Editorial – Guild Wars 2 Personal Story

For this blog post I decided to put up a short editorial I wrote in order to get things started. Read on!

Guild Wars 2’s personal story pushes the image of a hero. You are the centrepiece of the story. Although your hero might be somewhat of a goody, too shoes, the story succeeds in drawing you in and encouraging you to complete the objectives that are set out. You want to save your best friend’s father. You want to destroy the Ascalonian ghosts with your newly invented weapon. You want to claim back that war horn heirloom that was stolen from you.

Of course, this isn’t always the case. Some of the racial stories are not for everyone. This was clear from spooling through the forums during the first Beta Weekend Event. Most notably was the uproar over the Norn storyline. I can understand some people’s concerns here though. The Norn characters do need some improved dialogue. I often found myself rolling my eyes in midst of a conversation between my hero and some hefty Norn I didn’t care about as they bantered about…. Well… nothing! All they did was spout meaningless cliché lines and repeat what each other said. I was left quite bored of the extra characters. Eir Stegalkin seemed to be the only character with a little bit of life in her, but this was limited. However, once the arc progressed to be concerned with the heirloom I lost in a bet, things picked up. I can only hope that things pick up further along in the Norn story as we get further into the content. And they probably will. I trust ArenaNet there.

The Charr storyline was a lot more riveting and immersive. My Iron Legion Charr turned out to be developing a new advanced ghost killing weapon called the Ghostbore. Of course, I was dying to test

it out. To my greater excitement, the Blood and the Ash Legions wanted to make it into a greater killing weapon using either a huge turret or droppable mini turrets. A fantastic opportunity to see the tension between Legions. The story really made me feel the centre of attention.

Obviously, Arenanet have chosen a certain direction for the storyline of Guild Wars 2. It’s your atypical Hero story. This has both pros and cons associated with it. You can’t please everyone. Personally, I am happy with the direction they have taken although it would not be my favourite. It has its problems; dialogue and arc progression are still choppy. We will have to see if the story can live up to the games that have come before it. I look forward to finding out!

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