Curse

shinta_himura · Feb 24, 2011, 10:21 PM // 22:21

Would you agree that if Gwen managed to rise above her strife and become the legendary founder of Ebonhawk alone (well, with her old friends, us of course), then that would have been a much more satisfying plot line?

Instead of actually doing anything good for Gwen, they killed yet another very important person to her (Langmar) and bumped in the typical male love interest. And suddenly she's yet another typical female lead. Gwen's plotline was such a captivating and interesting thing... meeting her again after all that time and reminiscing on the bittersweet past that you shared. Then... wintersday comes along... and everything just goes downhill from there... down hill and into someone's wallet (what a dramatic build up just to put some non-sense into the cash shop).

The meaning of love is simple: it exists to help bad writers. Oh and it helps NCSoft earn more money.

Mireles · Feb 24, 2011, 10:35 PM // 22:35

/agree, not to mention the para hero nobody needed.

Xiaquin · Feb 24, 2011, 10:43 PM // 22:43

I'm not sure what you mean by "typical female lead". There was a huge thread over how people viewed her as a catty shrew that bosses Keiran around. She still breathes fire and wanted no part of the wedding reception.

Also, something tells me they are not done with her yet. As of current game lore, we don't know about Ebonhawke and that will need to be explained. That's somewhere around the present time of 1080 (GWEN was 1078). Adelbern recalls the Vanguard, and we should recall that Evennia went missing in Ascalon.

Can we save the criticism when there's much to be resolved?

shinta_himura · Feb 24, 2011, 11:08 PM // 23:08

"I'm not sure what you mean by "typical female lead". There was a huge thread over how people viewed her as a catty shrew that bosses Keiran around. She still breathes fire and wanted no part of the wedding reception."

By this I mean that she has become yet another potential powerful female that is instead tacked onto a male... just because. "Yeah she's awesome and everything... but let's have her get married for the lols". I am tired of this "love saves everything" nonsense that permeates every inch of media. Keiran literally came out of no where just so Arena Net could play out this forced love/romance drama. It was unnecessary and seriously insults Gwen's potential as a character.

There was no suspense (at least for me) when Keiran went "missing". The storyline by then was so saturated in happy-joy romance that it was completely obvious everything would work out ok. They even had Gwen completely ignore Langmar's death just to advance the "Keiran is Gone" nonsense. If she's a fire-breathing, catty shrew that bosses everyone around and wants no part of a wedding reception... WHY are they forcing this wedding?

Oh... Oooh... Wedding costumes... right. So it looks like the plot of our game here will now be ruled by capitalism rather than creativity.

ensoriki · Feb 24, 2011, 11:16 PM // 23:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by shinta_himura

"I'm not sure what you mean by "typical female lead". There was a huge thread over how people viewed her as a catty shrew that bosses Keiran around. She still breathes fire and wanted no part of the wedding reception."

By this I mean that she has become yet another potential powerful female that is instead tacked onto a male... just because. "Yeah she's awesome and everything... but let's have her get married for the lols". I am tired of this "love saves everything" nonsense that permeates every inch of media. Keiran literally came out of no where just so Arena Net could play out this forced love/romance drama. It was unnecessary and seriously insults Gwen's potential as a character.

There was no suspense (at least for me) when Keiran went "missing". The storyline by then was so saturated in happy-joy romance that it was completely obvious everything would work out ok. They even had Gwen completely ignore Langmar's death just to advance the "Keiran is Gone" nonsense. If she's a fire-breathing, catty shrew that bosses everyone around and wants no part of a wedding reception... WHY are they forcing this wedding?

Oh... Oooh... Wedding costumes... right. So it looks like the plot of our game here will now be ruled by capitalism rather than creativity.

It wasn't bad writing though so whatever.

Moonstalker · Feb 24, 2011, 11:21 PM // 23:21

I just read a spoiler as I haven't gotten to doing the newest addon quests yet.
Please let people know you have spoilers in your post.
Thanks.

shinta_himura · Feb 24, 2011, 11:26 PM // 23:26

It wasn't bad writing?

Yeah I guess it's hard to go wrong when you pull out the love cliche in a world full of saps.

I'm terribly sorry about your spoilerage. Please read carefully in the future.

Shadowspawn X · Feb 24, 2011, 11:41 PM // 23:41

I don't know why love is somehow a cliche. To put a beautiful woman in a script and not have any of the male characters hit on her would be more so bad writing imho, because if you want a female character to have any depth how she deals with guys crushing on her is almost mandatory. In this case she held out and eventually had to succumb to her femininity. Not bad writing because it was a dilemma that she had to work through and the relationship had depth. The love aspect didn't take away from the Gwen character, but added to it. I think Anet rounded out her character pretty good. Mhenlo and Cynn need the same treatment to a lessor extent.

Xiaquin · Feb 24, 2011, 11:43 PM // 23:43

shinta_himura, have you heard of Logan Thackeray? He's very important, and his great, great, (and so on) ancestors were pretty important people. Gwen is one of them.

shinta_himura · Feb 24, 2011, 11:51 PM // 23:51

Logan Thackeray didn't need to be Keiran's ancestor. What is Gwen's last name anyway? No one will ever know because apparently the random holiday event character is way more important than a main character...

They had better not touch Mhenlo/Cynn. Dear god. And besides, they would only do it to sell more wedding attire.

Nyta · Feb 24, 2011, 11:57 PM // 23:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by shinta_himura

They had better not touch Mhenlo/Cynn. Dear god. And besides, they would only do it to sell more wedding attire.

Or funeral. Cynn was pretty mad during the wedding, after all.

Chrisworld · Feb 25, 2011, 12:03 AM // 00:03

They should have just killed her off in the Searing. Buahahahahaha

Dark Saviour · Feb 25, 2011, 12:13 AM // 00:13

I don't like how Gwen was handled in EotN in general, but I personally found it more annoying how Thackeray was treated in all of this.

When he was just "That Wintersday guy", he was cool.
Now that they've (rather poorly, IMO) wedged him in as a regular character, he's lost his charm. Then again, I'm not particularly fond of them fleshing out Thorn either...
Leave the Holiday people alone, damnit!

shinta_himura · Feb 25, 2011, 12:19 AM // 00:19

Exactly...

They basically destroyed the whole "Old Friends" theme between gwen and your character

iToasterHD · Feb 25, 2011, 12:28 AM // 00:28

I can understand what Shinta is saying. it gets old that romance and love has to always wiggle their way into stories. Gwen's life (career) is more important than some romance or marriage and it belittles her character when they focus on her love life. Her getting married should be a footnote to her life, not the center of attention.

Shriketalon · Feb 25, 2011, 12:32 AM // 00:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by shinta_himura

It was unnecessary and seriously insults Gwen's potential as a character.

Wait, so being a powerful female character and give a damn about someone are mutually exclusive?

The entire point of the plotline was for Gwen to realize that her obsession with revenge was preventing her from having anything remotely resembling a happy life. The charr destroyed her world, but it was her own fixation with constant war that kept her from rebuilding it. Keiran, whether or not you liked him (I give him a resounding meh, not the best, but could be far worse), represented a balance between dedication to a soldier's duty and the appreciation for the little things that make life worth living. In turn, Gwen gave Keiran a purpose in life, taking him from just doing his job day to day to giving him a challenge to strive for, growing in the process.

Was it the best romance story ever told? No. But relationships don't make a strong character suddenly weak, frail, and dependent. They give them something they actually care about, and sometimes that makes them stronger.

Kojima · Feb 25, 2011, 01:05 AM // 01:05

I thought she was recall by the king to go to Ebonhawk? She was a key player in its history and I am sure that part can be bumped up even with her married.

jazilla · Feb 25, 2011, 01:09 AM // 01:09

the problem i had with it was that none of keiran and gwen's dialog made me feel like they would get married. there was nothing there but petty squabbles. he had more in common with the assassin really. also, when keiran changed into a paragon, i thought they were going to start selling class changes on the cash shop.

there were a lot of plot holes and unfinished plot points in WiK as well. Like, how the heck did those Asura get that Seer, and did they kill it? was it already dead? Where is the Scepter of Orr etc.? Pretty underwhelming stuff from a very talented bunch really.

CronkTheImpaler · Feb 25, 2011, 01:42 AM // 01:42

Im not sure whats scarier, this tough line your taking with the GW writing staff or the fact you seem convinced that a video game character demands some well developed life story. If you think for one second Anet is worried about the social and mental development of a character you off mark.

This is just my opinion, but it think overall game development is a much higher priority.

Cronk

Konig Des Todes · Feb 25, 2011, 03:37 AM // 03:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by shinta_himura

By this I mean that she has become yet another potential powerful female that is instead tacked onto a male... just because.

Personally, I see Keiran tacked onto Gwen rather than Gwen tacked onto Keiran.

Her marriage wasn't for "the lols" - one typically needs to have sex to have offspring, they wanted her descendant in GW2, therefore she needed some form of relationship and in order to help bring her story to a close of getting over - to some degree (clearly not fully since she's called the Goremonger for her actions after the wedding and the founding of the fort that Ebonhawke became, the fort which stood un-penetrated for nearly 250 years) - and guess what's the best kind of relationship to give a fictional character? Marriage.

Keiran did "come out of no where" but hey, guess what, so does everyone else. Every character gets introduced at some point, so where was that character before that point? Where was Langmar before Eye of the North? Keiran was on a patrol with the Ebon Falcons - that's the reason given to us why we didn't see him during the initial Eye of the North. Anton was imprisoned in Surmia, that's why we didn't see him in pre-Searing Ascalon. And so forth.

I fail to see how you get "happy-joy romance" out of the story when Keiran got rejected practically five times and Gwen was sobbing over Keiran simply going to Kryta. I don't want to live in a world where everything is "happy-joy" for you, that's for sure.

I actually liked the story between Gwen and Keiran and how it turned out, and I hate love stories.

As to the costumes - those were made because of the story, not the other way around.

I agree that it'd be nice to see a story without a love interest, since they're so common, but unfortunately that just makes it seem unrealistic. How many people do you know that has NO interest in a relationship - be it with or without strings? I can't name a single person.