GW2 Story - for fuck's sake, write better
Wednesday, October 5th, 2016 08:40![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cashewWhile playing GW2, I've kind of already ranted a bit, but since in game chat box is not really conducive to writing long ass complaints on why I hate the story writing, I'm going to go into a little more detail about what's been bugging me about where the GW2 writing has been heading.
First, a little context. Guild Wars 2 billed itself as not just any other MMO. Unlike those other MMOs, GW2 is supposed to have lots of replay value and a huge part of that replay value comes from the "fully branching story line". So GW2 has a history of branding itself as THE MMO to play if you're in it for the story. This is literally how they try to convince new players to give them a whirl, because the story is personalized.
Hell, the entire story is called "Personal Story" for that very reason. The idea is that you will have a unique story that is tailored to fit the character you pick and the choices you make. The dialogue options aren't just there for flavor, they literally are supposed to change how the story proceeds.
Now, albeit, the story doesn't actually succeed in doing that and I understand. Trying to write dialogue for all the potential options and combination of choices can get out of hand very quickly. There's a reason that no matter what you choose, your mentor will always die at Claw Island. No matter if you go into a fight guns a blazing or try to sneak around, it will always result in having to confront the enemy in a final fight. You're sneaky attempts will only result in covers being blown, and going in guns a blazing never results in companion deaths. And okay, I get it, you need to bring the story back to the same starting point every so often so the options and branches remain at a manageable level. Hell, I even understand that major plot points need to be the same so that there's some level of coherency for later story writing.
But.
Here's the thing, earlier on, despite my dislike for the writing, I acknowledge that at the very least, it felt like the writers were trying. At the very least, racial dialogue is different. Even as late as Living World Season 2, depending on your race, how certain dialogues played out was very different. An Asura PC would show deference towards their own more than other races, the Sylvari PC addressed the Tree Avatar differently from a Charr PC, players were given a decision on how to reply in dialogues, that would add a little bit more personalization to the PC, even if it was completely and utterly meaningless in terms of how it affected the plot.
And you know what? It was a good thing. All the way up until LW S2, the promise to personalize the story was still there.
Look, I'm not trying to say that the only way to write a game story is to offer customization, but GW2 has billed itself on this. This is how GW2 is trying to stand out from the crowd. This is supposed to be one of the reasons to play GW2 over another MMO, because it gave you a personalized story. GW2 made its bed, and it should be held responsible for lying in it.
And all of that is why I am utterly galled at the trend that started with Heart of Thorns expansion the utter removal of personalization. What is the point of giving us dialogue choice when it doesn't actually change the dialogue? And other than the first instance of the HoT story, everything was set in stone. And not only that, every racial dialogue sounds like it was written for humans.
Why offer us the option to play multiple races only to make it utterly pointless to play them? Why would an Asura just sit around and take it when another Asura is lecturing them? Why would the Asura PC be utterly illiterate in their own racial history? Why would Taimi (Asura NPC) feel the need to dumb down her explanations for a fellow Asura?
And what's most infuriating is that all of this is actually really easy to fix.
I actually have no objection to the idea of not writing five billion optional dialogue lines that the player will probably never see, because they play through the story once and ignore everything else. However!
Since we have already established personality, which is done, the trick is to now go forward writing the story so that the PC personality is not called into question. You have so many other NPCs that you can just get them to ask the questions, thereby not putting the PC front and center.
For example: When you first arrive in Rata Novus, it's just you and Taimi. What the writers could have done was included, say, Marjory or Kasmeer, someone who has zero knowledge of Asuran culture. Now you can have the dialogue proceed as normal, only to give the part of the PC's dialogue - the stuff about asking questions about Rata Novus - to the human NPC. Have a flag check to see if the PC is Asuran. If not, have Taimi answer the questions about Rata Novus. If the PC is Asuran, then let the PC take over Taimi's lines.
What you've done here is write a single conversation, only assigned the parts of the conversation differently according to the racial make up of your PC. If they did this for all the story bits (like have another non-Sylvari take over some of the PC dialogue when yelling at Caithe for Sylvari PCs at the end of the story), then you would have still honored the player's choice and avoided having to write 5 alternate lines for every interaction.
I know MMO writing is really not exactly the cream of the crop when it comes to games, but for fuck's sake, you can do better with even just a little more of giving a damn.
First, a little context. Guild Wars 2 billed itself as not just any other MMO. Unlike those other MMOs, GW2 is supposed to have lots of replay value and a huge part of that replay value comes from the "fully branching story line". So GW2 has a history of branding itself as THE MMO to play if you're in it for the story. This is literally how they try to convince new players to give them a whirl, because the story is personalized.
Hell, the entire story is called "Personal Story" for that very reason. The idea is that you will have a unique story that is tailored to fit the character you pick and the choices you make. The dialogue options aren't just there for flavor, they literally are supposed to change how the story proceeds.
Now, albeit, the story doesn't actually succeed in doing that and I understand. Trying to write dialogue for all the potential options and combination of choices can get out of hand very quickly. There's a reason that no matter what you choose, your mentor will always die at Claw Island. No matter if you go into a fight guns a blazing or try to sneak around, it will always result in having to confront the enemy in a final fight. You're sneaky attempts will only result in covers being blown, and going in guns a blazing never results in companion deaths. And okay, I get it, you need to bring the story back to the same starting point every so often so the options and branches remain at a manageable level. Hell, I even understand that major plot points need to be the same so that there's some level of coherency for later story writing.
But.
Here's the thing, earlier on, despite my dislike for the writing, I acknowledge that at the very least, it felt like the writers were trying. At the very least, racial dialogue is different. Even as late as Living World Season 2, depending on your race, how certain dialogues played out was very different. An Asura PC would show deference towards their own more than other races, the Sylvari PC addressed the Tree Avatar differently from a Charr PC, players were given a decision on how to reply in dialogues, that would add a little bit more personalization to the PC, even if it was completely and utterly meaningless in terms of how it affected the plot.
And you know what? It was a good thing. All the way up until LW S2, the promise to personalize the story was still there.
Look, I'm not trying to say that the only way to write a game story is to offer customization, but GW2 has billed itself on this. This is how GW2 is trying to stand out from the crowd. This is supposed to be one of the reasons to play GW2 over another MMO, because it gave you a personalized story. GW2 made its bed, and it should be held responsible for lying in it.
And all of that is why I am utterly galled at the trend that started with Heart of Thorns expansion the utter removal of personalization. What is the point of giving us dialogue choice when it doesn't actually change the dialogue? And other than the first instance of the HoT story, everything was set in stone. And not only that, every racial dialogue sounds like it was written for humans.
Why offer us the option to play multiple races only to make it utterly pointless to play them? Why would an Asura just sit around and take it when another Asura is lecturing them? Why would the Asura PC be utterly illiterate in their own racial history? Why would Taimi (Asura NPC) feel the need to dumb down her explanations for a fellow Asura?
And what's most infuriating is that all of this is actually really easy to fix.
I actually have no objection to the idea of not writing five billion optional dialogue lines that the player will probably never see, because they play through the story once and ignore everything else. However!
Since we have already established personality, which is done, the trick is to now go forward writing the story so that the PC personality is not called into question. You have so many other NPCs that you can just get them to ask the questions, thereby not putting the PC front and center.
For example: When you first arrive in Rata Novus, it's just you and Taimi. What the writers could have done was included, say, Marjory or Kasmeer, someone who has zero knowledge of Asuran culture. Now you can have the dialogue proceed as normal, only to give the part of the PC's dialogue - the stuff about asking questions about Rata Novus - to the human NPC. Have a flag check to see if the PC is Asuran. If not, have Taimi answer the questions about Rata Novus. If the PC is Asuran, then let the PC take over Taimi's lines.
What you've done here is write a single conversation, only assigned the parts of the conversation differently according to the racial make up of your PC. If they did this for all the story bits (like have another non-Sylvari take over some of the PC dialogue when yelling at Caithe for Sylvari PCs at the end of the story), then you would have still honored the player's choice and avoided having to write 5 alternate lines for every interaction.
I know MMO writing is really not exactly the cream of the crop when it comes to games, but for fuck's sake, you can do better with even just a little more of giving a damn.
