Is Joko human?

While running around Kourna recently with all the Joko statues, I noticed an oddity. Joko only has 3 toes. I went checked again on the actual Joko model and yeah he only has three toes. The guy also has outrageously long arms. Is Palawa Joko human or some other race?

Given that humans are a largely inferior race, i imagine joko would brag if he was anything-else. I suspect the features are just a design thing to accentuate his monstrosity. We have seen plenty of awakened humans which are over sized or misproportioned so it makes sense

In Life he may or may not have been an exile, we don't know where he lived, or what he did before he tried to conquer Vaabi. It is possible that he suffered Frostbite, or burn damage and lost his toes. Or he was a cripple, or the 3D modeler was very economical with the distribution of toes. In any case, nice catch, OP!

Considering the massacre of centaurs and disdain for norms, he seems quite "xenophobic", if that is the correct word.

if he had 4 arms, he could fit in Seer, perhaps a missed oportunity?

It's worth noting that several of the Awakened models only have three toes as well.

His toes are just a side effect/design choice because he and most of the awakened hves been undead for so long

And here I thought that he was an undead elder race.

Thanks for the responses.

@Tyson.5160 said:While running around Kourna recently with all the Joko statues, I noticed an oddity. Joko only has 3 toes. I went checked again on the actual Joko model and yeah he only has three toes. The guy also has outrageously long arms. Is Palawa Joko human or some other race?

In GW1, he had five toes. Joko is well known for flesh-warping in the past 250 years. Canids and Abominations among the Awakened were all humans originally, for example. Most likely explanation is that Joko altered his body a bit so that he could overcome some natural weaknesses of the human body. Given that many Awakened have three toes, this is most likely just a Jokonian Aesthetic of the past couple centuries.

Mind you, we don't know Joko's origins, so it is entirely plausible he isn't human. But there's nothing to suggest it.

@"ugrakarma.9416" said:Considering the massacre of centaurs and disdain for norms, he seems quite "xenophobic", if that is the correct word.

if he had 4 arms, he could fit in Seer, perhaps a missed oportunity?

Seers had no toes. Mursaat had three and were the xenophobes.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:While running around Kourna recently with all the Joko statues, I noticed an oddity. Joko only has 3 toes. I went checked again on the actual Joko model and yeah he only has three toes. The guy also has outrageously long arms. Is Palawa Joko human or some other race?

@"ugrakarma.9416" said:Considering the massacre of centaurs and disdain for norms, he seems quite "xenophobic", if that is the correct word.

if he had 4 arms, he could fit in

Seer

, perhaps a missed oportunity?

if was purely on size, could be a jotun

@crepuscular.9047 said:if was purely on size, could be a jotun

I was thinking more like Mursaat, however that would create so many retcons that it would make my head spin.

Do you know who else has three toes? Asura. Joko is just a really tall asura, and hides his big floppy ears under his massive hat so people don't suspect anything.

Oh, and he's also Lyssa.

He is extremely tall for a human, he's as tall as a norn.But there's cases of norn-sized humans like Shiro and Turai Ossa.

He has what appears to be 3 claw-like toes like many creatures found in Tyria such as Mursaat, Asura, Ogres, Ettin, Trolls, Skritt, Giants and even Giganticus Lupicus, and possibly more.Asura, ogres, and ettin also share the trait of having long arms in proportion to one's legs.Grawl, Jotun and many other humanoid creatures have 4 or more toes, so it's not like they give 3 toes to that many creatures only to reduce model complexity.

We know that magic can mutate creatures, making them gain features they would not have otherwise., like how slublings became caterpillar-like.

Joko could have filtered so much Tyrian magic over the years that he started to gain the 3 toes shared by so many humanoid creatures, or intentionally absorbed that much magic knowing how it will change him, which could also explain his new blue glowing eyes, or just traight transform himself to look less human and instill fear and respect on humans.He also appears to have been messing with elemental magic, using tar to reinforce and empower awakened and possibly himself, so it could be traits gained from such new processes.

On the toes, maybe Joko developed some strange ideas about how feet are supposed to look like, similar to the practise of foot binding in ancient China IRL. I mean he fits the bill of mad king, who proclaims himself to be some sort of god and he was able to reshape bodies. Add to that his tendency to get bored and he may have been a constant source of interesting ideas.

And the size issue with important characters being lager than characters of lesser importance is mostly for the sake of convenience. Notice how Raidbosses are generally huge? Or how in the Silverwastes Warmaster Gritblade is huge, even YUGE, in relation to other charr?This goes back to medieval art, where rulers and important figures were larger than unimportant figures, even if it broke perspective, in order to draw attention to the key elements of an image. In a 3D context you can scale models without breaking perspective, but these models will fell unusually small/large.Even the player characters are affected by it. Norn were downscaled to better fit into caves and narrow spaces (and it's still frustrating sometimes).