Video: Guild Wars 2 Races

Despite the fact that you may have loved or hated the original Guild Wars, it's getting a sequel, and with good reason too since they seemed to have a large audience with the first one, all things considered. Looks like with Guild Wars 2, the folks over at NCsoft and ArenaNet are making sure this one is even better than the last. One way in which they have me intrigued is that they are adding a bevy of different playable races into the game, each race with its own beliefs and background. Granted, it still has the typical fantasy genre races to some extent, but from watching the trailer, you can see that they've got a few new ones and have put some effort into each race.

The five races in the trailer are human, charr, norn, asura, and sylvari. Along with the five races, they also show each of the five different homelands and a hero from there, one for each race. For the humans there is Captain Logan Thackeray from Divinity's Reach. The humans are a more religious people, fighting for their deities and their queen. From the charr homeland of The Black Citadel comes Rytlock Brimstone of the Blood Legion. The charr mock the notion of gods and seem far more in tune with war, chaos and destruction, which seems to come easily from their sizable frames. From Hoelbrak, the large encampment that the norn call home, comes Eir Stegalkin. The norn are a race connected to the more feral part of nature, communing with the bear, the snow leopard, and the raven for intellect and guildance.

Keeping in the vein of "small but smart" races is the asura people, with one of their brightest leaders, Zojja, on the center stage. The asura place intelligence and reason above all other and even view magic as an extension of alchemy and science. The last character in the video is the sylvari hero Caithe. The sylvari race also commune with nature, but more with the earth and flora than the fauna, which can be seen with their immense city of Rata Sum-Rising. Overall, the game seems to be coming along great, and if you pay attention during the video, you'll hear a number of recognizable voice actors lending their talent to these heroes. No word yet on when we might see this sequel release, so don't hold your breathe just yet.