Out of the loop

The storytelling in Guild Wars 2 is at its best when it's not trying to tell a story.

I've spent a lot of this run doing the personal story, which I am now going to refer to as the main story, because that's a more accurate description of what it is - GW2's equivalent of the MSQ in Final Fantasy XIV, the Epic in Lord of the Rings Online or the class stories in Star Wars The Old Republic.

As I've said in previous posts, a lot of the story doesn't work. What's interesting is why it doesn't work, and I think this has a lot to do with how playing through the main story is so at odds with the rest of the Guild Wars 2 experience.

I've talked before about the core loop of this game - enter a new zone, complete Hearts while checking off points of interest and vistas, dive into events as you come across them if you're in the mood to do so, repeat. While it can get a little mechanical at times it's extremely well done and keeps things moving at a quick pace. By contrast at this point the main story serves up one instance after another, of varying length but frequently drawn out by an extra wave or three of Risen. Can I just point out that the Risen are really uninteresting opponents? I'd sooner fight centaurs.

Of course there's nothing forcing me to follow the story through right now, but I've come this far so I might as well see where it ends. I'm level 80 so what else am I going to do? Head to a lvl 1-10 zone and feed some cows?

Few of these encounters are challenging and the NPCs who accompany you on most of them seem significantly more resilient than their counterparts in the open world. I had to walk away from the my PC during one escort quest to take a phone call and yes, when I returned and caught up with the pack animal I'd been escorting it was dead and needed to be revived, but my allies were still bashing away at the Risen around it. In another instance they took 90% of the boss's health while I was fighting some adds, having barely noticed that the boss was there.

So compare this with an experience I had in the open world while travelling toward the next stage of the story when I came across an in progress event: a Pact camp had been overrun by the Risen - and I do mean overrun, in that there were about a dozen dead NPCs waiting to be revived when I arrived. I dived into that battle and had a hell of a fight until a couple of other players showed up and the odds turned in our favor.

It was fun: a proper battle and not a faux epic scripted sequence, and while I probably spent longer on it than I have on any of the big battles in the story, it didn't feel as long or as predictable. I wasn't counting the waves of enemies and wondering when the boss would show up, and I knew that if I was really in over my head and fighting an unwinnable battle I could retreat at any time and go and find something else to do.

The tone of the main story is also wildly inconsistent. GW2's use of incidental overheard conversations is really good - indirect environmental storytelling that's second only to that of City of Heroes. However the same style of dialogue that works so well in passing can become really obnoxious when you have to listen to it in a scripted sequence. It doesn't help that some characters are playing the desperate battle against ultimate evil stuff very straight while the rest are rolling out broad racial stereotypes that work a lot better as snippets of background conversation than as extended banter in between the fights.

(It was nice in one instance to see my Skritt allies again, and I wish they'd stuck around longer, because they said their hellos and then got on with the task at hand, whereas so many of my other allies in the Pact never shut up.)

In the past I've affectionately mocked GW2 for its perfunctory story telling and the way the open world constantly jumps from one Thing To Do to another, but the main story shows what happens when the game does attempt to tell a big story full of epic encounters. It also shows that the open world of Guild Wars 2 is the best thing about the game.

Also... a note to game designers: if you're designing a boss fight that may go on for some time, please give said boss more than one line of dialogue.

"I sustain Zhaitan and Zhaitan makes me strong. I sustain Zhaitan and Zhaitan makes me strong. I sustain Zhaitan and Zhaitan makes me strong. I sustain Zhaitan..."

 Yes, I know. I heard you the first fifty times you said it.