PC Gameplay

The world of Tyria, as imagined in the massively multiplayer Guild Wars 2, is an endlessly intriguing place, stuffed with mystery and adventure, gifting you with gorgeous sights and personal stories that etch themselves into your memory. These are the kinds of stories you tell for months to come–and they arise from your own spontaneous experiences. There’s the one about how you and your guildmates emerged from chilly waters into an ominous thunderstorm, captured a tower from the enemy, and escaped from a roaring crowd of necromancers and rangers before they could deliver you to the devil. Then there’s the one where a giant lightning-breathing dragon landed in a dark-misted field, and you joined a legion of soldiers to cleanse the land of its blight. Guild Wars 2 strips away the traditional game of “follow the waypoint,” allowing you to feel like part of a vast living landscape rather than the tool of a thousand and one taskmasters.

How does Guild Wars 2 make Tyria so inviting and inventive? It starts with the loss of the traditional quest log. That isn’t to say that Guild Wars 2 doesn’t provide you with side quests and other activities outside your main storyline–it’s that they are structured in a way that makes them organic to the world around you. In a sense, your map serves as a journal. Here, you see points of interest to discover; waypoints that you can unlock and that serve as nodes for quickly traveling from one area to the other; and non-player characters designated with hearts that have optional activities for you to do.

Your map is more than a sketch of the surrounding lands: it’s a personal guide to your adventure, beckoning you to uncover unexplored territory. It isn’t just the marked activities that have you peeking into every nook, however, but the surprises lurking on mountaintops and within hidden caves. Suddenly, you’re stumbling upon a secretive entrance or emerging from a deep lake to discover a hidden oasis. Further inspection reveals hidden treasure, tricky labyrinths, and giant ogres needing a smackdown.

As for the more structured activities, those NPCs labeled with hearts are more than just quest givers–they’re vendors, too. By fulfilling these characters’ requests, you get access to whatever gear they sell, which you buy not with gold, but with a currency called karma, earned by participating in world events (more on those soon) and by just doing things. This system of hearts is more or less like the traditional “take quest, earn reward” structure of most role-playing games, but the reward is access to a merchant’s entire inventory, rather than a piece of equipment you may not want or need. You don’t have to speak to that character to take on the task–you just get prompted when you come near, and the prompt disappears if you leave the area before completing the goal. (Of course, it then reappears when you again enter the area.)

Guild Wars 2

Free

8.6333333333333

Graphic

90/10

GamePlay

89/10

Sounds

80/10

Pros

• - Fluid movement and combat are consistently entertaining
• - Rethinks genre tropes in ways that keep you exploring
• - Exciting player-versus-player battlefields
• - Beautiful visuals with a painterly flair

Cons

• - Does a mediocre job of explaining important concepts
• - Some lingering technical issues and other annoyances