From what we saw in the Beta Weekend Event, Guild
Wars 2
is a very big, complex game. I come from an Epic PvE
background - both Star Wars: the Old
Republic
and the
Lord of the Rings Online
center around grand-scale stories with
world-changing events and legendary battles. GW2 promises
the same thing, but what it delivers is very different from either of these.

The Narrative

The PvE in Guild Wars 2 is centered around the "personal story,"
which has a rough equivalent in Star Wars: The Old Republic's class
stories
and the Lord of the Rings Online's epic books.
The GW2 personal story is, in some ways, more refined than either of these
equivalents because it is tailored to the specific character.

GW2 Sylvari Ranger

What's this Sylvari's story? The Guild Wars 2 personal story system will reveal it.

In SWTOR, the class story is a one-size-fits-all narrative.
It progresses the same regardless of the character's background, race or
advanced class selection - a Cyborg Juggernaut gets the same story as a
Pureblood Sith Marauder.

LotRO's epic books are even more generic. Everybody gets the
same story, beginning to end, with only minor variations here and there. A
Hunter will get a different vision from Galadriel at the conclusion of Volume
II Book 6 than, say, a Guardian or Captain, but getting to that particular
chapter follows the exact same path regardless of class and race.

In GW2, there is a lot more personalization, based on character background
decisions made during character creation. For example, the character I rolled
for the beta weekend was a Norn Warrior, a brutish thug who, according to the
selections I made during his creation, got black-out drunk at a moot and ended
up stealing a siege weapon and taking it for a joyride. And that's the story I
played out - a medieval-warrior version of "Dude, Where's My Car?"

The Style

Style-wise, GW2 falls somewhere between the brilliant voice-acted cut scene
dialogues of SWTOR and the rather archaic "wall of text" quest bestowals and
turn-ins of LotRO.

In SWTOR, nearly every mission involves some kind of dialogue, with branching
decision trees and multiple possible outcomes. These dialogues are fully
voiced and animated. You watch the characters move around and do things just
like they would in a movie. This is one of the major selling-points of SWTOR,
and it is done very well.

LOTRO Riders of Rohan scenery
Guild Wars 2 Sylvari - The Grove

A scene from LotRO's Riders of Rohan expansion (right), and Guild Wars 2's Sylvari city, The Grove (left).

LotRO uses a much older, tried-and-true quest system: talk to the NPC with
the ring over his head, read the (sometimes very long) page of motivations for
killing ten rats, click Accept. This has been the MMO standard for many years,
and though it is now really showing its age, it's still perfectly adequate.
Especially for LotRO - it is much easier to keep with the style and tone of
the Professor using the written word.

GW2 is kind of a hybrid of these two systems. The personal story is delivered
in installments which are fully voiced, but the cut scenes are much, much
simpler than those of SWTOR. What you get is two characters facing one another
on a painterly background, talking about what's happening. You don't make
decisions in these dialogues, you just watch the movie. Occasionally, the cut
scene will inform you of a decision you have to make - for example, do you
tell the army leader you want to set up an ambush, or that you wish to stage a
frontal assault? - but these decisions are made via clicking on text boxes
with no animated voice overs.

It's more "current" than LotRO's old-timey text boxes, but not as dynamic as
SWTOR's "choose your adventure" type dialogues. And this is only for the
personal story - the generic landscape quests are delivered via text boxes...
or, in the case of dynamic events, they appear automatically on your tracker
when you get near the area in which they are happening, with no associated
dialogue of any kind. Dynamic events, however, are not part of the
storytelling, and are a topic for another discussion.

The Characters and Tone

What epic Player versus Environment gameplay really boils down to is
memorable characters.

LotRO uses iconic characters from Tolkien's universe to tell its stories. The
characters that do not come directly from Tolkien often feel as though they do
- the Dunedain rangers of the Grey Company are not really given a lot of
face-time in the novels, but the LotRO NPC versions really seem to belong in
that world. Players rub elbows with some very important people, and the
stories they forge feel almost as epic and meaningful as the adventures of the
Fellowship of the Ring.

SWTOR draws from a different well: rather than using a set of established,
iconic characters (excluding Revan, of course), it uses the iconic setting and
builds memorable characters within that framework. The NPCs are occasionally
memorable because they are archetypical - Sith Lords are universally
despicable tyrants, Jedi are universally compassionate Lawful-Goods. Some
NPCs, like my bro Khem Val or my other bro Malavai Quinn, are memorable just
because they are so very well-written. The key, really, is that it is all more
or less consistent - everything feels like it belongs.

Star Wars: The Old Republic smuggler

Behind every good smuggler there's a great story.

GW2 has no massive Intellectual Property to draw from, and is a kind of gonzo
mish-mash of weird. Each of the non-human races can be summed up in 3 words:

Charr - militaristic demon cats
Norn - giant deathmetal dwarves
Sylvari - tree elf furries
Asura - Manga Yoda gnomes

This is further complicated by the addition quasi-steampunk elements to the
typical fantasy fare. You have your industry-standard sword-swinging Warriors,
magic-flinging Elementalists, bow-stringing Rangers, and gun-slinging
Engineers who drop (apparently) steam-powered artillery on the battlefield and
huck grenades. Also you can buy cosmetic aviator sunglasses.

And because the Guild Wars 2 universe is already so over-the-top, the NPCs
come across as, well, rather bland. I don't mean this as a criticism - the
interaction of all these weird elements works in a quirky and entertaining
way, but the NPCs need to be a little bit tame in order for the player to have
something to relate to.

Of course, part of that is me coming at this setting with essentially zero
knowledge of the universe, and only reaching level 21 over the course of the
beta event. My character never got to see elder dragons or the other epic
high-level stuff, and I never played the original Guild Wars. People who are
familiar with the major players in the original Guild Wars, and in the books
and such built around that universe, will have a very different perspective.

GW2 Norn

The Norn in Guild Wars 2 - Giant death metal dwarves? You be the judge.

Apparently, my Norn character met famous heroes of significant importance to
the lore, quite early on in his career. They were exactly as over-the-top and
ramped-up as everything else in the game - larger than life, twice as ugly,
and infinitely more likely to wear spike-covered armor and use a giant sword
-  and failed to make a lasting impression on me. But the same could happen to
a player trying out LotRO for the first time who has never read the novels or
seen the movies and has no idea who Strider is. Or to a SWTOR player who never
played Knights of the Old Republic and has no idea who Revan is.

Ultimately, it's unfair to compare the Guild Wars IP to Star Wars or Lord of
the Rings. Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are monolithic and have had decades
to build up massive cult followings. Guild Wars has only been around since
2005, and though it is one of the top ten best-selling games of all time, it
has nowhere near the cultural saturation of the older, bigger properties.

Going in with basically no expectations, but coming from a tradition of
strong storytelling, I found the GW2 system of storytelling to be a bit
jarring. The familiar elements combined with the bizarre pastiche of the
setting kind of blindsided me at first, but once I started to embrace the
craziness and stopped comparing it to the venerable, established IPs I was
used to, it got a lot more interesting.


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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