Saturday, August 12, 2017

Visiting the Crystal Desert : GW2

So, the Path of Fire demo weekend has hit Guild Wars 2 and I made a character to check out what's new. This post will contain minor (?) spoilers about the demo, my impressions and some pictures.


I made an elementalist in hopes of being able to test out Weaver - you don't get to do that. You can have the Heart of Thorns specialization but you can't utilize any of the new specs. I think you could in HoT preview?  Maybe you could only make a revenant. At least I remember making a revenant. So have a picture of my placeholder ele on a raptor in a burning city. That's your first mission after meeting the first baddie - rescue villagers and put out fires. 

Rest will be under cut for spoilers and such.


The first villain is a herald of Balthazar - I'm really glad these mobs aren't immune to burn since I use ele. Anyways -  I was reminded how GW2 writing can be a bit cringy and cliche - basically the herald talks how they were chosen as Balthazar's and our character pulls the "Aren't you just a puppet? Can't you make your own choice?" and the herald goes "No! The choice was made for me!".


This anime-tier writing pisses me off. Moralizing to a villain ain't doing shit, they made their choice. A lot of villains in GW2 feel very "narmy" - they talk big speeches and try to be intimidating but it just comes off as try-hard. I'm not here to talk the herald out of being evil, if you burn random civilians you die. Sometimes it feels like Guild Wars 2 tries to be pg-13 in its writing and it hurts the immersion.

What I am interested in, however, is Kasmeer and Marjory's story. I didn't care much for the two but now there's finally some conflict in their lives. Kasmeer seems to be shaken by Balthazar's treachery as she was a very devout believer all her life. It's quite obvious her character arc will be revolved around her spiritual beliefs. That is quite a heavy theme and also a very good one because it opens up many philosophical questions, but knowing how GW2 writing can be... I'm worried if they'll have the deep nuance to pull it off. 

I like Rytlock a lot, his sass is refreshing. I hope I will get to know what happened with him and magic. He's being all mysterious.

That's all we get from the plot so far.


I love how the new area looks, the new mobs look pretty swell too. There's even dolyaks that look like a warm-climate variant (doesn't have long fur) so that's a cool little detail.

The mount is very useful, at first the controls seemed a bit clunky, it doesn't react too strongly to changing directions so delicate maneuvers are hard to pull off. Other than that, if you get used to it it's a useful tool. Doing jumping puzzles won't be easy though, knowing me.


My character carrying a vase to thirsty refugees. Wanted to see the little details.

All in all I am excited for the expansion pack, I want to see the rest of the mounts and try out the new specializations.

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