In Divinity's Reach there's one rule for the rich and well connected, and another for the 'common' criminal. That my character is all for this is, intentionally or not, deeper characterisation than might be expected from Guild Wars 2.
In the run up to the release of GW2 I recall Arenanet talking up various ways in which this game would differ from other MMOs, and one of those ways would be that GW2 would not have the quest givers that are so common to games in this genre.
I suppose that's true, though the way that the to-do list for each Heart just pops up on the screen when you enter the area is a bit of a cheat. GW2 does have quest givers, it just skips over the bits where the player has to actually go and talk to them to obtain new quests and to hand in completed ones. That happens off-screen, so to speak.
As initially jarring as it is, it's something I can get used to. There are MMOs that are so well written that the quest text is a pleasure to read and/or listen to, like City of Heroes or Secret World Legends, and there are MMOs where a degree of long windedness in the prose style is part of the setting, like Lord of the Rings Online. There are also MMOs - too many MMOs - that simply say too much while conveying very little of interest or relevance. This seems to happen a lot in fantasy MMOs...
"Ho, adventurer. I, William Waddle of Wallingword, merchant trader of fine Simbrian Silks and Galdian Gold, have need of your services. I have to send this consignment to my brother-in-law, Jambo Joop of the City of Framble on the Coast of Ka'pa'Too and before I do so I need to wrap them in the pelts of ten Gargle Badgers that can be found in the Valley of Grok to the south. Can you aid me in this task, adventurer?"
In Guild Wars 2 it's more like...
"Centaurs are attacking from the south! Help us drive them back!"
There's an admirable lack of pretension to the writing in this game. The story and the setting are painted in broad strokes and background chatter among the NPCs delivers a lot of information that would be included in the quest text in other MMOs. Even the region descriptions that the scouts provide, which are perhaps the closest the game comes to info dumps, are models of brevity. There's a lot of background to the world of GW2, but the game isn't trying to fit all of it into every conversation.
GW2 doesn't aspire to the lofty style of much of the genre and something else that emphasises this is the dialogue, and the accents in which that dialogue is delivered. The game eschews Ye Olde Englishe in favour of a more natural sounding and modern conversational tone, and the effect of this is further underlined by the american accents of the voice acting.
I'm genuinely curious as to whether this was a conscious decision on the part of Arenanet to move away from the tendency of the fantasy genre - in print, in film and television, and in games - to draw heavily upon british and european accents, or if it was just that Arenanet are a US based developer. Either way it works, and works well.
As games come ever closer to levels of cinematic realism that would have been unimaginable not so long ago it's obvious that some developers succumb to the temptation to make films instead of games, or at least try to. This is more prevalent in singleplayer games, but it's not unheard of in MMOs.
Guild Wars 2 isn't one of those MMOs. The story serves the gameplay and not vice-versa, and it generally fits in well with the style of the game. It doesn't always work - sometimes a line of
dialogue will come across as a bit too contemporary and so becomes
unintentionally funny, and the exposition can slip all the way from
concise to inadequate, leaving certain locations feeling underdeveloped - but even the statically staged conversation scenes, framed against painterly backdrops like a theatre production, have their own charm.
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