More than a decade ago, Guild Wars 2 exploded onto the gaming arena, bringing with it a whole new problem for Tyrians. Alongside the massive open world, innovative shared experience, incredible new graphics and action combat that broke the mould something archaic still made its way into this brand-new MMORPG. In between godly brawls, usurpers, and the quarrels of kings the Elder Dragons were part of Tyrian lore as far back as Guild Wars. BNow, with the Dragon cycle broken, Tyria has a moment of peace.
Story arcs like the Dragon Cycle are an incredible feat. It’s rare that a tale can take ten years be part of a video game, and make it from beginning to end. The team behind Tyria seem equally aware of this, as noted by Joe Kimmes, Designer at ArenaNet:
When Guild Wars 2 launched, we had no idea if we would see the end of the Elder Dragons within the scope of the game. Now that we’ve told that story, it’s exciting to look ahead to the future – Tyria has seen its fair share of non-dragon threats over the years, but seeing what the world looks like without the Dragons looming over it will be a fun new journey.
The release of What Lies Beneath presents something of a problem and an opportunity for developer ArenaNet. After Slaying Zhaitan, then proceeding to take down the primordial power of these beasts, the team behind this massively successful adventure need to find a new way to keep players coming back that ill top the end of everything. We sat down with ArenaNet a to talk about building the Dragon Cycle, and how exactly you move on from overcoming a power so epic that it took ten years to take down. Joe spoke about the depth of planning, and quite how long the Dragon Cycle has had its teeth in Tyria to describe the Elder Dragons as,
the linchpin to the background and Personal Story of Guild Wars 2, with the initial storylines all funnelling towards the Pact’s confrontation with the Elder Dragon Zhaitan. With that as the focus, there was an immense amount of worldbuilding focused on the dragons, beginning in Guild Wars 1’s Eye of the North Expansion. At that time we had planned the domains and natures of the different dragons, how they fit into Tyria’s setting, and sketched in plans for the game’s initial story arc and where the story might go next.
The story wasn’t planned ten years of releases into the future, but players have noticed hints towards those early plans even in the core game. For example, the secrets of Mordremoth, the Jungle Dragon, were planned from the outset, even as the details of the Heart of Thorns expansion shifted based on the ongoing story. As the Living World revealed more of the dragons’ role in Tyria’s magical ecosystems, the story arc began to move towards its grand conclusion – it’s been a payoff well over ten years in the making for us as well as the players, so it’s been an incredible journey to see it play out from the first beginnings during Guild Wars 1’s development.
The end of one era, however presents a change for both the players and developers. The release of What Lies Beneath closes the door on the Elder Dragon threat, giving us an opportunity to move on from the history we’ve had before and forge a new path that isn’t tied to the shackles of old Tyrian lore. This is probably most obvious when Gorrik unveils the Friends Detective Agency., what might become a new guild of adventurers, and a replacement for the core cast that have paraded through the world until now. While Bobby Stein, narrative Director for Guild Wars 2, did say that, “The current story takes place almost exclusively in Cantha, so we’ll be spending time with the gang on solving an issue that’s localized to the Jade Sea for now.” He didn’t want to give us much more detail on that front.”
What that titbit does seem to suggest, is that we won’t be barrelling back to Tyria. If this turns out to be true, I’ll be glad of it. Much like the Elder Dragons, Tyria has gotten too big in many ways. There are massive maps, huge events, some nearly deserted zones, and a cast that can leave the lore archives tied in knots. This seems true for ArenaNet too.
Bobby Stein: Tyria is a big world, and with each expac it’s only getting bigger! This presents a real problem of having too huge a cast to manage effectively. This was an issue in the Personal Story that we tried to gradually correct over the years, as it’s better to have a smaller cast and a more focused story than a village of characters that you never get to really know. So now we try to focus on a subset of our overall cast, pick out one or more secondary storylines to give those characters individual arcs, and push them forward toward resolution or change by the end of an episode, ‘season’, or content series.
For the 2023 End of Dragons Cantha story, we’re spending time with Detective Rama, Gorrik, Yao, and Chul-Moo. Each of these cast members will show character growth and self-realization by the story’s conclusion. Beyond that, you’ll have to wait and see who shows up next.
While we may have to wait and see for specifics, there’s no denying that What Lies Beneath adds an interesting juncture point for the entire franchise. While it puts the Dragons to bed and starts to seemingly forge a new guild of heroes, it looks, both forward and back. Delving into the Jade mines in Gyala Delve uncovers remnants of a world players once visited, bones and all, while understanding that new players need a point to jump into a new story and try something different. We asked Bobby if the team felt the same way about this fork in the road?
Bobby Stein, Narrative Director: Absolutely. The EoD post-launch story allows us to address the energy crisis from the expansion’s main story, while reintroducing themes and creatures to the game that will be important in the coming months and beyond. Many of us on the dev team have been dying to shift the narrative in this direction for a while, and now that we’ve changed our development philosophy toward expansions and quarterly releases (that everyone gets for free), we can realize this vision. So while the current story is focused mainly in Cantha, the future lies elsewhere.
And as for newer players, “we’ll get them up to speed quickly. The story roadmap going forward will allow us to explore new topics, characters, threats, and themes than before inside upcoming expansions. And if we need post-launch content to continue or resolve those stories, we have that space. But we want to take advantage of this new, post-Dragon age to try some new things to avoid falling into repetition.”
It’s encouraging to see that with he closure of the Dragon Cycle, the team aren’t left wondering what comes next, but building a new story that possibly makes this the best time to get new players on board. Before we wrapped up our time with ArenaNet we asked Bobby how the team look forward, much they already have prepared and how much is left down to individual writers to throw in a last minute curveball for our favorite characters.
Bobby Stein Narrative Director: Now that the Elder Dragon story is behind us, we can look to other areas of our lore for storytelling opportunities. We ask ourselves, “What unfinished or untold tales would be interesting to explore in this new era of Guild Wars? What characters would we like to spend more time with? What challenges should the Commander face in this new age?”
After End of Dragons wrapped, members of Narrative and Design (along with other collaborators in adjacent disciplines) discussed our options. Since we knew that in the post-Living World phase of the game we’d have the opportunity to experiment with tone, we decided to extend the EoD experience by not only revisiting a location that was left untouched since Factions, but nudge the story into a more introspective space with a smaller, tighter cast of characters who we could spend time with.
In short, with each project we assess narrative goals for character, plot, and lore along with design goals (group content, rewards, scenarios) and try to find a unique intersection with art (environment, exploration, visual tone) that all aligns. Once that’s done, we break story as a multidisciplinary group and decide on major beats and character arcs. We outline. Then we write.
With any major piece of content, we’ll have a writer serve as Narrative Lead to draft much of the “golden path” or main storyline along with one or more additional writers who help with that, along with open world and systemic writing. We also partner with content and other designers who help shape the story through a mix of story instances and open world beats and gameplay, and environment artists who build the spaces where everything comes together.
Voice-over scripts go through a lot of iteration. It can take weeks or even months to get scenes, sequences, and acts written, revised, playtested, and edited before we consider them ready for recording. Lines and scenes will be revised, moved around, or entirely cut if it makes the overall story better. This is often done through a series of off-line edits as well as group workshopping exercises where members of Narrative and Design get together, read the content aloud, and identify any issues with plot, characterization, tone, continuity, lore, gameplay, or environment that could lessen its impact.
I’m not saying that I won’t miss Kasjory or the ire that Brahm stoked in the fan base. I’ll still visit Silverwastes with a pack and shovel and I might even go fishing in Lake Doric, but I won’t have to worry about the narrative weight of world ending dragons pulling me back to yet another crisis. There’s a sense of freedom in the release of What Lies Beneath and an excitement for what comes next. I just wonder how epic it will have to be to top world ending Elder Dragons. You can take your first, or latest, steps into Tyria What Lies Beneath, available now for free via the Guild Wars 2 website.
