This week has been full of interviews that have revealed interesting bits of information. I will just give you the highlights though.
Arenanet offered two blogs one about Voice Over and Dialogue in the game, and the other about Personality. The last one was from Univers Virtuels about miscellaneous things in Guild Wars 2.
Without further ado here are the highlights:
1.They are voicing the equivalent of more than 60 feature-length films.
2.They used games like GTA IV as examples of how they use audio in their stories.
3.You won’t be absorbing most of this dialogue through traditional cinematics. Instead, They are evenly distributing story bits, lore, gameplay information, and ambience over hundreds of hours of play.
4.They developed a sound throttling system so you won’t hear the same combat chatter repeated over and over again during fights.
5.There will be certain characters or races that speak in more formal terms, but by and large the inhabitants of Tyria speak more naturally than they did in the past.
6.They are cutting back on the stereotypical ye olde English speak in favor of tighter dialogue in active voice, because “…most people don’t identify with characters who speak in archaic expressions and passive language.”
7. How you respond to other characters develops and changes your personality over time, letting you affect how the game treats you.
8.Personality is your character’s attitude toward others; it grows and changes as you play through your personal story and as you adventure in the persistent world.
9.Your biography at character creation sets your starting personality, but almost immediately you will start refining your choice in dialogue with NPCs.
10.Your actions will sometimes allow you special responses or interactions with the world. Barbaric characters, for example, can occasionally just cut to the end of a conversation with a punch to the face.
11.Personality choices are entirely designed to customize the experience and have the world echo your personality but not to block you from content.
12. Unlike story choices, your personality is constantly changing.
13.Personality is one of the primary ways you will cash in on karma rewards earned by participating in events and helping other players with their personal stories.
14.As you grow your character from your starting personality, you’ll also unlock some of the first titles available for display. Many NPCs in the game will then begin to recognize and react to you, even if you’re not talking directly to them. They may talk admiringly about you as the new hero of Queensdale, or they may cower behind their merchant stalls, afraid of your brutish ways.
15.Players will be able to draw and click on the map like they did in Guild Wars.
16.After a short tutorial experience, players will be able to join friends by using an asura gate to travel to any of the major racial cities. That way, it will be easy and convenient for everyone to play with their friends, whatever their race is.
17.Not every profession features chain skills like the warrior does. The elementalist, for example, does not currently have any chain skills.
18.You can’t use environmental weapons several times.
19.When a warrior handles a banner, it acts as an offhand item that can be carried around and planted in the ground. He can also pick it up, use certain skills while carrying it with him, and plant it somewhere to offer an advantage to his allies. The buff offered by the banner is permanent (well, until it is destroyed by an enemy). Shouts, on the other hand, will affect allies for a particular duration after the shout is used.
20. If you have bleeding on you five times then a condition removal skill that removes one will remove them all as it removes the stack.
21.They came up with a bunch of really cool ideas that will undoubtedly made end-game an original and fun experience for many players.
22. A World vs. World match is really about three vast groups of players fighting each others over a variety of objectives, so that their world can obtain certain advantages. Every server is involved in a three-server WvW match in the Mists and players may only fight for the server they currently belong to. Since every server is always involved in a WvW match of some sort, we need to allow players to transfer servers during a WvW matchup. However, since it would not be fair to allow people from other worlds to influence the balance of the battle by constantly moving between servers, we will impose some restrictions for a short amount of time on players who switch servers.
Last but not least NCsoft will be at Gamescom in Germany starting August 19th. There they will be having a live game demo setup and be doing interviews with different members of the Guild Wars team. So expect more information then.
