batel.9206]

@"Yggranya.5201" said:I don't even know how to do that and it's propably too late now.

Well, for future reference, you can mark spoilers by tagging them like so ">!" (just remove the quotation marks) and putting them on another line in your post.

! fear not this night! you will not go astray! spoiler tags are annoying! i wish there was an easier way

[Adry.7512]

The expansions basically get into race lore, and explains some elder dragon lore. Nothing of the gods is explained. Historically, nothing goes into depth nor are questions answered, you’re basically looking at it from the player perspective and learning small details as you go. The game is fun and filled with content, the story is good, but the lore is not expansive. If this is what you’re looking for, then have fun and buy all the expansions. You will have loads to do if you look for it.

[White Kitsunee.4620]

It's been good S3 onward imo.Story telling peaked in S4 but that's just because the last 2 episodes are Godlike.

[battledrone.8315]

@"dandamanno.4136" said:Story suffers from "It's the end of the world...again" syndrome that many mmo's suffer from. After a while the end of the world doesn't seem like a big deal anymore.

the low level zones were much better, it was just fighting over outposts and forts, much more realisticall mmos end game is about doomsday scenarios, after a few times you just go "yeah, yeah, lets get on with it"they arent really helping themselves by bloating the story that way, realism and immersion disappears