Does the storytelling get better in late base game and the expansions?

[Athri.3780]

So, I've had GW2 for a couple of years and have played it on and off whenever. I mainly play games for the story, worldbuilding, etc, but with GW2 I've never managed to get beyond the level 50-60 main story quest because I've just found the writing and storytelling to be very dull. Due to this I've ended up just moving on to other games and I've never really gotten into the late gw2 base game or any of the expansions. I have not played the first Guild Wars.

 

Despite this, I also really like... most of the rest of the game? The gameplay is fine, it's aesthetically beautiful, and even if, imo, everything isn't so very well explained, Tyria is a really interesting world. So I want to give Guild Wars another shot and I'm considering buying the expansions so I can just get a mount/glider and focus on the story - but like... is it worth it? Does the story pick up after the Order stuff? Primarily concerning the actual storytelling and the characters?

 

Edit: What is your opinion on the story?

 

I know this is kinda vague, so I can elaborate if anyone wants to. My english isn't the best, sorry.

[lokh.2695]

The storytelling itself definitely improves from LS2 onward. Anet got rid of the side-by-side dialogues and put more storytelling and worldbuilding into open world and cutscenes.

 

The story however only improves slightly. We go from "Commander, for a word. I need you to X, Y, Z." to "This world ending threat, how should we overcome..." - "Oh! Nevermind, Taimi has figured it out. By pressing F on this magicgimmickthingy, the threat will dissapear." PoF was erally good storywise, but the maps don't offer much replay value.

 

I'd say give it a try, see if you like it and if you don't put it down again until someething in the game strikes your fancy again.

[Randulf.7614]

The production certainly gets better - better dialogues, better characters, better set pieces and so forth. The story writing itself is... inconsistent with some of the narrative rushed, incomplete and unfocussed.

 

A lot of people like it. A lot of people hate it. For me it is too all over the place and messy and often without direction (prob caused by the episodic nature and diff teams working on diff episodes and not being directed with discpline). I wasn't a huge fan of the actual writing in GW1, but at least it was well structured and holds together. GW2 rarely holds together for me.

 

 

[Batel.9206]

Personally, I think it gets exponentially better. I thought the storytelling in the base game was decent, if a little cheesy and juvenile (and occasionally poorly voice-acted...Deputy Mira from Claw Island, anyone?). But once you're into LWS2 - *especially* once you get into Heart of Thorns and onward - the storytelling improves by leaps and bounds...as does the voice acting. ;) I'd encourage you to stick with it!

 

Of course, that's just my opinion. Perhaps I'm easily entertained. Still, I play this game primarily for the story as well, and so far I truly love it.

[Ashen.2907]

I think it tends to get worse in some ways.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

> @"Athri.3780" said:

> snip

 

From my personal experience, if I did not already pay for HoT before reaching the end of the Personal Story (reaching max level and Zhaitan) I would have quit outright.

 

The game from Heart and Thorns and beyond is excellent gameplay. Story really starts to shine from there and Season 3 along with a new map per chapter with plenty to do in them.

 

If you're already this far into it and you liked Heart of Thorns, do it. You won't regret it.

[Athri.3780]

Your answers have helped a lot. I think I’ll buy the expansions and try out the story into Heart of Thorns atleast. Thanks everyone!

[Batel.9206]

> @"Athri.3780" said:

> Your answers have helped a lot. I think I’ll buy the expansions and try out the story into Heart of Thorns atleast. Thanks everyone!

 

Don't forget that there's one living world season that's unavailable to play due to the temporary nature of the episodes as they were released - season one, Scarlet's War, starting immediately after the end of the base game's storyline. It leads directly into season two and is a vital part of understanding the story. There's a recap available in-game, but it covers the absolute bare minimum (and does a frankly terrible job at actually explaining anything). You end up being punted into season two with only the faintest understanding of what's going on around you. Fortunately, there are alternatives to the in-game "summary": watch these (one or the other, or both if you'd like) after you're done with the vanilla storyline.

A three-hour-long recap/movie is available on youtube, compiled from a massive amount of in-game footage people recorded when the season was live:

>!

 

WoodenPotatoes also has a summary available, clocking in at a bit over one hour long - it's far more streamlined and organized, but also leaves out a lot of the detail of the longer recap.

>!

 

Hope you enjoy the game! :D

 

[Edit: Correcting errors, because I can't spell, evidently. I blame a lack of caffeine.]

[Athri.3780]

> @"Batel.9206" said:

> > @"Athri.3780" said:

> > Your answers have helped a lot. I think I’ll buy the expansions and try out the story into Heart of Thorns atleast. Thanks everyone!

>

> Don't forget that there's one living world season that's unavailable to play due to the temporary nature of the episodes as they were released - season one, Scarlet's War, starting immediately after the end of the base game's storyline. It leads directly into season two and is a vital part of understanding the story. There's a recap available in-game, but it covers the absolute bare minimum (and does a frankly terrible job at actually explaining anything). You end up being punted into season two with only the faintest understanding of what's going on around you. Fortunately, there are alternatives to the in-game "summary": watch these (one or the other, or both if you'd like) after you're doing with the vanilla storyline.

> A three-hour-long recap/movie is available on youtube, compiled from a massive amount of in-game footage people recorded when the season was live:

> >!

>

> WoodenPotatoes also has a summary available, clocking in at a bit over one hour long - it's far more streamlined and organized, but also leaves out a lot of the detail of the longer recap.

> >!

>

> Hope you enjoy the game! :D

 

Wow, I'll check these out, thank you!

[Psycoprophet.8107]

Gw2 story and writing is lolz bad. It's all subjective of course.

[Clyan.1593]

Yes it definately gets better after central tyria story line. However it has some steep up and downs in between. LS2 clearly is an improvement. HoTs is about on the same level, maybe slightly better due to a wider variety in comedy, drama and action. LS3 has a bit less of that, however manages to be quite interesting by adding a sense of mistery. PoF sometimes is good, sometimes not. LS4 too had up and downs, maybe a bit unimaginative, but overall still alright. The Icebrood Saga in my opinion is quite lack luster, both in story telling and lore, but it might pick up, who knows.

 

The big downside to mer personally is always the lore. It seems to me the hunt for Dragon's and other foes is too dominant. It all feels a bit like a movie rather than an epic saga within an epic world. And often the story mentions something that later on is completely forgotten - at least for now.

 

I still absolutely recommend buying the XPacs because the story telling and gameplay content in it is far superior compared to the base game.

[Hannelore.8153]

I love how people act like the writing in this game is the most terrible they've ever seen, when most of its very old (even HoT is some years old), but even if you buy a new video game from an AAA developer for $70 USD, its often worse these days.

 

Video games never had good writing, nor good voice acting (English voice acting in general tends to be awful). Part of the reason people have always played them is for the so-bad-its-good factor, especially on older systems like the 16-bit consoles from the 90s.

 

You just need to take things a little less seriously, I think.

 

But to answer the OP, yes, the storytelling and presentation quality get alot better.

[Trise.2865]

How would we possibly know what you will think is good?

[Thornwolf.9721]

> @"Athri.3780" said:

> So, I've had GW2 for a couple of years and have played it on and off whenever. I mainly play games for the story, worldbuilding, etc, but with GW2 I've never managed to get beyond the level 50-60 main story quest because I've just found the writing and storytelling to be very dull. Due to this I've ended up just moving on to other games and I've never really gotten into the late gw2 base game or any of the expansions. I have not played the first Guild Wars.

>

> Despite this, I also really like... most of the rest of the game? The gameplay is fine, it's aesthetically beautiful, and even if, imo, everything isn't so very well explained, Tyria is a really interesting world. So I want to give Guild Wars another shot and I'm considering buying the expansions so I can just get a mount/glider and focus on the story - but like... is it worth it? Does the story pick up after the Order stuff? Primarily concerning the actual storytelling and the characters?

>

> I know this is kinda vague, so I can elaborate if anyone wants to. My english isn't the best, sorry.

 

Simple answer? No.

 

In terms of writing it is better (Core had a low bar, so low that anything could be better.) But its not until around S4 that it actually grows some weight, but even now the writing is eh and the characters are meh. If you're here for a story and for lore then I'd go elsewhere my friend all that is here are ret-cons, idiocy and ultimately disappointment. I used to care and be a lore junky for tyria, but guild wars 2 has done nothing but dampen my enthusiasm and make me look back and realize that what made it special left with the majority of the team members who dipped out between the games.

[Atomos.7593]

Living world season 4 was the best story in my opinion. The base game story was not great. I could never get into the story in the expansions either. Icebrood Saga has been bland so far.

[tetsuo.7318]

> @"Athri.3780" said:

> Your answers have helped a lot. I think I’ll buy the expansions and try out the story into Heart of Thorns atleast. Thanks everyone!

 

Yeah that won't do you actually need to buy the living world seasons as well and they are only available for gems or the story won't make any sense whatsoever also season 1 is just gone altogether. As a new/returning player it's a complete nightmare to catch up with the story.

[otto.5684]

The production value improves, the story does not. The story is more lore based early on, versus later, where they make it character based. However, Anet clearly lack the expertise to do Mass effect/Witcher type stories, with dialogue and deep and interesting characters. I prefer vanilla GW2 over everything else.

[Athri.3780]

> @"Trise.2865" said:

> How would we possibly know what you will think is good?

 

By "good" I was more asking for other players' personal opinons of how well they like the story after the personal stories and the three Orders. Of course other people can't know what kind of writing I like, but people's opinions on this is for me something to go off on deciding whether to keep playing or not.

 

Sorry, that didn't really come across well in my original post.

[blambidy.3216]

I’d say story gets better when you start heart of thorns. And honestly as much as I hate to say it. The story in gw2 isn’t something to look forward to. I’d honestly say the achievement quests that you do for legendaries. And killing raid wings have much more of a better story and lore then gw2 story in general. However I’d say compared to core gw2 main story compared to heart of thorns story is miles apart of how story is. Gw2 main story is yikes.

[Generalissimo.8602]

I'd say the characters get a little bit better overall - in the base game, the only people I actually liked were the Order mentors, whereas there are a few recurring characters that I think are OK in the later parts - but the story line ranges from similar in quality to the base game (generally serviceable but mostly uninspired) to downright terrible and there's much more of a focus on the plot than general world-building.

 

Basically, if you need a good story to motivate you to keep playing the game, I would not recommend GW2 or any of its expansions.

[aspirine.6852]

Try GW1 it has a nice story going through it all.

[mercury ranique.2170]

To be hoest, without knowing what you like and dislike, this is nearly impossible to answer. The way the dialogue is presented gets better, but no clue if that's what you dislike.

[Atomos.7593]

The story in PoF is alright but I really don't like the design of the boss fights in it. Just did the Tomb of the Primeval Kings story part and it would be much better if they didn't have so many repetitive invulnerable stages where you have to kill illusions, and the twin fight at the end where you had to kill both together at low health only served as an annoying mechanic.

[Athri.3780]

> @"mercury ranique.2170" said:

> To be hoest, without knowing what you like and dislike, this is nearly impossible to answer. The way the dialogue is presented gets better, but no clue if that's what you dislike.

 

That's fair. I initially wanted to hear other people's opinions on the story, and I'm sorry I didn't make that clear enough in the op. My bad.

 

Story:

This might be because I haven't played Guild Wars 1, but I remember that when I got into the Order stuff on a human character, I got bombarded with all this stuff about Elder Dragons all of a sudden, without knowing what that was or what role those dragons played. My human character did know about those dragons though, and the game just continued on never actually explaining what that was. I thought I'd paid attention up until that point - I'd read all the heart quests, talked with the scouts, and so on, but even so I continued on with the main quest being confused and not really knowing what these big terrible enemies were. It's been some years since I played Norn and Sylvari last, but I can't remember those being any better. Basically, the way the exposition was laid out wasn't all that good and stuff just felt poorly explained. (and like... I do get that they're big evil dragons that needs to be defeated, but that tells me very little. Does that make any sense?)

 

I generally tend to care about characters and worldbuilding the most in these kind of games, so if the plot itself gets kinda contrived at places I don't really mind. As long as it is overall consistent.

 

One of the main reasons most of my characters have been humans though, is because the whole political intrigue thing in Kryta conceptually sounds really interesting, with Queen Jennah being at ods with the nobility, making many reforms, and so on. But, from what I understand, after the personal story is done, the main plot moves to focus on the fight with the Elder Dragons, with the PC becoming a commander of something. So does this ever go anywhere?

 

 

Characters:

I thought the mentor character for humans, sylvari, and norn were fine for the most part - they were tropey and fell a bit flat, but they were ok. Everyone else was kinda dull. I'm assuming they get more depth along the way. Does the Destiny's Edge members have any role to play once you get into the expansions?

 

 

Dialogue and presentation:

This ties into characters, but the way that everything was presented is one of the main reasons why I feel like the early story is so very dull and atleast partly why the characters felt flat to me. Everyone just... sounds the same. Regardless if a character were human, sylvari, or charr, lowborn thief or nobility, it feels like most of the important characters has basically the same vocabulary and speech patterns. All joke/comic-relief charcters also pulls the same kind of jokes, and that gets kinda grating after a while - maybe GW2's type of humor just doesn't work for me. But anyway, while the voice actors does a fairly decent job of making the characters stand out somewhat, the actual writing, in my admittedly limited experience, does not in the early base game.

 

To be fair, this is also about immersion as much as it is presentation. Final Fantasy XIV is an example of an mmo that does dialogue and immersion very well. In FFXIV's "main cast", there is no character that speaks in the same manner, and their various speech patterns says much about their backgrounds and region of origin. You can infer much about any character in the game - including random npcs that you get fetch quests from - simply by the way speak, what idioms and slurs they use, what gods they swear by, and so on. If you pay a bit of attention you're never going to confuse an npc from one city-state with another, because the writing and the attention to detail when it comes to language is so tight.

 

So basically, when I ask about the dialogue and presentation/storytelling I don't strictly mean whether the game show conversations through cutscenes or people just talking out in the world, but does the writing and language get to the point where the main characters stand out from each other?

FFXIV is just an example of dialogue done well (imo), and I of course don't expect that level of detail.

 

I realize this might come off as excessively nitpicky, and yeah to a point it is, but I hope this gives some clarity as to what I mean.

 

Thanks to everyone who's answered this thread, it's been fun reading your comments ^^

[Teratus.2859]

I personally feel that yes the Story absolutely gets better as we progress into newer content.

 

As others have said the story does improve after the base game's personal story, and after season 2 is where I personally feel the first big jump in story quality really comes in with the first expansion HoT.

In my opinion it only improves from there although some disagree and have their cirticisms of later living world etc.

 

I would argue Gw2 gets bigger and better with each new living world season and expansion but I mean that in an overall sense, not that each episode gets progressivly better.. that would be very difficult to pull off >.< but overall as a living world season I would say 3 is definitely better than 2, 4 is better than 3 and once it's complete.. Icebrood Saga may be better than 4 if the trend holds.. although I have only played 3 episodes of Icebrood Saga so far since im waiting for the voice acting to come int before I play episodes 4 and 5 so I have no idea what happens story wise in episode 4 nor want to know until I get to play it myself.

 

Likewise PoF in terms of Story at least is better than HoT imo.. but HoT does have far more replayability in it's open world and offers much more challenging content than PoF does so they both have their pros and cons.