All Or Nothing - Post Mortem And Review: GW2

Following Jeremai's advice in the comments on my earlier post on Guild Wars 2's latest Living World episode, All or Nothing, I'm going to say a few things about what I saw there. If anyone hasn't played through the storyline yet but intends to, I'd look away now...

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Hope Is A Dangerous Thing : GW2

Yesterday, sometime around five in the evening, "All or Nothing", the fifth episode in Guild Wars 2's fourth season of The Living World, went live. At the time I was playing EverQuest II. Later, I stopped to have tea. Then Mrs Bhagpuss and I watched something on iPlayer.

It wasn't until around eight in the evening that I logged into GW2 to start the new chapter. By a quarter past eleven I'd finished it.

I was still thinking about it when I went to bed. I dreamed about it in the night. I woke up thinking about it this morning. Mostly about the way it ended.

There's not much I can say that isn't a spoiler. Nothing, really. I took plenty of screenshots, some of them excellent, but I can't use any of those either, especially not the best ones.

I guess I can talk about the new map, Thunderhead Peaks. I haven't really explored it yet, other than the parts that I needed to visit for the storyline. It's a very large, multi-layered area that sits above Desert Highlands. I think it's technically part of a region known as Deldrimor Front, which may or may not be part of The Shiverpeaks. It's a moot point. As yet it doesn't connect to anything else.

Visually, Thunderhead Peaks is stunning. I found it difficult to resist running off in all directions to poke around the ruins, caves, tombs, mines and mountains. As I was working through the storyline there, banners flashed across my screen, announcing various stages of what I took to be the meta event chain.

I declined to join in. Too busy. Too focused. Word on the meta isn't very positive, anyway, but I only found that out later. I'll reserve judgment until I've tried it for myself.

The other big ticket item in the update is a new Fractal along with a lot of tweaks to that game mode. I don't do Fractals so I have nothing to say on that. There's also a new Epic weapon, something else I have no interest in, a new mount mastery that sounds marginally useful at best and an "Upgradeable Weapon Set" about which I know absolutely nothing.

None of which matters in the least, not after that story episode. Which I really can't talk about.

I suppose I could comment on how very, very short it is. That's not really a spoiler. Even by the long-established standards the Living World, this is blink-and-you'll-miss-it short.

It took me barely three hours on a first run, when I had no idea what I was doing. Those three hours included at least thirty minutes of dithering and probably another ten or fifteen taking screenshots and generally gawking. Plus I spoke to every NPC that would talk back.

Added to that, I do the Living World on my heal-specced Druid, who wishes he had the DPS of a limp dish-rag. I'd estimate that a second run, on a character with decent DPS, knowing where to go and what to do, would take no more than a couple of hours.

And yet, I'm not complaining. One of the reasons All or Nothing is so short is that, finally and thankfully, almost all of the really pointless, timewasting filler has been removed. It's true that there is still a certain amount of repetition but the barefaced padding isn't quite as obvious as it used to be.

The big fights were... ok, I guess. They didn't last forever. I was able to use my normal class abilities. Nothing made me want to throw my monitor out of the window. It's an improvement. I'll take it.

The story, though. The story and the ending. That ending...

So, now what? We wait three months for Episode Six? Or was that the finale of Season Four? Do we go all the way to late Summer, early Autumn and a third expansion that hasn't been officially announced or even unofficially hinted at? Which might not even exist?

We're supposed to just carry on? As though nothing happened?

Anyway, I can't discuss it so I'm going to shut up. And you know what? By the time it's all common knowledge and fair game for analysis and dissection and speculation we'll all have moved on and it will be too late. No-one will want to know. So I'll never get to discuss it.

This is what I will say: it's the kind of thing that, the moment you've finished it, you want spend a whole evening talking about. Preferably in a bar, loudly, with hand gestures. And you know someone's going to cry and if someone else says the wrong thing then, friendships could end over it.

Where does that leave us? Well, that's what we'd talk about, isn't it? We'd have to. We couldn't not.

But we can't. So let's leave it at that.