#8 Personal Story

Each character has their own personal story.

The general idea behind this (imho) is to enhance your immersion and experience in the game world, giving you reasons to do the things you do. These reasons are in addition to those given for the general quests, events and other happenings in the world that have a story as well, but that are more often associated with the general lore and history of Tyria. Your personal story line, makes the game more, well, personal.

When you first create your character, one set of questions deals with your Biography. Your responses to these questions determine your background and they are associated with your Race, Character Type/Profession (Soldier - Warrior/Guardian, Adventurer - Engineer/Ranger/Thief, or Scholar - Elementalist/Mesmer/Necromancer), and your personality (Charming/Dignified/Ferocious). This background will determine the path that your personal story starts on and subsequently determine the responses available for you to choose from during conversations with various NPCs.

Ok, so you can find all this out from the link provided above to the Wiki. How does it actually feel in game?

 

The personal story segments are 'instanced' and so are done on a solo basis. There are cut scene conversations interspersed with response selections on your part. The written story and voice acting are not as consistently superior as SW:TOR frankly, but are still entertaining and informative if you choose to engage in them. Often, for hard core players, racing to get to level cap, these types of 'distractions' are ignored (at least on the first character). Not sure why I threw that in there, but there it is. In any case the cut scenes are skippable. Naturally, you get experience for pursuing your personal story and it can be a significant portion of the game. Personally, I find it entertaining and a diversionary aspect of the game. Your personal story segments will start out in your capital city (presumably, Sigurd's did), and then you will have follow-ups out in the various zones as you work through them. If you are going to experience your personal story, I would suggest you pursue it as you go, so that you are not only performing level appropriate story segments, but they will tie in with other events / story line occurring within your current zone.

Let's ask Sigurd how this is all working out for him.

Sigurd experiencing one of his personal story segments, which, in this case, is a historical perspective (indicated by the black and white visuals even though this isn't Kansas).

Well, during the personal story, I do get the chance to interact with the various characters of note in the Guild Wars story. I get to display my 'Stallone' style of method acting and pronunciation (which is totally in character for a Norn - Editor). I do have one complaint on my most recent story episode.

I am supposed to help out Wolf clan to tidy up a bit of a mess, in that I must kill the mad wolf (for his own good naturally) with the aid of Eir Stegalkin (Norn Ranger) and her pet Wolf, Garm. I was given a choice earlier to either be provided with a supior weapon or the aid of Eir, and I selected Eir. I mean, she's totally all that, right? She's way up there in terms of experience, strength, etc. and she should be able to handle this wolf with one hand tied behind her back. Besides, she's a ranger and has a pet to help as well. Nope.

I've died four times now and her only comment is 'Be careful!'. Yeah. Really not helpful. Maybe in another level or two?

...or not. Hopefully in a post or two I will meet with success!

Ciao!