Guild Wars Interview
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"Our job as writers is to impart the story through convincing and compelling dialogue in the smallest space possible. Players will have no shortage of interesting stories in which to immerse themselves, but those stories will be presented in new ways compared to the original Guild Wars," Bobby stated. "I tell my team all the time that a good actor can't save bad dialogue. If you've written something that sounds wonky when you read it aloud, you need to change it. Lines need to be short, credible, and relatable. Even though our characters exist in a fantasy world, they should exhibit the same sweeping emotions that we do. As writers, we draw from our own personal victories, private tragedies, and comedic moments for inspiration. We must breathe life into these characters, or else they become nothing more than quest dispensers."
One of the ways that the Guild Wars team previously constructed their story arcs was through the use of in-game cut scenes. Though some gamers had a love-hate relationship with these pre-scripted events, many players found them to be appealing. We all have a touch of Narcissus flowing through our veins and seeing our virtual avatar in his own personal story truly captured the hearts of many adventurers. But generating these in-game scenes was far from easy.
"In-engine cut scenes carry their own difficulties because they are generated on the fly; they require a lot more coordination and context awareness compared to other cinematic methods," Stein explained. "You're at the mercy of the game engine, which isn't necessarily optimized for that task. As any Guild Wars player can attest, pet and minion AI does not always play nice for the camera. (My pet flamingo loves sticking his tail feathers in my character's face.) Compare the cinematics of the original Guild Wars to those from the Bonus Mission Pack, though, and you'll see how we've stepped up our game."
