Doing animals right in Guild Wars 2

Posted by on September 11, 2012 in Games

As much as I skip over the lore while I’m playing Guild Wars 2, I can’t help but admire what an imaginative world ArenaNet has made. Ever see a frog in heavy armor? Well, you have now. Pictured. Left.

I recall another MMO called Vanguard having various dog and cat people, and as near as I can recall, they were just human character models with dog and cat heads stuck on top. It’s just like how all the aliens on Star Trek are bipedal humanoids with prosthetic noses or ears or whatever. One of the things I really like about playing a charr in Guild Wars 2 is that it’s not just a human character model with a cat head. The charr have an entirely different posture, size, and movement animation. Similarly, the various non-human races around the world — I don’t just mean the monsters, but the NPC civilizations — have a distinct look. In addition to the frog people, there are polar bear people, platypus people, rat people, and bird people, and not a one of them uses the basic human character model. In fact, with all these NPC races, with all the charr, with all the diminutive asura, it sometimes seems that human character models are the exception rather than the rule.

  • Haverghast

    EverQuest and EverQuest II have had frog men in heavy armor for a long time now. The Frogloks went from being NPCs in EQ1 to being playable in both games. They are also completely different than human models.

    I’ve been really disappointed in race modeling in games for a long time now. There have been few character models in modern games that are truly different from the base human model. I get why this is so (easy to design armor, less work for artists), but I still wish there was more creativity.

    Since launch, EQ has had Trolls, Ogres, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Halflings that had marked differences in models and height. Going into first person even gave you the correct height perspective, which a lot of modern games no longer do.

    Hmm, I sound like I’m promoting EQ there, but I’ve not played it in a long time. Truth is, other games have had differing models as well, but most don’t take that extra step.

  • Fishbreath

    Wait, there are platypeople? That’s fantastic.

  • TheMopeSquad

    If its one thing we have learned from the success of WoW its that people love anthropomorphism. Someone should do an MMO based on Brian Jacques “Redwall” series that would probably make a ton of dosh.

  • tomchick

    Well, they’ve also got a little otter and a little seal and a little dolphin. Plus some gungan, since they can waddle around on shore.

  • http://twitter.com/CHGardiner Chris Gardiner

    I would do terrible things for a Mouse Guard MMO:
    http://www.mouseguard.net/

  • http://twitter.com/gndwyn Urthman

    Tom, I’d love to hear your reaction to that recent live-action Guild Wars commercial. I don’t suppose you could get Kelly Wand to do a Guild Wars Traileropsis?

  • Peter Michelsen

    I do love me some skrit. How come the funniest races are never the playable ones? WoW had much the same problem. Someone should really fix that.

  • mipearson

    My big tough Charr curls up into a little ball with his tail and purrs for the ‘/sleep’ emote.

    Doing it right.

  • http://www.facebook.com/iphigenie Joelle Nebbe-Mornod

    ” it sometimes seems that human character models are the exception rather than the rule.” I think that is actually a desired effect linked to the lore, the humans have fallen so low, most of their nations gone etc.

  • Amit Asghar

    The first thing I thought of when I saw the frog people in GW2 was “FROAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAK”. (EQ1 reference)