GW2 Point of No Return
GW2's Living Story continues, and makes me consider the philosophy behind it. But I'll circle around to the technical aspects in a bit.
The story progresses okay in general. I was under the impression that this latest episode was the season finale, though it doesn't really feel like it to me. There's no real conclusion. If anything, it seems to be tossing fuel on the fire for upcoming developments. With an announcement due on the 24th that's widely believed to be a game expansion, I'm not surprised, but I can't say I'm exactly satisfied either.
Caithe continues to be frustratingly plot tool-ish. "We're on the same side," she insists moments after agreeing that sylvari are all creations of Mordremoth. She offers nothing that would be remotely reassuring and vanishes conveniently before you can press her for any answers. I still feel as though she is, in fact, a good guy, but the only way the writers have come up with to create doubt is to remove any opportunity to meaningfully interact with her (at least in the present, the glimses of her past are generally good). I just feels unnecessarily heavy-handed to me.
Scarlet really hasn't been addressed since early on in the season. We know pretty well what happened to her, but still have no explanation of 1) what she was actually thinking/intending at the end or 2) why she was so goddamn special in the first place. Maybe the omissions are intentional, but I find it unsatisfying.
The Pact get spanked, which I found completely predictable. When I heard talk about joining up with the fleet for an attack on Modremoth, I knew it wouldn't end well. After the campaign against Zhaitan (taking out sources of his power and minions), that felt ridiculously premature. Oh, I could see the argument that Mordremoth is newly awakened, so maybe weak, but everything I've seen in the game led me to think otherwise. If anything, killing one dragon is likely to make the others more powerful, and the extent of his reach through the ley line web shows he doesn't seem to be the least bit weak or "groggy." Nevermind that we haven't even seen Mordremoth himself - how the heck do you hope to kill him without a set target? It's foolish, though I find it moderately believable foolishness that the Pact, with other factional backing, could feel overconfident about it.
Seeing Rytlock in the cinematic was nice. Oddly, I find myself wondering more about his story right now than the Mordremoth storyline. Considering how long I wanted to get back to dragon-fighting, that says something.
Taking down the Shadow of the Dragon was... something. It's a reasonably good encounter, though has technical issues. But it wasn't really built up enough as a threat for taking it down to feel like a conclusion to anything.
Also, having played GW, I was kinda of disappointed at all the times it was reiterated in the library quests that "you're doing this ritual, but not actually undergoing Ascension." Why not?
What I am most curious about (and cautious in my expectations) is the implication that many/most sylvari are shown falling under Mordremoth's sway. That's going to be really, really hard to pull off well in the game. I can't find the reference now, but I one addressed this in regards to WoW and the Forsaken. There, Sylvanas and her followers are really positioned to be enemies of everyone, narratively, but Blizzard can't very readily put that in the game because so many players are Forsaken characters.
On one side of the scale, to make the "threat" look real, there has to be a significant amount of Mordremoth-controlled sylvari. You can't just edit the Nightmare Court because they're already "bad guys" and that wouldn't change anything. The Grove would have to change, which would seriously impact starting sylvari characters.
On the other hand, it's generally not good policy to radically change the experience of a not-insubstantial fraction of the player base. For gameplay reasons, sylvari characters have to remain available, they have to have a starter zone, you can't make all other PCs and racial zones hostile to them. All those limitations blunt the effect, making it difficult to believe the race has actually undergone any changes.
I don't know how they're going to balance that. There's great potential, but I have trouble seeing how it can be done in a way that I would find good.
Back to the technical side.
One of the fights in the library bugged on me, with the NPC just standing there and the event not progressing. That was annoying, as I had to exit out and restart the whole thing.
This was the first GW2 content patch that really made me wonder if the approach is a good idea. GW2 certainly pushes content out more quickly than, for example, WoW. But it's also content without much replayability for the most part. Southsun is a drag, and everyone I know avoids the place when they can. The Silverwastes are a bit more interesting, but don't really offer any rewards that have drawn me in, at least. And there have been a lot of story instances, but there's no real reason to play any of them more than once.
The library fights felt sloggishly boring to me, dealing with waves of uninteresting opponents. I'm glad not to do that again. The Shadow of the Dragon fight, on the other hand, had some interesting mechanics and encounter design. But the problem there is you go in with no explanation, you learn fast or you die a few times until you pick up the rhythm and details of how to use effects, and then you're done. There's really no reason to replay it. Most games would make it a repeatable encounter somehow with a reward. That might get boring, but it also means people would get more play out of the work involved.
How much time and effort went into model design and animation and crafting the level and the abilities and scripting that scene... all for something I spent maybe ten minutes with and will probably never play through again. Is that really worthwhile?
I guess as long as the company makes money, that's find for them, but that line of thinking makes me wonder if a more "traditional" approach doesn't have more merit than it's given credit for.
The story progresses okay in general. I was under the impression that this latest episode was the season finale, though it doesn't really feel like it to me. There's no real conclusion. If anything, it seems to be tossing fuel on the fire for upcoming developments. With an announcement due on the 24th that's widely believed to be a game expansion, I'm not surprised, but I can't say I'm exactly satisfied either.
Caithe continues to be frustratingly plot tool-ish. "We're on the same side," she insists moments after agreeing that sylvari are all creations of Mordremoth. She offers nothing that would be remotely reassuring and vanishes conveniently before you can press her for any answers. I still feel as though she is, in fact, a good guy, but the only way the writers have come up with to create doubt is to remove any opportunity to meaningfully interact with her (at least in the present, the glimses of her past are generally good). I just feels unnecessarily heavy-handed to me.
Scarlet really hasn't been addressed since early on in the season. We know pretty well what happened to her, but still have no explanation of 1) what she was actually thinking/intending at the end or 2) why she was so goddamn special in the first place. Maybe the omissions are intentional, but I find it unsatisfying.
The Pact get spanked, which I found completely predictable. When I heard talk about joining up with the fleet for an attack on Modremoth, I knew it wouldn't end well. After the campaign against Zhaitan (taking out sources of his power and minions), that felt ridiculously premature. Oh, I could see the argument that Mordremoth is newly awakened, so maybe weak, but everything I've seen in the game led me to think otherwise. If anything, killing one dragon is likely to make the others more powerful, and the extent of his reach through the ley line web shows he doesn't seem to be the least bit weak or "groggy." Nevermind that we haven't even seen Mordremoth himself - how the heck do you hope to kill him without a set target? It's foolish, though I find it moderately believable foolishness that the Pact, with other factional backing, could feel overconfident about it.
Seeing Rytlock in the cinematic was nice. Oddly, I find myself wondering more about his story right now than the Mordremoth storyline. Considering how long I wanted to get back to dragon-fighting, that says something.
Taking down the Shadow of the Dragon was... something. It's a reasonably good encounter, though has technical issues. But it wasn't really built up enough as a threat for taking it down to feel like a conclusion to anything.
Also, having played GW, I was kinda of disappointed at all the times it was reiterated in the library quests that "you're doing this ritual, but not actually undergoing Ascension." Why not?
What I am most curious about (and cautious in my expectations) is the implication that many/most sylvari are shown falling under Mordremoth's sway. That's going to be really, really hard to pull off well in the game. I can't find the reference now, but I one addressed this in regards to WoW and the Forsaken. There, Sylvanas and her followers are really positioned to be enemies of everyone, narratively, but Blizzard can't very readily put that in the game because so many players are Forsaken characters.
On one side of the scale, to make the "threat" look real, there has to be a significant amount of Mordremoth-controlled sylvari. You can't just edit the Nightmare Court because they're already "bad guys" and that wouldn't change anything. The Grove would have to change, which would seriously impact starting sylvari characters.
On the other hand, it's generally not good policy to radically change the experience of a not-insubstantial fraction of the player base. For gameplay reasons, sylvari characters have to remain available, they have to have a starter zone, you can't make all other PCs and racial zones hostile to them. All those limitations blunt the effect, making it difficult to believe the race has actually undergone any changes.
I don't know how they're going to balance that. There's great potential, but I have trouble seeing how it can be done in a way that I would find good.
Back to the technical side.
One of the fights in the library bugged on me, with the NPC just standing there and the event not progressing. That was annoying, as I had to exit out and restart the whole thing.
This was the first GW2 content patch that really made me wonder if the approach is a good idea. GW2 certainly pushes content out more quickly than, for example, WoW. But it's also content without much replayability for the most part. Southsun is a drag, and everyone I know avoids the place when they can. The Silverwastes are a bit more interesting, but don't really offer any rewards that have drawn me in, at least. And there have been a lot of story instances, but there's no real reason to play any of them more than once.
The library fights felt sloggishly boring to me, dealing with waves of uninteresting opponents. I'm glad not to do that again. The Shadow of the Dragon fight, on the other hand, had some interesting mechanics and encounter design. But the problem there is you go in with no explanation, you learn fast or you die a few times until you pick up the rhythm and details of how to use effects, and then you're done. There's really no reason to replay it. Most games would make it a repeatable encounter somehow with a reward. That might get boring, but it also means people would get more play out of the work involved.
How much time and effort went into model design and animation and crafting the level and the abilities and scripting that scene... all for something I spent maybe ten minutes with and will probably never play through again. Is that really worthwhile?
I guess as long as the company makes money, that's find for them, but that line of thinking makes me wonder if a more "traditional" approach doesn't have more merit than it's given credit for.
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