The story is weak

   
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Many journalists, including Massively's, have already criticized the poor storytelling in GW2. Part of this is that people have stated (correctly) that the voice acting ranges from acceptable to bad; I'm not sure of exactly why, since there's top-shelf talent in the cast, especially among Destiny's Edge. Kari Wahlgren does a pretty good job as Caithe, but Troy Baker comes off as a pastiche of previous roles, and Steve Blum just sounds like he's growling his way through Rytlock without a great deal of effort. And once you move past the main five NPCs, things get worse, despite the fact that there are still several other excellent actors and actresses in the lot.

But let's leave that to one side; I can assume that the actors weren't given good direction or pacing. There are games that do voice well and games that don't. A more fundamental problem is the story itself.

The first problem is that the emotional arc of your character concludes after the second arc is finished. From that point onward you are, essentially, a tagalong; the story is affecting other people, and you're mostly just along for the ride. A good part of this is due to the segmented nature of the game's quests, as every 10 levels or so you kick over to another arc, treating a story as if it's a sequence of blocks stuck together instead of an evolving whole. Events from one chunk don't really play into the next chunk.   buy or sell GW2 items

My human Thief joined the Order of Whispers. First order of business? Protect a human noblewoman to keep Kryta in the hands of the royalty. This meant I got a crash course on Krytan politics and history, despite the fact that I had just finished doing a whole chunk of work for the Queen and had been right there investigating a conspiracy that petered out halfway through. But that was another arc, so nothing that happened then counted, and I had to pretend as if I'd never heard of these people or places before.

Of course, by that point I already had stopped having a say in the storyline. The story gets suborned by the antics of Destiny's Edge and whatever pet NPC is your current companion, while none of the NPCs you interacted with before is ever seen again. It's hard to feel much emotional impact when characters die or leave because they're being treated as setpieces rather than actual individuals with wants or desires. Your friends from the start of the game aren't relevant later on, not even as a reminder of where you come from.

The actual plot that the game wants to tell -- Destiny's Edge reforming against the background of fighting Zhaitan -- is handled competently but without any flair. Since all of these characters are NPCs, we don't get any context or emotional insight into these various characters. They're stereotypes without any depth as presented. The game doesn't give you a chance to understand why Rytlock and Logan dislike each other; they just do. Nor do we see emotional growth take place that brings them back together. Instead, the plot mashes them back into a single group because the climax is coming up.

And the player character is reduced to playing step-and-fetch-it alongside better-known heroes. Not since Britney's Dance Beat has a game so succeeded in letting a player feel as if his or her best efforts are enough to earn the right of being second fiddle.   cheap Wars 2 gold

It's possible that I'm being too hard on the story's content, but that just leads to pointing out that what the story is supposed to do -- guide the player to level-appropriate zones -- is also not well-handled. Nor is the story compelling enough to keep a player following along, which is a cardinal sin in what should be driving you forward. It's a great idea that doesn't pan out in execution; whether that's because the execution is bad or the idea itself is a poor one is left as an exercise for the reader.


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