The Black Sheep of Guild Wars 2

With asura week last month, we were made aware of the unsavoury activities of the Inquest, an asuran super-krewe with dubious morals and ethics willing to burn out young prodigies purely for the progression of science, knowledge, and most importantly: power. In fact, it seems every one of the playable races has an 'evil' or at least morally grey faction.


As anyone who played through the Prophecies campaign in the original Guild Wars will know, the charr have the Flame Legion, who by the time of GW2 are exiles from the race and have earned the mocking title of 'the Gold Legion' from the other three legions (Ash, Blood and Iron), implying their weakness. Even with their false gods dead, the Flame Legion continues to be a thorn in the side of Tyria.


The norn have a rather interesting faction, known as the Sons of Svanir, these norn worship the Elder Dragons as a spirit, like Wolf, Bear, Snow Leopard or Raven. Surprisingly, this does not immediately put them at odds with the rest of their race. The norn believe that they have a right to choose their own path, so until a Son of Svanir starts causing trouble, he is still a brother norn and is treated as such. When I played the demo at Eurogamer Expo the Sons of Svanir played a major part in the personal story, but most of the Sons out in the wilds were neutral, linking the lore to the gameplay.


The horrors of the Nightmare Court are the sylvari's plunge into the darkness. These are sylvari who believe that the centaur Ventari's teachings are a corruption that has twisted the Pale Tree away from 'true' sylvari nature. The Nightmare Court seeks to traumatise their fellow sylvari in order to add those memories of anguish to the Tree's pool, a campaign that will eventually sway the sylvari to their way of thinking.


So, what remains for the humans? We saw plenty of the darkest aspects of humanity in GW1 with the White Mantle and the servants of Abbadon - what threatens them from within this time? While at the Eurogamer Expo, I talked to Theo Nguyen, content designer for GW2. He said that the humans' personal story would be a lot more morally grey than any of the others, and you would be constantly unsure of who was on your side, and who has Tyria's best interests at heart (particularly the Ministry Guard). Nothing much changes in 250 years then!