GryffinGuy007 Posted April 7, 2014 Report Share Posted April 7, 2014 [Apologies for the bad screenshot quality] I’m walking along the banks of a lake and suddenly, I’m alerted there’s an event happening nearby. Looking around, I can’t find the event anywhere, until I look into the water. Underneath the beautiful reflection effects, I see the vague shadow of a beast. Immediately, I jump straight into the water, to be confronted with huge shark attacking NPCs. I’m an Asura, a small, short race that seems strikingly similar to the house-elves in Harry Potter. All the Dobby-looking NPCs are dying, I must save them. Just as I begin swimming towards the underwater terror, I see two other characters swim ahead of me – the Charr, a large, dragon/bull hybrid of a race. They’re players! I see them both begin striking the monster – there isn’t much time. Without thinking, I follow them into battle with my harpoon. After a few minutes of dodging, swimming, attacking and counterattacking, we bring down the horror and swim back to shore. I ask them what two Charr might be doing in the Asura homeworld – one replies, saying that he and his buddy are simply exploring and doing story missions. We chat for a bit, I ask them if I could join them on this adventure, they accept. Our greeting is interrupted, however, when we hear the sound of Asura bells ringing loudly – there’s an attack. As a party, we begin running to defend the facility from invading outlaws. This is just an example of the many adventures you’ll have in Guild Wars 2. Read on and you can reveal our entire journey past that moment. In Guild Wars 2, there’s no quest log. No single objective. No ‘accept or decline’ buttons. These are dynamic events – a string of objectives that randomly occur throughout your adventure. You complete the objective, for which there are many – you could be tasked to defend, attack, assassinate, gather, etc. You can complete the objective altogether, or help just a little bit. Either way will reward you with what you deserve. Once you finish that objective though, it doesn’t end there – oh no. That’s just the beginning. NPCs will continue on, maybe plan a counterattack or rebuild what has been destroyed. This creates a whole new dynamic event altogether and sends you on a great journey with NPCs that feel alive and intelligent. Continuing on, we start defending. Waves of outlaw Asura and their reverse-programmed robots pile in from all angles. We need help – they outnumber us 5:1. Mind you, they’re not incredibly difficult to take down. With the right amount of movement, perfectly timed dodges and attack combos, its smooth sailing. However, with them firing on us from all sides, its hard to jump and spin your way out of trouble. We need to revive some downed NPC allies. I’m a Thief – I can equip two daggers, two pistols, one pistol in my main-hand and a dagger in the off-hand, vice versa, maybe whip out a shortbow – all of which give me a completely unique set of 5 weapon skills. I pull out the awesome pistol/dagger combo, with 2 skills from the dagger, 2 from the pistol and 1 skills that uses a combination of both. I begin jumping all over the place, rapid firing my pistol, throwing daggers, getting enemies caught in pistol nets, spinning in and out of battle as I please. I’m near a downed NPC, so I pop one of my profession skills and disappear, rendering myself invisible. I help the NPC up on his feet, he thanks me, and runs of to revive his companions. All of a sudden, we have a miniature armada of Asura and destroy the enemies as they flood in. They make a retreat, scrambling to the nearest exits in fear, we decide to let them live. After that, one the Charr players had to leave, so it was just me and his buddy now. Read on to see what happens next… What happens now? No events around, no heart quests to do. Which, by the way, are essentially your normal quests, but they’re not accepted or declines, you just volunteer to do them and gain a reward for doing so. There’s no metaphorical ‘boxes’ to tick either when completing a quest, just a progress bar. Why? Because there’s multiple ways you can complete the quest, some ways filling the progress bar more than others. Anyway, there wasn’t anything to do. Wait, no. That’s not right. There’s always something to do in Guild Wars 2. What do we do? We hop into the World vs World PvP map. This is a system whereby wherever you are in the world, you can enter the World vs World PvP map, unless you’re currently in battle. In WvW you’re thrown into a huge map where servers battle it out for dominance over territory and resources. These massive clashes cause for some intense situations, even when you can’t see anyone in the cluster of names and flashy skills. We start out not really knowing what to do. We look around, see people with awesome gear, ask if anyone wants to join us, get denied by random strangers. So we head out, on our own, just the two of us, in a huge battlefield where large enemy squads could came right out of nowhere and tear us to bits… yeah, we didn’t really think it through. First, we try to scale down a cliff to get to the bottom, even though there’s easier ways to get down. It didn’t end well. After that, we tried the easy way down and got attacked by a pack of snow wolves. We dive in and begin our skill combos, dodging and weaving enemy attacks. My buddy goes down, but later gets back up by killing a wolf while downed. With the killing blow, we continue on our short adventure to seek some PvP action… it came too soon. While we were quietly strolling along the vast snowy plain, over the hill comes a huge battalion of enemy players, filled with all kinds of races and professions. There wasn’t much we could do, only one thing we could do – run. We immediately spun around, trying to lose them amongst the small cliffs and rocks. Soon, they caught up to my buddy and began unloading skills on him. I turned around, firing rapid shots of my pistol to draw their attention away from him. It worked. They all went after me, taking me down in an instant. Under the grey filter that covers my screen, all I could see was my poor buddy, alone, being completely destroyed from all sides. He told me he had to go for a while, so he did, later to return to me back in the normal world. Upon his return, I was in the middle of a dynamic event of which I was extremely under levelled. Level 11 monsters up against a puny, level 8 Asura Thief… it wasn’t that bad though. With the right amount of movement, I was able to avoid most attacks. Before he came, we were tasked with helping this rat find shiny things, then kill a giant lizard. Once my buddy came though, we were tasked with exterminating a community of giant frogs, destroying their flaming mortar cannons and taking down their buildings. We did it! Yay! No, not yay. The chief of the giant frog community came out, enraged by our destruction. We had to take him out. This boss had a load of health, allies were dying all over the place, revives being traded by each downed member. Eventually though, after quite some time, we took him out. It occurred to us that I had some serious levelling to do, so we went back to Rata Sim, the Asura city, to do some more questing. We got there to find an onslaught of alien brain things attempting to devour the town’s energy. We got in there, defending the power supplies and picking up loot. Once that was done, another event popped up! Asura outlaws were attacking the power facility. We gathered with a small group of Asura NPCs who were already plotting to defend it. They charged in and we followed. Our mini battalion was attacked by outlaws from all sides. We desperately tried to defend the power supplies, with more and more enemies pouring in. We stood our ground, defeating wave after wave of enemies and helping up downed allies. After we successfully defended against the onslaught, we walked into a large room to find an ally NPC in the middle of an argument with the outlaw leader. He threatened us, then booted up his robots and ordered them to attack us. We ducked and weaved, returning attacks and skills as they did. Eventually, we took down the robots and the leader. There’s a secret tunnel in the facility. My buddy and I, as well as the NPCs go down to investigate. More outlaws – we take them down. Finally, our squadron make it out to find a beautiful vista – a gorgeous lake, with surrounding cliffs and trees. An NPC screams in celebration, then jumps straight into the lake. The NPCs follow and so do we… [better quality image] After some more adventure, he had enough and left. So I went back into World vs World... here were the results... More images for those interested: http://s34i.img-up.net/gw0265771.jpg http://k23i.img-up.net/gw0276cc8.jpg http://d66i.img-up.net/gw0232390.jpg http://g28i.img-up.net/gw02496bf.jpg Just minding my own business in the battlefield... suddenly, a wild ambush appears. ._. Anyway, more of this review/walk-through/first impressions coming soon. This game is quite simply, awesome. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.