GW's lore sucks badly. (spoilers warning)

I've been thinking about this for a while. Even though I am much more interested in PvP than in PvE, I'm still amazed by how dumb and stupid a game lore can be.

Prophecies

The only thing I liked about GW:P's lore is the beginning. Those Charrs are pretty cool bad guys, and aren't an irritating cliche. I also was pleased that for once we won't get flooded by that fantasy books dwarves/elves/dragons/etc theme, which really started to get boring. The fact that Ascalon was also losing the war added interest.
All good ended here. The lore suddenly got flooded with cliches- The good prince that disobeys his father. Dwarves. Prince dies and becomes undead. Undead at general. You find yourself in an entire new story fighting undead and then white mantle. The Charr disappeared from the storyline. Then you go to the desert and do something that doesn't have anything to do with anything ("Wow we ascended now we can kill mursaat!") and then you find out that the good vizier is actually the bad guy (yeah, real surprize). You suddenly find yourself fighting titans and saving the world by killing the undead lich.
Now, this story is just AWFUL. I think that anet realized it themselves when they made a joke about it in NF, in that Bokka Theater scene (not that nf lore is better but we will get to that). During that story you find yourself fighting something like 5-6 antagonists that got nothing to do with each other, you start fighting charr that invaded your homeland and end fighting the lich and saving the world.

Factions

Factions lore was also bad. In the flashbacks, Shiro is viewed as a good person that was influenced by the evil fortune teller. And when you meet him during the storyline, he is the ultimate bad guy that wants to kill everyone and take over the world. Wtf?
In order to beat Shiro you meet with a ghost and get the artifacts of some dead luxon/kurzick heroes (that luxon/kurzick theme had so much more potential). And then comes that Kuunavang that had completely nothing to do with anything. And when Shiro succeeds in his evil plans and comes back to life, you just go and kill him. yay. Dissappointment. At least this time you stick to the same storyline the entire game.

Nightfall

This set a new standard for how bad a lore can get. Now the evil guy doesn't want to take over the world, he wants to destroy it! Stop the world from becoming a dark place where evil demons are walking around and nasty looking tentacles sprout from the ground!! I'm too pissed to expand here, but this storyline is just pathetic, even more than Varesh's "muwahaha"s. The only nice part here was Palawa Joko, that according to the GW2 lore release is gonna conquer all Elona, which is promising.

Eye of the North

After how the 3 previous lores ultimately failed, and when Anet said that EN's lore will be a bridge between GW to GW2, I had some expectations for that one. However, GW:EN's lore really hits the jackpot. This is probably the worst lore I ever encountered in my gaming experience. This is quoted from wiki: "The Destroyers are fiery, nearly mindless creatures who seek to clear the Depths of Tyria of all life." ok. They really put some thought into that one, didn't they?
I don't understand what those destroyers are. Where they come from. Who the hell is the Great Destroyer (and ffs why is he so laughably weak). What is the Great Dwarf. Why do the dwarves become stone. Why do you come back to the charr just for 3 minutes. Why is this lore is a bunch of childish cliches.


As I said, a good storyline is not what I look for in a game, but seeing how a good lore can really upgrade a game (i.e Max Payne) I would expect anet to spend some minimal mental effort regarding lore. Look at Blizz games like SC and WC3. Besides them being very good games, they also have nice storylines which makes them more likable (I'm not talking about TFT of course- "the bad guys wanna kill each other but they hurt the environment we gotta stop them!!111").

Just had my (long) rant. Do you agree that this game's lore is just horrible?

We first learned about the Great Destroyer in Prophecies. Weren't you paying attention to anything?

KANE

I have to agree with you about Factions and Nightfall,I love the Tyrain lore though. That why I am happy Gw2 will take place on the Tyrian continent

I always wonder how people can say a games lore sucks when they obviously paid no attention to it at all.


The first three games are linked rather well with the whole storyline up to Nightfall being one big plot by Abaddon. It explained some things like where the Titans came from,who the Fortune Teller was, how the orrian Kings advisor, the Vizier found out about and used the magic that brought about Orrs end and of course the reason behind the Charrs Invasion.


My my you really didnt pay attention here. The Great Destroyer was mentioned in Prophecies and was explained to be the enemy of the Great Dwarf - who was explained to be worshiped amongst the Dwarves. the game itself explains what the Destroyers are - they are Fire and Rock brought to life and controlled through the GD. Why was the Great Destroyer so weak? because it was just a minion of Primordus.

And we come back to the Charr long enough to see the effects of Prophecies on them and their search for new gods after their old ones, the Titans were destroyed. An entire campaign on them would of been overkill.

Tyrian Continent = Elona+Cantha+Battle Islands+Tyria

You have 2 Tyria's, the Prophecies one. And the one that includes just the whole world of Guild Wars.

Factions was awful, NightFall was a little better, Prophecies was decent (for GW), and GW:EN just plain sucked.

i disagree

i love the gw stories

The storylines were fine when you played them first time (as it's always lol). But tbh i want to see something more possible in gw2. Killing a god is just too much...

I thought the awakening dragons in GWEN was an awesome idea :P but yah everything else is pretty crappy. lol Though I thought the White mantle was a cool and interesting thing in proph

Not lore. GTFO of my lore forumz.

The storyline for Prophecies was done by Jess Lebow. Jess Lebow also did some parts of Factions AFAIK.
http://ww2.wizards.com/Books/Wizards...?doc=JessLebow

ANet also hired Jeff Grubb, but I do not exactly know what he did. They say Nightfall.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Grubb

Jeff Grubb is known to me from Azure Bonds and stuff like that, he wrote later some Magic: The Gathering stuff, but actually I think his big time was already over long before that.

Right now, she has also written the GW2 lore hints we know so far, Ree Soesbee is writing for ANet: http://www.learsfool.com/

Coincidentally or not, she has "Dragons" as recurring theme in her scifan-listing.


Then we have http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/John_Stumme and http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Linsey_Murdock who als contribute quest dialogue and pop culture references.


The storyline of Prophecies was disjointed, but at the core I like it better than the Factions and Nightfall-Storylines. I also like the Pantheon of GW Gods and the background lore in general. I think this is mostly Lebows work. Jeff Grubb probably brought some humor into the Nightfall storyline, I am not sure if it was his fault, but killing a god just smells of cliché.

This is the problem of GW in general, often too much cliché and overloaded with references.

For GW2 they seem to form the Charr a bit like the Golden Horde. I hope they get it right, the Norn were tuned to be so extremely stereotypical norsemen with a dumb sense of humour that I found them rather boring. Then we had the Asurans, ego extreme smartasses. The Ebon Vanguard consisted of Brave Brent Poltroon style jokes and had little character. Gwen herself demonstrated the cliche route they are going to take, fanatic charr haters.

But OK, there are still worse games out there, so the story is not that bad. I also do not demand supreme storytelling from a computer game.

I think Pyre was introduced quite well.

I liked all the stories, except the NF ending, I mean, first they say 'we can't kill a god' then the gods say 'oh but you can'. Then some random guy becomes the new god instead of the one you just killed, without any special weapons or something...

It's a shame that they deleted the uncyclopedia.org artilce about Guild Wars...
You would have loved it, I am sure... here is a tasty bit from it:

Nothing is new under the sun.

All you can do is mix-and-match it differently, and package it differently. Trying to make a story unpredictable, while still going anywhere, is a lot tougher than it sounds, and most people just don't care enough. Literary snobs don't play video games much.

I have to agree with killing a God in the Nightfall scenario, after you’ve done that, how on earth can you top it?

Although I like the lore especially the background of the Gods we haven’t killed!

Prophecies, always seemed like two stories to me, maybe everything that happens before we get to Lions Arch could have been called “Prelude: Escape From Ascalon” with “Chapter 1: The Flameseeker Prophecies” beginning upon arrival at LA.

My advise, stick to your PvP and leave the PvE to those who acctual know what happend. If you did not like it, suffer in silence or get it all right.

And as a side note, Mrmango, this is lore related, so please shut up.

i have to agree with u all on your comments....

if u want a good story Go to LOTR online man ...they had a good storie and popularized by movies...what did GW have E3 film cliip


STORY
GW<LOTR

/signed

There is no such thing as an original idea. Guild ars is not the first to use the basic concpets shown in all the expansions, and they will not be the last. they did a good job of using them however and I give them props for this.

What you have a problem with is the story of the game not the game lore.
The lore of the game is all the back storey, the history of the world etc which gw goes into quite alot of detail ablout compared to most games.

The story gives emphasis on the lore by showing you there isn't one,shallow problem in the world but infact many. Every region has its own problems to deal with the culmination of which prevents them from tackling any other threat that turns up (i.e. the titans).

The role of the hero in the prophecies story is to ultimatlry defeat the lich, everything else you encounter are merely other problems you get dragged into while helping your people escape to safety before you discover your true purpose.

The core storyline and especially the lore in guild wars happens to be very strong, its just not very well presented in the mission by mission format. EotN's format was more fluid but unfortunatly was rushed.

Keep in mind most of the game lore is actually presented in the form of quests rather than missions, Quests that very few people bother to complete.

Guild Wars has great lore if you actually bother to read your quest dialogue and do the out of the way quests...

The storylines are meh...but the lore is good.