Exclusive Guild Wars Interview with Bobby Stein - The Next Big Step

Cody Bye · 11-10-2008, 07:53 PM

Trying to "win" in the MMOG marketplace is often something of a gamble. You put your money in [To the tune of $50 million.--Ed.] and then you sit back and see if you hit the jackpot. With the original Guild Wars, NCsoft and ArenaNet hit those three lucky sevens, and it wasn't due to simple dumb luck. One part of that equation was the writing team behind the original series, and those writers have now set their focus on the sequel to Guild Wars. Ten Ton Hammer's Cody "Micajah" Bye sat down with Writing Team Lead Bobby Stein to talk about the process that team goes through and what we might expect from Guild Wars 2. There's some juicy tidbits in there, so make sure you check this one out!

Quote:

"Our job as writers is to impart the story through convincing and compelling dialogue in the smallest space possible. Players will have no shortage of interesting stories in which to immerse themselves, but those stories will be presented in new ways compared to the original Guild Wars," Bobby stated. "I tell my team all the time that a good actor can’t save bad dialogue. If you’ve written something that sounds wonky when you read it aloud, you need to change it. Lines need to be short, credible, and relatable. Even though our characters exist in a fantasy world, they should exhibit the same sweeping emotions that we do. As writers, we draw from our own personal victories, private tragedies, and comedic moments for inspiration. We must breathe life into these characters, or else they become nothing more than quest dispensers."

To read the rest of our exclusive Guild Wars interview, click here!

Sardu · 11-11-2008, 01:12 AM

Great interview! Of all the various settings for the current live games, Guild Wars is among my absolute favorites. It also notably has my favorite soundtrack of any online game I've played, but that's besides the point.

I'm really looking forward to GW2 though. There were a lot of really great, subtle things done with story in the original that brought a lot of depth to the world that went above and beyond what the main storyline offered. Even simple things like when people first started traveling to the Underworld there were long discussions about the ghost of Gwen's mom - then years later you can travel there with Gwen in your party and reunite them. Or a favorite of mine is what Reyna says to you after you finish the first campaign - totally hilarious (but I won't spoil it for anyone who's not gotten there yet)

I started playing again recently, specifically because I always enjoy the holiday events, but found myself spending a good bit of time in Tyria otherwise even with all the other major releases this season. I've also been oddly drawn to making anaglyph images lately so to bring the two together, I'll leave you with an anaglyph of an Elementalist!