Guild Wars 2 MMO News, Guides, and Features at Ten Ton Hammer

Guild Wars 2 expands on the lore established in Guild Wars, but it also builds on the story with a new trilogy of books. The first of those books, Ghosts of Ascalon, introduces players to the story that sets the stage for Guild Wars 2. Ten Ton Hammer got the chance to speak with Ghosts of Ascalon co-author Jeff Grubb to learn more about the story of the book and how it folds into the lore of Guild Wars 2.

Ten Ton Hammer: Could you introduce yourself to our readers?

Jeff Grubb: My name is Jeff Grubb and I’m a game designer with ArenaNet, Guild Wars 2. I work with the content team and I am responsible for continuity, lore, some of the cinematics and basically keeping us going in the same direction being the repository and traffic cop and making sure we’re all going in the same direction at the same time.

In addition, I am the co-author of Ghosts of Ascalon, the first of our three independent Guild Wars novels for Simon and Schuster and it’s the first novel that leads us into the world of Guild Wars 2.

Ten Ton Hammer: Could you tell us a little about Ghosts of Ascalon?

Jeff Grubb: It is 250 years later and a greater danger is arising in Tyria, but the various races: the humans, charr, asura, the norn are all pursuing their own agendas and can’t see the bigger picture. And one of the things that occur before the start of our game is that the humans and the charr come to a peace.

In Guild Wars, to the old players that were human, the charr were the enemy. But now the charr will be a playable race and the two sides will be able to interact and as a result there has to be some sort of resolution to the charr/human war that’s been going on for so many centuries. And part of the story of the novel is the resolution of how they got to the cease fire that exists at the start of the game. That’s the high level story.

This is also the story of Dougal Keane, who is one of the few humans that has gone into Ascalon City, which is in the heart of charr territory and is haunted by a humungous number of ghosts and got out alive and how he deals alone with the ghosts in Ascalon and also how he deals with his personal ghosts from that previous expedition.

It’s a lot about adventuring, friends, alliances, and facing the failures of the past. Ghosts of Ascalon was written with both first-time explorers and long-time fans in mind, people who are coming to Tyria for the first time or have heard about Guild Wars or this book and thought it looked interesting. So we have to bring people in and let them understand the world. For long-term fans, which have been playing since Guild Wars Prophecies back on day one, the world has changed and we have to tell them how the world has changed and why it is the way it is.  So it is complete in and of itself. No additional war or background is really necessary. And we’re hoping that the story we’re telling here will bring people back to find out more in other books.

Ten Ton Hammer: You’ve noted in your latest Dev Diary that you had to think about lots of things like what’s served at a dinner party with the Asura and Sylvari and how the politics and justice system is in Divinity’s Reach. Is it fair to say that the canon has grown quite a bit? And have any of these changes or additions caused you to rethink how things will play out in Guild Wars 2?

Jeff Grubb: Yeah. Books and games are a different medium and they each have different strengths and challenges. I can get deep into lore and backdrop in a novel and I can blow your socks off with action and art in a game. Books and games feed upon each other and there are benefits to both. A good example is we talked about the legal system. We have very medieval-type of castles and farms and a very traditional fantasy feel in the human areas, but the legal system functions differently at the high levels than at the low levels. In other words, bringing charges against a minister, who is one of the rulers, is very different than charges brought against a supposed tomb robber who is originally from Ascalon but has been living in Ebonhawke. So we’re looking at a lot of depth to the world as far as how we interact with it. In the real world we have different things that apply at different levels. We found the same thing applies within our fantasy world.