Zero Punctuation: Guild Wars 2
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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I seen the story from the kids but as far as I remember they glossed over bits but if you say it was everything I'll take your word for it. Although it was the main bits.2xDouble said:
So the game play is already part of the story. The only argument people make for consolidating story and gameplay is to make choice which affect the world which does happen in Guild Wars 2. There is plenty of little bits told between Dynamic Events. If you actually follow the chain rather than do 1 part and run off. Of course you will experience no story and find an arguably soulless world that way.Loki_The_Good said:
Ok firstly, that was exactly my point with FF XIII. It was not bad because it linear it was badly done that was the exact point I meant to get across. I for one did not like FF X but I can admit it has a good story despite being unashamedly linear. Same here in a way Guild Wars 2's story is not bad because it isn't immediately obvious and thrown on top of you. People who are interested in the story miss it because they literally run by. I mean people literally run by, over, around and under everything that will tell them stuff about the story. The aforementioned play is a good example of this among just clicking on stuff you can to see if anything pops up.
When I actually listened to the game I starting hearing amazing conversations. There is a charr engineer that throws cows at some other Charr Guarding a tower and a story of a Norn who killed a Drake Broodmother with said Broodmother's hatchling. Sure its a little fucked up but I just kept running by everything I wouldn't hear this. Passive mobs like Moa have something like 2 or 3 minutes of unique animation before they go into a loop and there is plenty more than just that. This to me seems like someone walking through a forest and complaining that they see no animals when they're shouting and talking loudly. You'll still have a nice walk but you won't see any wildlife.
My personal preferred story-communication-method is the voice-over-from-an-absent-character-whilst-I'm-doing-something-else (as used in Halo and Borderlands).GrandmaFunk said:
Ideally, the voice-overs should occurred while I'm travelling somewhere (or doing some other boring-but-necessary activity), instead of when I'm being dog-piled. But I'll admit there's something really fun and frantic about trying to catch snatches of important dialogue whilst holding off a robot army with nothing but an underpowered SMG and bad language (which pretty much describes my Borderlands 2 experience thus far).
Another fairly acceptable method is what my boyfriend and I call the "exposition walk" (most notably used by Gears of War). This is when the character you're controlling slows down to a dawdle in order to have an important plot conversation (either with another character or with someone over a radio). You still haven't completely abandoned the game for a cutscene, but it does stop you running into the next homicidal-insect battle before you've been given your marching orders.
Well, that was surprisingly mild. Me, I'm really enjoying it, though I can see the obvious flaws in the story and mechanics.
Around level 20 I came at a bridge that a group of players was protecting from centaurs. Only at any one time there were just half a dozen centaurs attacking and 50 players defending. Yah...
Around level 20 I came at a bridge that a group of players was protecting from centaurs. Only at any one time there were just half a dozen centaurs attacking and 50 players defending. Yah...
Soon to be seen on the back of GW2 boxes:
"probably deserves some kind of medal"
Yahtzee, The Escapist
"probably deserves some kind of medal"
Yahtzee, The Escapist
I want to play this game really bad since I've seen the first gameplay video; but I'm still short of dosh, and 60 bucks for a digital version doesn't add. Thank Jim this game doesn't require subscriptions.
In the first Guild Wars the level cap was only 20, and you got a skill point each level to buy a new skill. Once a character reached 20 they still get a skill point earned every time they would have gained a new level. GW1 had an very large number of skills to unlock, so that's why they did that. But not all players cared to unlock more skills than the core ones they needed for their favourite build.Raioken18 said:
So after months, or years, there were characters running around with hundreds of unused skill points.
I think GW2 threw in using skill points to buy special things like legendary weapon recipes, and whatever else, as a way to use up any surplus of skill points long-time players would have accumulated. A number of us who are fans of GW1 were glad the skill point earning after level cap was kept. It makes buying new skills in future expansions less stressful, because players who like unlocking every skill can save up their points in anticipation.
I find it strange how the people giving this game the most ire are the ones that haven't played it... I'm loving it , and having played the whole story of guild wars 1 and one of the expansions (factions) there is so much story there, but you do have to look for it - even in the human area, which as mentioned is the blandest of all the starting areas there is a battle raging between the centaurs and the humans, terrorist criminal groups attacking the city (or maybe that was just with my origin story), and so many more little battles going on, and if you talk to the NPCs then you get all the information.
I spent an hour or so wandering around the Norn starting town of Hoelbrook just listening in on conversations and chatting to people, listening to the wolf shaman telling the children of the wolf clan a story about the importance of the pack, wandering up to the shrine to the dead spirits and seeing the grave mementos of a god whose people gave their lives to protect the Norn and it was genuinely moving to see this out the way shrine that is so different to most games where the story is just there to move you to the next place to kill stuff, the characters, races and places are all fleshed out and intriguing.
I'd suggest people head over to Shamus Young's blog for a more detailed breakdown of the real pros and cons of the game
I spent an hour or so wandering around the Norn starting town of Hoelbrook just listening in on conversations and chatting to people, listening to the wolf shaman telling the children of the wolf clan a story about the importance of the pack, wandering up to the shrine to the dead spirits and seeing the grave mementos of a god whose people gave their lives to protect the Norn and it was genuinely moving to see this out the way shrine that is so different to most games where the story is just there to move you to the next place to kill stuff, the characters, races and places are all fleshed out and intriguing.
I'd suggest people head over to Shamus Young's blog for a more detailed breakdown of the real pros and cons of the game
Nice review. And the ratio of insults to compliments was actually slightly smaller than one, so I think I call that a positive review too. And as much as I like GW2, I agree with the disconnect between the uber-evil elder dragons and how much random stuff you end up doing. If I hadn't played Eye of the North and been following this game's announcements I wouldn't have known they existed, much less how important they're supposed to be. Though humans are the worst of all in that respect, they really do have you do 50% farmwork in the starting area. Even if it's mechanically the same as helping with Asura experiments, at least the latter sound more fun.
Also, I'm suprised to see Yathzee pick the humans. I'd have pegged him for Asura, the little snarky bastards who feel they're smarter than everyone else and let them know at every occasion.
Also, I'm suprised to see Yathzee pick the humans. I'd have pegged him for Asura, the little snarky bastards who feel they're smarter than everyone else and let them know at every occasion.
He didn't see a clown, but he did see the rest of the contributors doing Gangnam Style. Close enough?GenGenners said:
I see you have a bit of a misquote moment there but on we go. I'd like to say that is an awesome way to start but quests and Guild Wars should do it but that already happens. There is a Dynamic event in the second human area where a kid runs up to you and asks you to save his Mother from bandits. That is just one example there are others and all escorts give you a bit of why and what they are ferrying from place to place and what you have to protect them from. So this is there. If you are the first you get to start it and etc. On the other thing I'm not sure if that happens outside of the personal story as something similar happens in the Sylvari story.Loki_The_Good said:
On the investment a lot people miss out on the things that invest you in the story because they are to rush through it to reach this magically land of 80 and endgame. That is not really the true end game of Guild Wars 2 but you get good stuff there. The only arcs that could have used more exposition to invest you in the characters are the Order arcs.
Er... I think you've experienced a quoting error. I didn't say any of that.Loki_The_Good said:
All I can say is that if you're interested in the story you'll have to work for it a wee bit more than you might be used to. It's just not thrown at you in a conventional way. Hang around and listen to conversations. Read things. Don't pop out of your personal story as soon as it's done. Talk to people before you go, they always have extra stuff to say, often good stuff. It's not that difficult, just don't barrel through content. Stop and smell the roses.Loki_The_Good said:
Most of what you'll miss if you miss anything is backstory. The going forward necessary to know stuff is relayed to you in the more conventional way so you won't miss it.
1: MMO's on release almost never have end-game content, and guild wars 2 by design can't go the "raid" route because it's trying to avoid ridiculous gear ceilings.
2: GW2 isn't what Arena Net tried to sell. It's not a revolution, and it's not exactly the next sliced bread. The combat can still get boring, and there's still plenty of grinds.
3: On the other hand it's still the best MMO we've seen since WoW. This is literally the game Warhammer Online wished it was however many years ago.
It's got flaws- there's still no real sense of impact in the game, and you never really figure out what the hell's the context of everything unless you uh....I don't actually know. There's still a lot I can't figure out about the game's story and I'm at 80.
The game lets you hot-swap weapons for most classes, but doesn't let you hot-swap gear which is irritating because what makes sword and board work as a survivability build clashes with what makes a beater build with a 2-handed sword work.
The game's LFG system is MIA. The dungeons are damn fun, but when I think that the last MMO I played this seriously was WoW it's kind of depressing that I'm taking such a step backwards and going back to going to the zone the instance is in and crossing my fingers that I'll find a group.
The crafting system was kind of half-asssed too. It's not exactly fluid when after completely clearing a zone and doing my damnedest to collect every single crafting node along the way I'm typically about half way through that particular material, while the zones are stepping up to the next level.
2: GW2 isn't what Arena Net tried to sell. It's not a revolution, and it's not exactly the next sliced bread. The combat can still get boring, and there's still plenty of grinds.
3: On the other hand it's still the best MMO we've seen since WoW. This is literally the game Warhammer Online wished it was however many years ago.
It's got flaws- there's still no real sense of impact in the game, and you never really figure out what the hell's the context of everything unless you uh....I don't actually know. There's still a lot I can't figure out about the game's story and I'm at 80.
The game lets you hot-swap weapons for most classes, but doesn't let you hot-swap gear which is irritating because what makes sword and board work as a survivability build clashes with what makes a beater build with a 2-handed sword work.
The game's LFG system is MIA. The dungeons are damn fun, but when I think that the last MMO I played this seriously was WoW it's kind of depressing that I'm taking such a step backwards and going back to going to the zone the instance is in and crossing my fingers that I'll find a group.
The crafting system was kind of half-asssed too. It's not exactly fluid when after completely clearing a zone and doing my damnedest to collect every single crafting node along the way I'm typically about half way through that particular material, while the zones are stepping up to the next level.