Glad It's All Over : GW2

Well, at least that's out of the way.

Is that what ANet's writers think every time they sign off on another episode of GW2's Living Story World? I only ask because that's generally how I feel when I get to the final cut scene.

This morning I finished the Season Three finale. I started it last night, when I got home from work. It took me about three hours to get to what I suspected would be the final instance. Knowing from bitter experience that there was bound to be at least one long, tedious session of kiting and dodging to come I chose to log off and start again fresh the next day.

Since I have a couple of days off work, as soon as I'd had breakfast I picked up where I'd left off. It took me another couple of hours, so, approximately five hours in total.

That five hours included doing my dailies in WvW and completing all the Hearts in the new map as required by the storyline. It also involved several "puzzle" instances, during which most of my time was spent trying to read mouse-over tool-tips while various NPCs and Security Devices tried to set me on fire plus some time tabbed out searching the forums for hints about why certain things didn't seem to be working.

If you subtract the trial-and-error/research time and the filler, I guess there might be a couple of hours of actual content. If I ever take a second character through it, which is unlikely, I guess I'll find out.

Now that we've hit the buffers, Season reviews are starting to pop up on the Forum. I thought about doing one but I don't have the enthusiasm or the interest to go into detail. It's over, let it lie.

What I would say is that the whole format is looking tired and formulaic and that the underlying conceit - trying to mirror the narrative structure of a TV show - simply doesn't work. A successful TV show pumps out far more episodes far faster with much shorter gaps between them. Intertwined plot lines have time to develop and resolve; characters have space to change and grow.

You can't do that with four to six episodes spread across an entire year. Or, I should say, there's no evidence that ANet's current team of writers and instance designers can do that.

There is abundant evidence that their artists and map designers can keep up the pace but even there I see a problem. It's been great to get a new map every two or three months - a huge step up from the way the world failed to expand during the first two seasons. Unfortunately, although the maps vary widely in their environments, covering everything from permafrost to lava, they are all structurally more alike than that would suggest.

Add to that the very similar content - the Hearts, chained events, rewards - and there's a strong sense of diminishing returns. Yes, these are gorgeous maps, soaked in visual flair and rich with detail. They're still beginning to feel samey.

Looking back at my posts on the earlier episodes, my feelings a year ago were a lot more positive. I gave the first episode four stars out of five. I'd give the current one two stars for the storyline and maybe three for the map, although I haven't done map completion yet, nor fully explored it, so that's a tad premature.

Without giving any spoilers I would say that the storyline in this Finale is incoherent. That, however, is something we've come to expect and a lack of coherence is, frankly, the least of its problems. Much worse is the seeming inability - or possibly interest - in even paying lip-service to the idea that the player character has any agency, individuality or existence other than as a tool of the plot.

At one point, when words were put into my character's mouth that neither he nor I would ever utter, I shouted out loud at the screen in denial. I can only thank my stars I swapped from doing the Living Story on my Charr to my Asura because, had I been playing the Charr I might have thrown the monitor out of the window. I'm not alone.

Apart from that, the voice work seemed lackluster compared to earlier episodes, the dialog in general was often wooden, the persistently ironic tone seemed inappropriate and much of the humor fell flat. In terms of character and backstory I thought it was the least engaging episode to date.

As a "Finale" it fails completely because it doesn't finish. One - and only one, - sub-plot is resolved (in a way that presents serious moral problems that are simply ignored). Everything else is left to hang.

Instead of a resolution we get a commercial. The final cut scene is quite literally a trailer for the unnamed expansion. Or, more accurately, a trailer for the Official Announcement of that expansion.

At this point I have to say I'm about done with The Living Story as a narrative. It's pointless becoming emotionally or intellectually invested in something so arbitrary and etiolated.

Characters appear and disappear with no more than a half-line reference. Entire sub-plots proceed, climax and fade off stage. If we're lucky Taimi gives us a report in precis by cat-whisker. I read superhero comics for decades; I'm inured to this kind of thing but even I can't suspend this much disbelief or fill in this many plot-holes for myself.

Next week we get to find out the name of the forthcoming expansion and, presumably, what's in it. At this point I'm looking forward to some new maps that look and play at least a little differently. I'm hoping for some new Ascended weapons for each class because the "quests" for those were one of my highlights from Heart of Thorns. I'd like some big-ticket events as enjoyable as Dragon's Stand or Auric Basin. And that's about it.

What I'm really hoping is that ANet's A-Team has been working on the expansion the whole time and what we've been getting from Living Story for the last year is sloppy seconds. If so, then it's not been at all bad, considering. If it's the best they can do, though...