Living Story 2 My thoughts (Spoilers if you haven't done it, sort of ish)

[Humor.5763]

Hello all,

 

So I finally proceeded on with one of my characters through the story, in order as I wanted to go, Living Story 2 (don't own the first one, nor was around much through the first season), and I guess I'd like to share my thoughts.

 

So, before going into Living Story 2, I did the whole recap, to Scarlet Briar, and honestly, it didn't really explain a whole lot, or I was supposed to do some reading, which I clearly don't do enough of, because the "4 new heroes", Taimi, Keesmar, Marjory, and Braham, I had absolutely no clue who they were, and why on earth they were traveling with me, they just kind of existed.

 

In the beginning of Living Story 2, I found myself (Story wise), incredibly bored, as mentioned before, not a clue who any of these characters were, I didn't really care for any of them because no backstories were actually given to me (again could have needed to read). There were hardly any cutscenes in the beginning, and going from core Guild Wars 2 with voice overs, and cinematics through almost everything that was in the game was something I was used to, and something I enjoyed seeing. Sure, the characters didn't have much in terms of animation in core Guild Wars 2, but it was refreshing to sit back, and just enjoy the show, plus I really was, and still am a fan of the motion art that plays in the background while characters talked.

 

This time around, it almost felt like the main character (i.e; ME), felt like a complete mute, having absolutely no voice over this time around, and having to read through a bunch of stuff I didn't care to read, because after I had skipped everything, the voice-overs more or less summed it up after I skipped through the dialogue. Not too sure what really happened there, voice actor quit? Too much money to keep multiple main voice actors aboard? Like I said, it just kind of felt bland, and I found myself skipping a LOT of the dialogue just to get to the end, so I could do something. I was no longer watching, and enjoying something, I was working, to get to the fighting, which honestly did NOT feel like a break I needed, or even wanted, I just wanted to get it over with.

 

As the story progressed, I finally decided to start reading some of the quests again, and found myself more interested in it, right around the time Taimi started to run away with her invention, soon afterwards being ambushed by the inquest, I'm not sure why that was the point I decided to care, maybe it's because it was the point I finally stopped traveling between the cave every 10-20 minutes to check up on her, and the story actually progressed.

 

Soon afterwards came the "Summit", which I still don't understand, and probably missed something huge from the first living story, because again, nothing was really explained, and everyone was just questioning "Why should we help? We need to protect our own people". This made very little sense as to why they were questioning this, everyone had already fought off a great "Evil" once before "Zhaitan", so why would they question themselves again? The threats they speak of were there before Zhaitan was defeated, and still everyone more or less agreed to help, granted majority of the work was from the "Pact" I suppose, however, all races are tied somehow to the pact, and had to spare personel in some which way or another. The whole Summit meeting felt like a waste of time, and again, it was just something I wanted to get through fast, I did "read" all of it, key word "Read", again, something which i felt would have been so much more enjoyable if the main characters voice actors stayed on board, and could be something I could watch, and enjoy, but no, it was reading, and basically having the main characters response to everyone of there questions be, "We've done this before, we can do it again!", and having the Summits response be like, "Okay, good enough for me, let's send in troops again!". It's almost like the writers, and whoever was working on this portion wanted to see it done rather quickly too, that's just how boring it was.

 

Throughout the almost half of the Living Story 2, I was wondering, "What the hell happened to the 4 main characters, Rytlock, Eir, Caithe, Logan, and Trahaerne (as a fifth)", I almost thought I missed something major in Living Story 1, because Logan, and Treahaerne didn't show up until near the end of Living Story 2, I thought maybe they were dead or something, I know not a lotta people would care for either of those characters, but still, they were there throughout all of the Core Game, and suddenly, just no where to be seen. It was really odd.

 

I think I really started to enjoy the story, when the main characters started to show up again, it was no longer, "Hey, let's go on an adventure random people who I know nothing about!", back to, "Oh hey we killed Zhaitan together, if anyone can bring down Mordremoth, it's probably this badass group that did something like it before". It almost feels like, ArenaNet, or whoever wrote the story realized just how much nobody cared for these new characters, and decided to bring back the old ones, that people actually cared about, who actually had backstories (again, new characters were probably mentioned somewhere, but not from what I've seen). It also felt like the main character (Me), was trying to replace Trahaerne, and Destiny's edge throughout the entire story. The main Character (Me), is now Trahaerne, Rox, is Rytlock, Braham is Eir, Taimi is Zojja, and Kasmeer, and Marjory, well, I know more about Kasmeer than I do Marjory, at least from Countess Anise's perspective, nothing was really mentioned about Marjory, her sister who no one cared about either (Belinda) died, and her soul was infused with her sword, which then Marjory took, and BAM, she's a Reaper now, that's about what I got out of it, other than she's Kasmeer's "Lover", at least I think that's what's happening between those two.

 

I think the real fun to be had here in Living Story 2, was playing through the eye's of Caithe. Cutscene's started to come back, I could sit back and enjoy stuff, and playing through Caithe's story actually gave me a way more in depth story about her character, so much so, that I actually wanted to keep playing as her, and find out a heck of a lot more about the Sylvari (my favorite race).

 

Overall, the story went from boring me to sleep, and just in general swapping to play different characters, to something that has me interested to see what lies ahead of me in Heart of Thorns. I'm guessing the Main character wont' have voice acting still, so... I'm not setting my hopes too high.

 

Anyways these are just my thoughts on Living Story 2. The ending leading into Heart of Thorns was entertaining, I'd love to see a more in depth look at the main characters through their eyes. It kind of feels like maybe ArenaNet tried to tell their stories through the dungeons a little bit in Core Guild Wars 2, but it failed horribly, and they wanted to test something new out, which was fantastic, if they wanna replace dungeons for stuff like that, I'd totally be down for it.

[maddoctor.2738]

> @"Humor.5763" said:

> This time around, it almost felt like the main character (i.e; ME), felt like a complete mute, having absolutely no voice over this time around, and having to read through a bunch of stuff I didn't care to read, because after I had skipped everything, the voice-overs more or less summed it up after I skipped through the dialogue. Not too sure what really happened there, voice actor quit? Too much money to keep multiple main voice actors aboard? Like I said, it just kind of felt bland, and I found myself skipping a LOT of the dialogue just to get to the end, so I could do something. I was no longer watching, and enjoying something, I was working, to get to the fighting, which honestly did NOT feel like a break I needed, or even wanted, I just wanted to get it over with.

 

If I'm not mistaken the tech to allow player characters to speak in those situations didn't exist until much later. Which is why the player character is mute in both the Personal Story, LS1 AND LS2 outside cutscenes. They created tech to allow the player character to speak for Heart of Thorns, which is why after that Player Characters become more active in the story in Heart of Thorns, and stay that way. If I recall the ability for the player character to speak, outside custscenes, was developed for Raids, so the multiple characters of the squad all have the opportunity to speak and not just the squad leader, this was put to great use in the rest of the game too. Don't worry, player characters speak for the entirety of the game starting with Heart of Thorns.

[Luthan.5236]

I actually felt the season 2 was a lot better than HoT. (I only played until season 3 including and starting with PoF soon.) While the thing with the char talking is a nice thing the HoT story felt rushed a lot at the end and season 3 was like a lot of different small stories (for every map like an own little story).

 

Season 2 was great. You really noticed that hey had released it slowly and that the focus was of the story - and not much work used for own maps but mainly for the story. The way stuff was told ... and additional background was presented about certain chars (Caithe, Scarlet) and how it all fit together ... until that interesting reveal at the end - it was just great.

 

If I remember correctly the thing with the silent/mute main characters also is something used in a lot of older single player RPGs (I think especially the console games that were from the east, Japan) - and it is an own style. I like to think of my own voice there when clicking the dialogue lines in the box.

 

I think it is an own style with advantages and disadvantages. Maybe having the char talking with a voice makes it feel more "alive" and like a movie. But for me it isn't always better in every regard.

[Taril.8619]

> @"Humor.5763" said:

> So, before going into Living Story 2, I did the whole recap, to Scarlet Briar, and honestly, it didn't really explain a whole lot, or I was supposed to do some reading, which I clearly don't do enough of, because the "4 new heroes", Taimi, Keesmar, Marjory, and Braham, I had absolutely no clue who they were, and why on earth they were traveling with me, they just kind of existed.

 

Yeah, even with reading about their background (You can ask the LW1 recap lady about each of them) it feels really awkward to be shoved alongside them since you really have no clue who they are or why they are seemingly replacing Destiny's Edge (Given that at the end of your PS it's DE that you're with to take out Zhaitan)

 

Heck, even after HoT and LW3, I still have no clue about most of them.

 

Like, who the heck is Braham (Other than Eir's son. A revelation that comes as a shock to most people, despite his surname being "Eirsson" literally following the traditional Norse surname of saying that he's the Son of Eir)? Why is he with me? Like, he gets some motivation AFTER HoT (Then becomes Emo Braham, the worst character ever) but before then?

 

Rox? All I know is she REALLY want's Braham's D.

 

Marjory? Uhh... Apparently she's Kasmeer's GF? Though she doesn't come across as caring that much about her...

 

Kasmeer? She's like an Ex-Noble because her father got caught/tricked or something?

 

Taimi is the only one I understand, since she's a decent character and has a lot of time spent understanding her background and motives and fleshing out her character (Improved by the fact that she's also prominent in PoF)

 

> @"Humor.5763" said:

> Soon afterwards came the "Summit", which I still don't understand, and probably missed something huge from the first living story, because again, nothing was really explained, and everyone was just questioning "Why should we help? We need to protect our own people". This made very little sense as to why they were questioning this, everyone had already fought off a great "Evil" once before "Zhaitan", so why would they question themselves again? The threats they speak of were there before Zhaitan was defeated, and still everyone more or less agreed to help, granted majority of the work was from the "Pact" I suppose, however, all races are tied somehow to the pact, and had to spare personel in some which way or another.

 

Actually, the main cities had not partaken in the fight against Zhaitan.

 

It was fought entirely by the Pact, which was a gathering of the 3 Orders - The Order of Whispers, The Vigil and The Dormand Priory.

 

These orders are not manned by the main army of any city, but are filled by soldiers whom CHOOSE to join up with them in order to explicitly fight against the Elder Dragons.

 

Each cities army is instead focused on defending their actual cities and their realm against the local threats (The ones you'll do Hearts and Events in zones against). I.e. Charr are dealing with Ascalonian ghosts and the Branded, Sylvari are dealing with Risen and the Nightmare Court, Norn are dealing with the Sons of Svanir and Jormag's influence as a whole, Asura are dealing with the Destroyers and Inquest, Humans are dealing with Banditos and Centaurs.

 

Which is why they were questioning helping. They are barely holding off these threats with their full military might AND not to mention 3 cities are fighting against Elder Dragons anyway (Branded = Kralkatorrik, Jormag = Jormag, Destroyers = Primordus), so why should they divert any military away from defending their own citizens and the Elder Dragons that are on their doorstep to go fight against this other Elder Dragon that's halfway across the world from them?

 

Hence why your PC has to make the arguments that include how far Mordremoth's reach has extended (Reaching into Ascalon territory already) and how it's going to be a major threat to ALL cities due to how it will be able to attack any stronghold or settlement whenever it wants (Even being able to attack them ALL simultaneously)... Though, it does feel like the attack from Mordremoth's Shadow during the meeting did the most to convince the leaders... Being a first hand view of how pointless their defences are against Morty given that in the middle of the Sylvari capital, with military envoys of all the races alongside leaders (Whom in the case of the Charr, Norn and Humans are no slouches in combat) that they were basically at the mercy of the Commander to fight back the Mordrem threat that just appeared out of nowhere.

 

> @"Humor.5763" said:

> Throughout the almost half of the Living Story 2, I was wondering, "What the hell happened to the 4 main characters, Rytlock, Eir, Caithe, Logan, and Trahaerne (as a fifth)", I almost thought I missed something major in Living Story 1, because Logan, and Treahaerne didn't show up until near the end of Living Story 2, I thought maybe they were dead or something, I know not a lotta people would care for either of those characters, but still, they were there throughout all of the Core Game, and suddenly, just no where to be seen. It was really odd.

 

Well, Trahearne wouldn't show up, because he was off leading the Pact and while it's not made particularly clear (Until LW3) but your PC has left the Pact which is devoted to fighting the Elder Dragons, so you can form a new guild with the new characters which is dedicated to fighting the Elder Dragons... Yeah, I don't know either...

 

While the other members of Destiny's Edge are off serving their leaders, given that aside from Caithe, they all hold pretty important positions (Rytlock is a Tribune and seems like Smodur's right hand, Logan is Jennah's top military general, Eir is important enough to Knut that she can go talk to him whenever) though, Eir and Caithe both have a tendency to go off and do their own thing. Eir because it's a very Norn trait to seek personal glory and Caithe because... Well, you've seen her past, she's dealing with a lot (Bearing in mind she seems to be in love with Faolain, the leader of the Nightmare Court which doesn't help things either)

 

> @"Humor.5763" said:

> Overall, the story went from boring me to sleep, and just in general swapping to play different characters, to something that has me interested to see what lies ahead of me in Heart of Thorns. I'm guessing the Main character wont' have voice acting still, so... I'm not setting my hopes too high.

 

Actually, for HoT and onwards, the MC does have a voice. So you no longer have someone stuck to your butt just to make random comments when you progress through stories as your Character can make their own comments.

 

Story tends to make more sense though, especially since throughout HoT you're mostly on your own and just with the remainder of the group that didn't trek into the heart of maguuma in the airships. That said, Emo Braham does show up and he's the worst...

 

 

[Danikat.8537]

This is the problem with Season 1 being temporary content which was removed and never came back. All those new characters were introduced gradually so you get to know them through the story, and together you discover what's going on and what this new threat is, but that was all removed and you're dropped into what's effectively the middle of an extended storyline with no background.

 

I kind-of understand why they did it, because bringing Season 1 back as permanently available content would be a huge amount of work. (Apparently the random selection of Season 1 instances we got with Flame and Steel were originally done as a test to see exactly how much time it would take.) But it leaves a huge gap in the story which means anyone playing it in order either has to go hunting for fan-made Youtube videos to try and make sense of it or is just left with exactly this effect - not knowing or caring what's going on because it was never explained.

 

IMO it would have been worth the time required, even if they had to do it very gradually over time, so we don't have this problem where ever increasing numbers of people finish their personal story and are then thrown into the middle of a new storyline which makes no sense.

[Randulf.7614]

Structurally, ls2 is them getting the living world prob the closest to being right. Ls1 was an unmitigated disaster, with almost no story and no explanation of Scarlets motivations. LS2 changed all that from the start.

 

Unfortunately it has not dated well because it doesn’t fill in the characters and it lacks the VA and production values of later. The Caithe stuff is also horribly jarring.

 

Considering how bad the living world was to get, LS2 has a lot of positives which are easily overlooked

 

 

[Teratus.2859]

> @"Humor.5763" said:

> So, before going into Living Story 2, I did the whole recap, to Scarlet Briar, and honestly, it didn't really explain a whole lot, or I was supposed to do some reading, which I clearly don't do enough of, because the "4 new heroes", Taimi, Keesmar, Marjory, and Braham, I had absolutely no clue who they were, and why on earth they were traveling with me, they just kind of existed.

>

Technically 6.

Living world 1 introduced 6 characters which eventually became the off and on main cast for the rest of the game.

 

What you're experiencing is one of the biggest problems with Gw2.. and one that I and many others have been very vocal about for YEARS!!

The absense of living world 1 is felt by both old and new players alike and I wish Anet would make it a priority rather than just hammering on with new content all the time.

Hell with the whole situation right now of working from home and the next episode not even having voice acting.. it would have been a good time to put new content on hold and start fixing problems with existing content to which they already have the framework for.

 

Not having living world 1 replayable in Gw2 is like having a few chaptors ripped out near the start of your favourite novel.. it bothers me immensely and i'm not the only one who feels this way.

Gw2 will never feel like a complete game until Living world 1's story is brought back and made replayable in some way.

 

> In the beginning of Living Story 2, I found myself (Story wise), incredibly bored, as mentioned before, not a clue who any of these characters were, I didn't really care for any of them because no backstories were actually given to me (again could have needed to read). There were hardly any cutscenes in the beginning, and going from core Guild Wars 2 with voice overs, and cinematics through almost everything that was in the game was something I was used to, and something I enjoyed seeing. Sure, the characters didn't have much in terms of animation in core Guild Wars 2, but it was refreshing to sit back, and just enjoy the show, plus I really was, and still am a fan of the motion art that plays in the background while characters talked.

>

I used to feel that way about the animation cutscenes too but over the years i've become far more favourable to the open world dialogue that's become the standard for Gw2.

This however came into the game late with HoT.. so for Living world 1 & 2 we were pretty much stuck with the "mute" protaganist feeling and reading lots of dialogue instead.

 

In all honesty I'd prefer it if Anet went back to LW2 sometime (possibly when they finally get around to doing LW1) and essentially remastering it with more voice acting.

Likewise i'd also like to see the same done with the personal story too, doing away with those animated cutscenes entirely in favour of open world dialogue.. just to make the game more consistant and diminish the obvious that Anet were heavily experimenting at this time with the game and hadn't fully finalized the way they wanted to tell a story.

This is why new Gw2 content feels like a very different game from a lot of the older content.. in some ways it really is.

 

> As the story progressed, I finally decided to start reading some of the quests again, and found myself more interested in it, right around the time Taimi started to run away with her invention, soon afterwards being ambushed by the inquest, I'm not sure why that was the point I decided to care, maybe it's because it was the point I finally stopped traveling between the cave every 10-20 minutes to check up on her, and the story actually progressed.

>

Yeah there was a lot of back and forth in the early living world, however at the time we were waiting a good while before new episodes dropped so it didn't feel all that bad then.

But playing the story through back to back like that, it becomes very noticable and sometimes tedious.

 

> Soon afterwards came the "Summit", which I still don't understand, and probably missed something huge from the first living story, because again, nothing was really explained, and everyone was just questioning "Why should we help? We need to protect our own people". This made very little sense as to why they were questioning this, everyone had already fought off a great "Evil" once before "Zhaitan", so why would they question themselves again? The threats they speak of were there before Zhaitan was defeated, and still everyone more or less agreed to help, granted majority of the work was from the "Pact" I suppose, however, all races are tied somehow to the pact, and had to spare personel in some which way or another. The whole Summit meeting felt like a waste of time, and again, it was just something I wanted to get through fast, I did "read" all of it, key word "Read", again, something which i felt would have been so much more enjoyable if the main characters voice actors stayed on board, and could be something I could watch, and enjoy, but no, it was reading, and basically having the main characters response to everyone of there questions be, "We've done this before, we can do it again!", and having the Summits response be like, "Okay, good enough for me, let's send in troops again!". It's almost like the writers, and whoever was working on this portion wanted to see it done rather quickly too, that's just how boring it was.

>

This is a bit of a misunderstanding..

The Pact and likewise the individual orders are independent organizations that are not beholden to any nation or racial power.

They work with the Legions, Wardens, Seraph and other government structures/military forces in local matters but that's about it.

The world governments and races are not associated with the pact like the orders are and for the most part they have not been involved all that much with the Dragon storyline.

This Summit mission was an attempt to gain more support from the Races and their nations to aid the Pact against the Dragons.

 

It's an easy misunderstanding to make considering one of the main plot points of early Gw2 is this narrative about how the races must unite to fight the dragons.

In reality though it was the multi racial Orders that united and not as much the individual nations of Tyria.

That said though if you play through the VIgil storyline you do actively play a key part in helping to end the War between Humans and Charr, which later gets celebrated in the CM Dungeon Story before poo hits the fan there.

 

Dungeons stories are mess in Gw2 though since you get mail for the CM dungeon at level 40 with absolutely no indication at all that the mission takes place after the entire level 40 story ark for the Vigil.. easy to miss if you joined another order and very annoying if missed when you're playing as Vigil and trying to complete the story in proper order.

Likewise the events of Ascalon Catacombs Story also takes place after the level 40 Personal story mission where you meet Destiny's Edge in Lions Arch.. even though you get mail about the dungeon at level 30 and can access it 10 levels before you can access the story mission that sets it up..

 

This really, really bugs me lol the dungeon stories not being canonically alligned to the Personal story it's probbaly the biggest narrative sin in Gw2 imo.

I really wish Anet would fix this but I'm not going to put money on them ever doing it.

It's just one of those things you as the player must actively pay attention to and know about before hand.

 

> I think I really started to enjoy the story, when the main characters started to show up again, it was no longer, "Hey, let's go on an adventure random people who I know nothing about!", back to, "Oh hey we killed Zhaitan together, if anyone can bring down Mordremoth, it's probably this kitten group that did something like it before". It almost feels like, ArenaNet, or whoever wrote the story realized just how much nobody cared for these new characters, and decided to bring back the old ones, that people actually cared about, who actually had backstories (again, new characters were probably mentioned somewhere, but not from what I've seen). It also felt like the main character (Me), was trying to replace Trahaerne, and Destiny's edge throughout the entire story. The main Character (Me), is now Trahaerne, Rox, is Rytlock, Braham is Eir, Taimi is Zojja, and Kasmeer, and Marjory, well, I know more about Kasmeer than I do Marjory, at least from Countess Anise's perspective, nothing was really mentioned about Marjory, her sister who no one cared about either (Belinda) died, and her soul was infused with her sword, which then Marjory took, and BAM, she's a Reaper now, that's about what I got out of it, other than she's Kasmeer's "Lover", at least I think that's what's happening between those two.

>

 

Yeah the absense of living world 1 strikes again lol

For the most part the OG characters had obligations that kept them away so we got a younger secondary cast that was mostly always around to help.

This actually fits in with our chracter who is also a Newcomer compared to the Destiny's Edge cast.

We may have been brought into the fold on that guild and are responsible for getting them back together but they were renowned Heroes long before we ever made a name for ourselves.

Becoming the leader of a new band of Heroes makes a lot more sense than us relying on Destiny's Edge all the time and being that latecomer who's always trying to catch up to the other legends, It wouldn't make sense for us to lead a group who have far more history and experience than we do.

In our group however, we are the senior and most experienced hero so us being the leader does make sense.

 

 

[thepenmonster.3621]

> @"Humor.5763" said:

> So, before going into Living Story 2, I did the whole recap, to Scarlet Briar, and honestly, it didn't really explain a whole lot, or I was supposed to do some reading, which I clearly don't do enough of, because the "4 new heroes", Taimi, Keesmar, Marjory, and Braham, I had absolutely no clue who they were, and why on earth they were traveling with me, they just kind of existed.

 

Sadly it shall forever remain that way... Unless Anet has _S1: Remake_ planned for expansion 4. And yes, S2 was all over the place writing-wise.

 

Time will provide you with familiarity with the gang as you play through.

 

> I'm guessing the Main character wont' have voice acting still, so... I'm not setting my hopes too high.

 

Don't worry, your voice will once again be your own.

[Etria.3642]

It's funny how some people really like certain things and others don't.

 

For me the absolutely worst thing about season 2 was Caithes memories. Before that I liked her. After that I totally and utterly had zero respect. I loathed that entire mess. I am still working my way gradually back through ls2 for achievements and am dreading replaying that atrocity. It kind of reminded me about those morality experiments they did in the seventies, where they would pretend to torture someone in the next room while doing a job interview to see how many people would interfere when given a reason for the excruciating screaming.

 

But that is just my opinion. I am glad others like it.