You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will

The transient, here-today and, if I may say so, gone-tomorrow nature of betas blunts the achiever streak that’s a major motivator for me in MMOGs, so I didn’t do an awful lot of adventuring in the Guild Wars 2 beta. The vague impression I formed was pleasurably chaotic, partly by design, partly a result of waves of brand new players squinting in the gleam of new-game shine and shouting “HOW I MINE FOR FISH?” Stumbling out of the introductory quests into the starter zones you talk to a scout, who basically opens your map up, points out a bunch o’ stuff going on, then slaps you on the back and says “off you go!” Following the directions of punctuation-emblazoned questgivers in a more structured MMOG can be like an assault course, where an instructor at each stage orders you to climb the scramble net, kill ten boars, step through tires or whatever, refusing to allow you to progress to the next obstacle until you’ve done it properly. In comparison Guild Wars 2 is an adventure playground where there’s a game of tag going on around the monkey bars, an impromptu round of “capture the fort” centred around a climbing frame, then a heavily distorted version of Greensleeves starts playing as an ice-cream van turns up and everyone runs after it for a 99 (except the van’s driven by an otter, who’s taking it to a carpet factory, and… hang on, this analogy has crashed, ABORT! ABORT!)

I did spend quite a lot of time on the character creation screens, though, wallowing in the luxury of ample time to adjust nose width and brow depth without the nagging feeling you get once a game goes live that you’re in a race with an Evil Society of Name Thieves to get to the “Enter character name:” box, that every second spent considering the precise tint of hair colour is a step closer to the accursed defeat of “Sorry, that name is not available”. Or maybe that’s just me. Character customisation is reasonable; not right up there with APB, but a decent array of options, and ArenaNet at least remembered to do some work on the rest of the game. The Charr seem quite interesting, they get good horn sliders and some fun fur patterns, but I’ve never really got into anthropomorphic characters so spent less time with them than the Humans or Norns.

Syl posted about the generically attrative faces of GW2, and Humans suffer particularly badly. A lot of the faces, especially female faces, go past photoshopped-model-in-glossy-magazine into slightly freakier animated-porcelain-doll territory, they just didn’t look right to me. GW2 is also slightly unusual in that, at least for this beta build, facial details such as scars, wrinkles and make-up are part of a head-package, not elements that can be added or tailored individually; I’m not sure if that’s something they’re planning on changing, but I found it quite tricky to get a Human head I was really happy with. Norns were much better, plenty of character in most of the male faces and a few female options from outside a glossy teen drama, plus the ability to add tattoos to mix things up a bit. Granted the high level female outfits shown during creation were heavy on the cleavage and midriff, and if there was any equivalence then male Norn casters would excel at smuggling budgies, but I think that’s been beaten that to death recently. With a high-heeled boot.

In summary, then: Guild Wars 2 has a character creator, and after that you run around a bit. Join me here at KiaSA after the next beta weekend when I hope to be able to shed some light on the rumours that you can “press buttons” to “use skills”.

8 thoughts on “You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will

  1. Hunter

    I spent a lot of time in the character creator too, and I have to say this was not one of my first thoughts. After hearing people talk about it though, I suppose it is somewhat true, but it didn’t bother me in game.

  2. Vic Sandman

    I personally wouldn’t mind a wider variety of gear for male characters, at least appearance-wise. Seems like the females get all the outfits that actually…look like anything.

    I’m considering buying GW2 on release or shortly afterwards, simply because it looks like so much fun. However, on the other hand, I’ve recently invested a significant chunk of change into APB, so I think I will be sticking with that game for awhile now at the least.

  3. darkeye

    I’m not expecting scars, wrinkles etc to be separate from the faces, Arenanet took a bit of prodding to even allow eye colour to be modified. It’s similar to the first game where faces were preset (but classes/campaigns had unique faces, e.g. ugly and scarred necros), except the sequel allows tweaking of the presets. Maybe there will be a bit more diversity towards release or future releases. Though norn and human may be one and all beautiful, in contrast charr, sylvari and asura can be made to look freakish.

  4. Attic Lion

    I hope I’m not the only guy who was terribly disappointed by the inability to hide my mans chest armor. A hulking barbarian should be able to fight bare chested. :(

    Likewise, barbarian girls should be able to have massive braids and muscles to go along with their massive tits. Why it’s impossible to make a barbarianess look like a damn valkyrie is frankly, beyond me. Instead they all look like Red Sonja.

    It’s a damn shame, they have some really good concept art for norn chicks (see the one with the golden plate pasties and the giant polar bear in the background), but there’s almost none of that implemented within the game. The same problem seems to plague the asura and the cabbage elves.

    The face complaints I find a tad amusing really, in a vindictive way. I took one look at them and immediately wrote them off as overtly catering to korean design tastes and thus all but non-viable for me. I had thought that nobody else would complain about it because that’s what normally happens in these cases, but I’m glad that other people see the issue.

  5. Zoso Post author

    @Hunter It’s much less of an issue when actually playing, certainly, when looking at the back of your character’s head with the camera zoomed out (and possibly a helm or hood covering the face anyway), hardly a game-breaker.

    @Vic Sandman It does seem to vary by race/class/gender; the male Charr Elementalist was one that I seem to remember really got the short end of the clothing stick with a pretty dull outfit, but there may well be options aplenty as loot. How’s APB going in its Reloaded form? I saw blog post from them about adding more paramilitary gear, was quite interesting; is there much of a market in user-created clothing?

    @darkeye Fair enough if that’s the way the tech works, I guess further options might become available either before launch, or in updates/expansions. I’m definitely interested in how the Sylvari will look, Charr were just a bit too non-human for me to get on with.

    @Attic Lion Indeed, for all the talk of not obsessing over the realism and practicality of armour in a fantasy game, male fighters seem pretty keen to cover themselves with lots of metal rather than a couple of artfully placed Conan-style straps and a couple of pints of olive oil.

  6. Draygo

    “I did spend quite a lot of time on the character creation screens, though, wallowing in the luxury of ample time to adjust nose width and brow depth without the nagging feeling you get once a game goes live that you’re in a race with an Evil Society of Name Thieves to get to the “Enter character name:” box, that every second spent considering the precise tint of hair colour is a step closer to the accursed defeat of “Sorry, that name is not available”.”

    – Little known fact. Press the finish button and dont bother making your character, enter the name you want first.

    – that name is locked to your account for 24 hours even if you delete it to remake it. I tested this over the weekend.

  7. Syl

    I didn’t feel like I was able to concentrate on many things this first beta – but then the bad server performance kinda forced me to spend much time on char creation. ;)
    you’re right that it’s been beaten to death….I am still grumpy about the make-up though.

    I look forward to the next BWE. let’s hope for stable connections.

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