Guild Wars 2 Preview

The latest preview of Guild Wars 2 can be found over at VideoGamer, where they dive further into the game’s mechanics with the help of global brand director Chris Lye.

Where a traditional quest system will have you wander over to the nearest NPC with an exclamation mark, then force you to read a wall of text to find your objective, Dynamic Events happen instantly and without real warning. A dragon will attack an area outside a nearby town and the villagers about town will suddenly be bricking it. You’ll hear screaming and spot guards trying to recruit the help of players. Buildings will suddenly explode into flame as the dragon spits fire and from a distance you’ll see the clouds of smoke billowing out on the horizon.

Don’t fancy fighting? That’s fine. Go ahead and pick up that keg of water next to a barn and begin to put out the flames that have taken over the farmyard. Not bothered with that either? Then head down to the fight and help revive any fallen players. Lye tells us:

“We’re encouraging people to interact, not penalising you for helping each other out. And the fact that every profession can revive is a huge bonus, that’s a great piece of social rewarding. People want to revive because it’s not a lot of work and you actually get experience for doing that.”

Even the basic movement mechanics feel looser. Dodge has been implemented into fights, allowing you to dive and roll out of the way of incoming attacks. Hell, now you can actually freely jump and swim – in previous iterations players had been locked to the ground, unable to mindlessly skip around.