Interacting with GW2’s narrative

[Lemony.9180]

In GW2, playing through a new episode of expansion is like watching one of my favorite TV shows with some GW2 combat to tie together the narrative beats.

 

However, as a player we don’t actually interact much with the dialogue. I was wondering if there are any plans to make the dialogue itself more core to the interactive experience.

 

I think three games that explore dialogue interaction in interesting way are Kentucky Route Zero, What Remains of Edith Finch, and The Witcher 2:

 

In KRZ, you don’t define layout of the narrative but shape who the characters are.

 

In What Remains of Edith Finch, the dialogue doesn’t just reflect the gameplay but in some vignettes it IS the gameplay (the kite vignette).

 

In The Witcher 2 you make a crucial decision halfway through that determines the course of the narrative.

 

Does the narrative team have any thoughts on making the narrative in GW2 more interactive?

 

[Bobby Stein.3612]

We often look to other games (or films or TV shows) for ideas on how to evolve our storytelling. But it ultimately comes down to what technology we're working with, and what kind of game we're trying to build. All the titles you mentioned are single-player (two of which have no combat as far as I recall). The underlying systems and the design and narrative philosophies in play are very different. Could we take some lessons from them? Sure. Could we overhaul our interactions to more closely resemble the variety and uniqueness of something like Edith Finch? Doubtful. We simply built a very different game for a different audience and gameplay style.

 

All that stated, I think we can learn a lot of valuable lessons about what makes those games enjoyable and unique from both gameplay and narrative standpoints. And where appropriate we can try new things. For example, in the raids we have all 10 player characters talk instead of just the instance owner. In the open world story steps we can show or hide characters and play specific client-side dialogue depending on where you're at in your story. So while it's not the same thing as an intricately branching story like the one found in the Witcher, or ultra-specific gameplay like in one of the Edith Finch stories (the cannery one is my favorite, followed by the hungry little girl) I think there's a lot to inspire. Whether those kinds of ideas shows up in GW2 or some other game in the future, only time will tell.