Guild Wars 2: Pre-PAX Interview

We talked to ArenaNet about Heart of Thorns and the demo build coming to PAX East this weekend.

This weekend, ArenaNet will be at PAX East with the first demo build of the upcoming Guild Wars 2 expansion Heart of Thorns. Last week we had the chance to visit the ArenaNet studio to get an early look at the demo. While there, we were able to interview Jon Peters and John Corpening of ArenaNet.

There are two separate versions of the demo, one for PvE which takes players through one of the personal story instances of HoT, open world content including an outpost, adventure and a wyvern boss fight. The other demo is for PvP and is all about the new game mode Stronghold. The Revenant is also available in both the PvE and PvP demos.

Our first interview was with Jon Peters, who we questioned over the Revenant and everything PvE. Click here to jump straight to our PvP interview with John Corpening. 

When you get your hands on the PvE demo, the very first thing after making your character is that you are dropped into a story step for HoT’s personal story. Since this is where our demo started off, it only seemed fitting that this is where we started our questions for Peters.

Very early into the story step the player is given a choice, but for this demo the only option available to pursue is to help Laranthir find surviving members of the Pact. After making the difficult choice to help Laranthir, you are immediately put on the hunt to find the surviving Pact members all while in the same story instance. This is a change of pace for those who have played the original Guild Wars 2 personal story where any choices made were not followed through until a later story step.

Peters said that there are a couple of benefits to this. The first is the great sense of immediacy. You can make a decision and see how things are changing because of that decision. It also is not locking you into a predetermined path. In the original personal story, players might have made a choice only to regret it and being locked into a line that they didn’t want to play. In the new story the decisions the characters make are not permanently affecting them. Peters said that they did some permanent choices in the original personal story and were met with mixed results as sometimes these decisions felt really cool while falling flat at other times. So for HoT, they wanted to change things up and try this new immediate, non-permanent decision making.

The other benefit Peters mentioned was replayability. Unlike the original personal story, players will be able to go in and replay story steps on a single character. Did you pick to help Laranthir, but really want to see what would have happened if you had picked a different path? With the HoT story, you can go back in and experience every path possible. Peters even said that it might end up being beneficial to do so. Currently, finishing a story step will award players with a Mastery Point. Peters said that it will probably end up that going back and repeating story steps to complete all the paths and doing bonus things will give an additional Mastery Point.

If you are not one for repeating story instances, you won’t have to worry about missing any of the plot. Peters says that this is part of why having the decisions play out immediately is good, as all of the decisions end up at the same conclusions, just in different ways. He likened it to a story being told from two different perspectives. You have these different outlooks, but ultimately the story and plot being told is the same.

The story step shown in the demo is very focused, giving this epic feeling as you go up and through the first decision all the way to the final boss of the instance. We asked if all of the story steps were going to be this intense and Peters replied that they generally would be. “We want them to be very clear and punchy.” In the demo’s story step, you are going in to rescue these people. Then that story is tied more tightly into the open world, where at the end of the story step you are picked up by helicopters and once you leave the story instance you are dropped off by a helicopter and you see more helicopters there in the open world fighting against the Mordrem. Later when you fight the wyvern, the helicopters are there creating air gusts to lift you back onto the platform if you fall off of it.

This cohesion is something that ArenaNet planned ahead of time as they built the story and map so that you can follow this thread that will wind through the open world, into a story step and back out into the open world. Peters said that this is something that players will see happen throughout the whole expansion’s story.

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