Guild Wars ½ Screenshot Comparison

Something I’ve always found interesting, playing Guild Wars 2, is how consistent the art style “feels” with Guild Wars 1 in many respects. Walking around the GW2 Charr areas, I often feel a sense of deja-vu, having played through the same area multiple times as “Pre-Searing Ascalon” from Guild Wars 1.

This made me think, when you put them side-by-side, how much do the locations in GW2 reflect their origins in GW1?

Well… It’s a mixed bag, as you can see above. Left is GW1, right is GW2, and these are the areas:

Lion’s Arch (GW1) and the sunken ruins of Old Lion’s Arch (GW2)



The view from Camp Rankor (GW1) and the view from Rankor Ruins (GW2)



The Ascalon Catacombs (GW1) and the ruined structures in the same location (GW2)



Droknar’s Forge (GW1) and Sunken Droknar (GW2)



Ascalon City (GW1) and the closest matching area (GW2)



Now, GW2 is meant to take place over 250 years after GW1, and many areas are supposed to be very different (for instance, the previous Lion’s Arch and Droknar’s Forge were destroyed, in-world, by a massive flood) but I’m surprised about how much the architecture differs to big setpieces like The Great Northern Wall in Ascalon City.

That being said, what’s more interesting is that I didn’t really notice this very much until I took the screenshots, which I guess is a testament to how the second game preserves the spirit of these locations, if not their actual appearance.

I have a few more, but I’ll save those for another post.