Guild Wars 2 Preview

G4 has gotten around to publishing a hands-on preview of Guild Wars 2 after checking out ArenaNet's subscription-free MMORPG sequel firsthand during last month's GamesCom. A little something on character creation:
Building a character in Guild Wars 2 is an extremely creative process, and one that looks to create an entire backstory instead of just letting you pick a race, class, and color of your ponytail. There's a sort of Mad Libs presentation where you pick and choose your entire background. For instance, the game will prompt you "I was raised ..." and your choices might be "by commoners," or "among the working class," or "as a member of the nobility." and so on.

These choices both change the look of your character, and their Story, which becomes a large part of your particular experience with the game. There's a "My Story" tab in the menus where you can later access and refer to this type of content, but once it's picked, it is locked in place. You might choose what element you work with, and I choose fire when given the opportunity for my elementalist. This gave a reddish glow and aura to the tiara worn by my female character.

Touches like this are meant to ground you more with your selections, and make that character more real for you. Your level 37 Dwarf Ironbutt in World of Warcraft might not have much of a backstory, other than the one you've created for him, but in Guild Wars 2, that character has a fully fleshed out path that you can chart, making him or her that much closer to being a real person.