I don’t really intend this blog to be a “gaming news” blog, nor do I expect to usually blatantly advertise a particular game like this – but I’m so completely looking forward to Guild Wars 2 (and there’s been so little information about it for such a long time) that with the release of the trailer just a couple of hours ago, I’m entirely giddy.
First of all, the trailer is amazingly beautiful. You can find it on the official Guild Wars 2 site. Nor is the trailer the only thing you can find there – the FAQ also has answers to some nagging questions that I’m quite glad how they turned out. For starters, Guild Wars 2 will be like the original in that it will not have a subscription fee. I think this was a great factor in the original’s success, and I think that it’ll give Guild Wars 2 a leg up on any potential competition as well – not that it seems like it will need any, if the trailer is any indication. Other things confirmed by the FAQ include a full 3D world (no fake z-axis this time – in fact, some of the environments are even underwater!) and also that unlike the original, Guild Wars 2 will not be limited to instanced areas only – some portions of the world will be non-instanced (but there will still be many instanced portions as well to help drive the storyline).
I’ve added a lot of screenshots from the trailer to this post – click past the jump to see them all.
I apologize that in a couple of the shots, there are some artifacts, but that’s just a fact of life when taking the shots from an encoded video – if you see artifacts, trust me, they’re just due to that; the actual rendering is amazingly detailed. I tried to mostly take shots from the portion of the trailer which wasn’t cinematic in nature – as far as I can tell, most of these shots are from actual 3D environments rendered in the engine. There are, however, a couple of concept art pieces as well.
Representatives from all of the 5 playable races strike a dramatic pose.
Not only will Guild Wars 2 feature full 3D environments... some of them will even be underwater.
The Sylvari are one of the 5 playable races in Guild Wars 2.
A view of a town from the cinematic trailer of Guild Wars 2. Suspended boat hulls? Wow.
As with everything else, Guild Wars 2's character models have been improved over the already good-looking ones from the original Guild Wars.
A frigid town entrance from the Guild Wars 2 trailer.
A view of a massive fortress city from the Guild Wars 2 trailer.
A lair entrance within a dragon's remains?
An impressive view from the base of a dam.
Charr wielding both fiery swords and even guns in the Guild Wars 2 trailer.
An impressive, almost industrial city, presumably of the Charr.
An Asuran engineer with a powerful battle golem in the Guild Wars 2 trailer.
