Guild Wars 2 | Touring Divinity's Reach, the human city (English+subs)

Finally there comes the cool stuff...
Hi everyone! I’m Albert
and I’ll be your guide on this journey around Divinity’s Reach.
Wow, I've been amazing there!
Once inside the city, we’ll start in Plaza of Dwayna,
one of the six plazas dedicated to the gods.
Here we see a sylvari (with the old design),
she has just arrived to the human city.
They greet her and she says that she has travelled from far away to get here,
''everything seems so dirty, the crime, the danger… nothing is like The Groove'',
you know, the sylvari city.
To our left, we find a Seraph, the kingdom's guard that protect the city under the consention of the queen.
Well, we walk down the Dwayna High Road,
as you can see, the city is full of life, a lot of environment,
we can observe people walking, guards, citizens, trading posts,
We can hear the sound of the people talking, the merchants...
You'll check it for yourselves in another video later.
Right now we're in the Western Commons, one of the districts of the city, if you remember the map that we saw at the beginning of the video.
We arrive to one of the mini-games of the city. It appears a yellow message informing us that we've discovered it.
The cartel is in New Krytan, the official language of Tyria, and it says something like ''Target Shootout''.
Every character of every level can participate here.
We keep moving on, we climb over here and we address to the Upper City.
At the bottom you can see something like a blue control point,
points that appear all around the map which we can travel to when we explore a specific zone.
Ok, once here we have the Royal Garden, the Royal Palace, the Ministry Chamber with all kind of politicians, scholars...
If you take a look to this enclosure surrounded by columns, the wall at the bottom is painted with many works of the concept art of the game as a mural,
These precisely are from Kekai Kotaki, you know, one of the ArenaNet art designers.
Here we can appreciate a conversation between two ministers, talking about the centaurs and all the lands they're devastating.
On the floor appears what could be a world map of the game...
We arrive to a beautiful zone of the city that personally I really love.
I present you the Royal Garden, with that kind of astronomical clockwork or mechanism with constellations.
This part would also be a mix between a park, a botanic garden and as I said right now, an astronomical studio (suppositions).
As you have already seen in the images, these giant trumpets and other kind of instruments are part of the Uzolan's Mechanical Orchestra,
that is present in the carnival of Divinity’s Reach, which is celebrated all year in one of the districts, and could be used for mini-games or party events.
As I say it was created by Uzolan, a human inventor that has been protagonist of many improvements of the human race.
The city homes all kind of cultures, citizens of Ascalon, Cantha, Elona, Kryta...
Each one has its own districts in the city, and the other two districts belongs to the stores and activities of the festival.
The Ascalonian district is known to contain a hospital for soldiers of Ebonhawke, the last human fortress in Ascalon.
As you can see, all the city is persistent except one single zone that is instanced, the Salma District, in honor to the Queen Salma of the first part of the game.
In this zone will be reflected our personal story.
For instance, there could be the situation that forces me to choose if a character lives or die,
if he dies, we won't see him anymore but if he lives, we meet him in our home instance,
we’ll be able to talk to him, among other things.
The same happens with the buildings, I mean, if you save a hospital or an orphanage of a fire, for example,
that building will be in your zone with its corresponding characters.
As data, in our personal instance or home we only will be able to enter alone or with a party with other people.
And answering the question you’ve got in mind, the characters of other races that come here will see a basic version of the instance.
That’s it, we enter our home, our zone, this kind of neighborhood.
Everything around here belongs to us, there are merchants, buildings, other characters walking that we can talk with...
Depending of what you choose in your personal story it will happen a thing or another,
For example, this character is a commoner, the commmon social class, that must meet her friend Petra
and help her to get rid of some thugs.
We enter the tavern following our personal story.
In the human city there will be bar brawls where we’ll be able to use bottles, chairs...
If you pay attention, the bottles are marked, and it appears a message allowing us to take them once we get closer,
to drink them or surely to start a fight.
This guy says to us ''Hey, watch it! You almost spilled my drink, and I almost had to mop it up with your face.''
Certainly, we're going to leave this guy's head like an asura's one hitting him with a bottle.
So well, here we are with Petra, to continue our personal story.
Good night everyone, we're back at Plaza of Dwayna,
this time at night so we can see a bit how would be the city at this hour.
As it seems these people don’t sleep, we’re still finding conversations everywhere.
If you've noticed, every time we get closer to a NPC or a non-playing character it appears the option to ''greet'',
usually they say you a short sentence or a simple ''hello''.
Also it appears the option to ''talk'' with them, as we can do with this norn,
and we can ask them things about the norn race.
This option is supposed to have one or more questions or sentences inside the dialogue,
with which we can interact with the character for any ''quest'',
or simply to obtain information or some additional comment.
We keep moving, you see the city has an environment pretty beautiful at night,
and I don’t continue because I get sensitive and romantic, I know me.
Well, here we meet Mina, the responsible of the Target Shootout that we’ve seen before.
She says: ''Our shooting range is closed for a private party.
Minister Caudecus is footing the bill, and he was very specific about his guest list.
We'll open to the public as soon as this party's over''.
So, we must suppose the activity is closed during some hours,
or at night, or when the Minister wants to be there.
As I've already commented, this would be part of the mini-games or activities inside the human city.
Each city of Tyria has its own mini-games,
as, for example, ''Kegball'', we can play in Hoelbrak.
Well, we turn around and we find a girl in the middle of the street, she says...
''Are you skilled enough to drop a drunken norn?
Then The Busted Flagon wants YOU as part time bouncer!''
I imagine that the Busted Flagon would be a kind of tavern or something like this,
and well, although we didn’t talk to her, surely it’s a kind of ''quest'' or tells you any interesting story.
Again we go to the Upper City.
I’d like to say that Kryta present three military factions,
whose members we'll see around the city and other zones:
The Seraph, the Ministry Guard and the Shining Blade.
The Seraph stretch their influence across the nation, with outposts in every major town, and patrols that struggle to keep roads free of bandit attacks and centaur raids.
They operate under the queen's command.
The second largest martial unit is the Ministry Guard.
Typically seen only in Divinity’s Reach. it is their task to keep the peace in the ministry and provide personal security for the Krytan ministers and their aides.
Y por último la pequeña fuerza de élite conocida como la Hoja Brillante.
The Shining Blade are the queen’s own guard and watch over the Royal Family itself.
We come back to the home instance.
Before I talked about our character as a commoner, he had to meet with her friend Petra and other stuff.
But depending of the social condition we choose in our biography, our quests in the personal story will change.
If your character is an Street Rat, he'll meet an old friend called Quinn, of his gang, and he'll have to help him.
If you're from the nobility, you’ll have to go to a party organized by another noble, Lord Faren, who is assaulted by some bandits.
This is only a little part of the District of Salma, obviously is so much bigger, we have many other buildings, more people walking near us...
In this zone we will have our own house, that may be customizable.
Here we'll find another crowd of people, I think that these are the same people of the morning,
they’re here all day partying, although they don’t seem really enjoying it.
And we enter again the tavern...
There's a guy talking with the waitress: ''come on sweetness, just one dance'', and she says: ''only if you get a job, a haircut, a claw. And maybe not even then''.
And well, this tavern specifically we'll only be able to enter alone or with a party with other people.
Outside the city we know that there's another tavern, in that kind of village near the walls of the city and surely we'll find many more.
Don't worry, because the party is guaranteed.
Also, as I've said, the fact that in the game we'll be able to explore the interior of the houses and walk inside certain buildings or go across rooms…
It's pretty cool.
With this amazing soundtrack we arrive to a really interesting part of the video that I hope you enjoy,
where I pick references, curiosities, details, and definitely, the places where probably came the inspiration to create Divinity’s Reach.
We'll start talking, obviously, about Minas Tirith, from The Lord of the Rings.
Here you have the map, the city presents a circular structure in many levels, surrounded by white walls.
Minas Tirith is the city of the kingdom of the humans of Gondor.
It's divided in many levels, like the big city of Kryta, and presents many white stone walls.
The highest place of Minas Tirith is the citadel, where stands the King's house, the white tower...
comparing its similarities with the royal palace of Divinity's Reach, located on the highest area.
As you see, it's not necessary to be so smart to find similarities between one city and the other one.
Another example would be the Imperial City, from Oblivion.
The Imperial City is located on a really big island.
One of its features are its enormous exterior walls and the lots of interior walls,
because the city is divided in 9 districts and each one has its own wall.
In the center, the city has a palace as a core.
And what I'd like to highlight from this city, apart of the obvious stuff, is the botanic garden and its great similarity with the Royal Garden in Divinity's Reach.
We arrive to the reference par excellence of Divinity's Reach in the real world, the Mont Saint-Michel.
This medieval citadel surrounded by walls has only 40 population and it's located on a hill of about 92 meters towering over a sandy plain,
with a splendid medieval abbey on the top.
Fifty-three days a year, only during the big tides of the equinox, it becomes an island during some hours.
During centuries it was an interesting fortress with the reason of its insularity; because of that the big wall surrounds the entire village.
This is composed by many steep streets that flip around the mount with worth seeing buildings because of its medieval arquitecture.
On the top, the abbey crowns the citadel imposing as a magnific set composed by the church and the romanic and gothic abbey.
The legend of the Mount Saint-Michel starts in the north of France, in a region called as Low Normandie,
where, as people say, held one of the bravest battles of the history between the good and the evil.
It occurred in the Mount Tombe, which was used to worship the gods.
It has been said that the Demon acquired the shape of a big sea dragon, and frightened all the citizens during the VIII century.
From the sky, everything was observed by the archangel Michael, feeling a big compassion for the people.
Because of that, the leader of the celestial army went with his troops to finish with the recent threat.
He addressed to the Mount Tombe and started the battle that finally won the archangel Michael,
when he cut the dragon’s head with the help of its holy sword.
The legend tells that the Bishop of Avranches, Saint Aubert, saw this battle and during several nights recibed messages in his dreams sent by Michael,
asking him to build a monument in commemoration of his victory.
So he did that, and in the year 709, the Saint Michel abbey was founded.
As you can see, the similarities can be very successful.
Now I leave you with images series of villages and cities of Europe,
where I found many similarities with Divinity's Reach and its arquitecture.
Then I'll show a last trip around the city,
this time with the real sound of the game,
and well, for my part I'm done, I leave you here,
it has been a real pleasure to make this kind of documentary and be with all of you,
so I hope see you guys soon around these streets.
See you soon!