The ZAM staff concludes our "Reinventing Tyria" series with in-depth looks at the Sylvari, voice over artists, and the problem of endgame storytelling. Check it out!

ZAM: Switching subjects – how are you handling this idea of in-game storytelling? This concept that only end game players actually get to see the end of a story told throughout the game…

Soesbee: Do you consider the death of Arthas to be storytelling?

ZAM: I guess not…. I mean it is sort of inevitable and everyone knows it’s coming.

Soesbee: When you play through the dungeons – and I have played WoW for a long time and have a stupid amount of 80s – I don’t consider doing those raids and instances the same thing as telling a story. It’s not. You’re getting to see awesome stuff, but you’re not really experiencing a story.

The story in WoW is that you run into a guy’s home / lair / castle and you beat him up. It’s cool… but not a story. Although there’s plenty of interesting flavor pieces going on around you in these dungeons, I’m not sure it’s actually a story. I don’t want to critique their game, but I was interested in the death of Arthas, but I don’t think it was a story.

ZAM: How is Guild Wars handling it?

Soesbee: We’re really doing it two ways. You have to break the story down into pieces so people don’t need to feel like they can’t eat or sleep or get all crazy because they need to see all of this story at once. Additionally, we can’t make the pieces so small that they’re just flavor, which is what I think happens in the higher level WoW areas.

So, like a play, I think the story has to unfold in acts… in segments. This helps us on the development side then be able to adjust the story for every player, because those segments can be different as long as they’re both telling the same story. While two people may want to destroy the great dragon, one may want to kill the dragon because he’s threatening his home, while the other is because of the threat to her mother.

The pieces can be moved around and have different motivations while still allowing the entire story to make sense. We look at our process of storytelling and begin that journey at level 1. It doesn’t start at level 80. On top of that, the things you do at the very beginning of the game, those motivations still make sense at the end of the game. There’s a whole world out there, and you’re actually a piece of that grander story that’s going on with every character in the game. You may save the house at the beginning of the game from the evil villain that’s going to burn it down, but the dragon will eventually consume everything anyway.

Thus what we’ve done is make you invested in that house. And so when the dragon comes to destroy everything, you’re still invested in your house. The story has meaning all the way through, from beginning to end.

ZAM: Thanks so much for your time! We really hope to check out more of Guild Wars 2 when the time is right!

- Cody Bye, Director of Content