A little less conversation, a little more action.
I've been playing a bit of Final Fantasy XIV recently with a friend of mine, and since I approach any game I'm playing casually/socially somewhat differently from those in my regular rotation I haven't been writing about that here. That's not to say I won't add FFXIV into the mix - I will, and perhaps sooner rather than later because there's a lot to say about it. I'm also interested in seeing how the game strikes me when viewed through the 2 hours a day/24 hours per run schedule I apply to the other MMOs I play.
The reason I mention this now is that upon returning to Guild Wars 2 I quickly ran into a situation that contrasts vividly with my recent experience of FFXIV. That's a game that never uses one word when a hundred will do, and so when my GW2 character was sent as part of a story mission to meet with the representatives of the three Orders of Tyria I couldn't help but think of the (many) times Final Fantasy XIV has set me similar tasks.
However this is Guild Wars 2, a game whose approach to narrative is best summarised as yeah, story is fine I guess, but wouldn't you rather be killing centaurs? The representatives of the three Orders were all in the one place and kept their respective speeches short and to the point. GW2 is nothing if not concise, and as always the story serves the gameplay and not the other way around. At the end of this stage of the personal story I was asked to choose which of the three Orders I would join in order to open up future activities, and I'd learned all I needed to know about them in bite-size chunks in between the action.
The narrative style of this game doesn't aspire to the lofty heights of The Lord of the Rings or even Game of Thrones. Introspective dialogue and drama is kept to a minimum and I'm much more reminded of '80s fantasy films like Krull and Hawk the Slayer, or perhaps of Xena. I'm not saying the writing is bad, because it really isn't. It's lively, tonally consistent and often funny, and it doesn't give the impression that it's trying to be anything other than that.
It's also extremely upbeat. "Don't wait to be asked, just jump in and help" said the first scout I encountered back in Queensdale, and that's as good a summary as could be asked for not only of the gameplay but of how the player character is defined. When an NPC in this game asks for help it's in the expectation that the character will leap at the chance to do so, and they are rarely disappointed. Coming from SWTOR, where the player character often has to be literally talked into doing something, the selflessness and can-do attitude of the protagonist of GW2 is actually kind of charming.
With the latest chapter of the personal story complete I'm now entering the Harathi Hinterlands, which is further than I've ever taken a character in this game. So from here on everything is uncharted territory for me. I'm looking forward to it, or as my character often says in her relentlessly enthusiastic way, "A new place to explore - can't wait!"
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