Skeletons of Guild Wars

[Castigator.3470]

Greetings.This started as an odd showerthought, but looking around Tyria, I've found a surprising lack of nonhuman skeletons. This lack is not just limited to the animated skeletons, there seems to be a complete lack of bones for several races.

The charr, for instance feature prominently in battlefields across all of Tyria. Entire warbands fall together, sometimes a charr gets lost in a remote place. But who of you has ever seen a charr skull rendered in Guild Wars 2? Were there charr skulls in the original Guildwars?How does an entire skeleton look like and why haven't we seen one?The charr have the custom of burning their dead, but unless they have been using crematoria for more than 250 years, we should have found their remains somewhere.Here's a drawing by someone, who took this matter into her own hands. Art by xstarrx

Same with the asura. I've never seen the skeleton of an asura. There were risen asura, but they were fleshy, as if they were risen just last week. You'd think there are some remains of long lost asuran explorers, or the citizens of Rata Novus. I don't expect a graveyard, since the asura too, seem to cremate their dead and have the technology for cremation at least since 250 years. Then again, the asura live in a jungle biome with jaguars (panthers) roaming around, dangerous caves, elementals, hostile hylek, there's bound to be some unlucky researcher, who found the eternal alchemy a bit too soon.

Among the major races, these are the odd ones, since the lack of skeletons seems to violate common sense. Norn skeletons seem similar enough to human ones, that the main difference would be added bulk to account for square/cube law. Sylvari may not even have bones and even if they do, their wooden bodies likely decompose, so their lack of skeletal remains is not surprising. (Plus, the oldest tree children in Tyria are 28 years old in 1330.)

Next are the minor races. The ogres, grawl, skritt, quaggan, hylek and krait. I could have counted the centaurs, but Joko did integrate their remains nicely into the bone palace. Aside from centaurs, I was unable to locate any skeletons. Did anyone here find something interesting?

Then there's the disappointment of lich form. Sure it's a one size fits all transformation ingame, but it should raise some eyebrows, that a necromancer team consisting of one of each playable race look excactly the same, when using their lichform. From a lore standpoint this absolutely baffles me.It's not even impossible, this artist made a model.

[derd.6413]

would be lots of work for something most ppl won't care about or even notice.

[Castigator.3470]

I'm not sure if people would not notice. IIRC the reddit thread about lich form was very much in approval of a lich form, that doesn't turn your character into a generic model no matter their race.Plus, I really doubt, that I'm the only one who notices a distinct lack of fitting bones, when really, one or two static models per race would have been enough. Ideally, this would have been done before 2012, when everything had to be made, because yes, the current teams have been downsized to a sustainable size. But even now, the devs are more than capable of doing so, it may just never have occured to them, because they lack showers at their office, hence the lack of showerthoughts.

Also, I don't think it would be an unreasonable workload.Consider this: When we finally visit the Blood Legion Homelands, we'll reach an area that never had a permanent human population to begin with. If this place is to contain skeletons, someone will have to model a charr skeleton, unless there will be absolutely no skeletons. In that case a reasonable workload would be to make a skeletal charr model, put it into two or three poses and save as a static model.It doesn't have to be many, but considering that we may or may not see the Scarab plague unleashed, you know, the pestilence where scrarabs burst from your skin and eat your flesh, it seems that making a charr_skeleton_01 model would be a reasonable effort.

Same with Asura, really. I was weirded out by the ornithologist achievement in HoT, because ultimately there was no trace of the poor guy. Are their bones so easily dissolved?

[derd.6413]

no one would notice/care about skeletons and if i'm not mistaking it would make lichform the only skill that does something different per race.

[Castigator.3470]

@derd.6413 said:no one would notice/care about skeletons and if i'm not mistaking it would make lichform the only skill that does something different per race.

The first claim is false, some people do care. They may not be a vocal group, but let's be honest, the effort to add three props is not equivalent to moving a mountain.

The second claim is also false, since this changes none of the skill's effects. The server side numbercrunching would be completely unaffected by such a change, just some files added to the client, and playermodels transformed according to the player's race.In case you are curious, look at the skill animations of the different races. Asura, charr, humans, norn and sylvari already have different postures and skill animations when casting, or moving. The emotes, you guessed it, all have different animations, despite being invoked by the same action.It would be a nice change, and it doesn't need to happen overnight. That's the advantage of small stuff like this, you can do it whenever there's a calm moment.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

@derd.6413 said:if i'm not mistaking it would make lichform the only skill that does something different per race.

As one example, Thieves' Guild will summon 3 thieves who's appearance is dependent on your race. It will summon 1 male thief, 1 female thief, and either a thief, deadeye, or daredevil depending on which and whether you use an elite specialization. If you're a charr thief, you summon three charr NPCs, if you're sylvari, they're sylvari, if you're human, they're human.

Even though the mechanics are 100% the same, as a unique Lichform model would be, the aesthetic differ on race and elite specialization.

That said, the simple world building of having asuran and charr skeletons (or even wooden sylvari skeletons) for adding such where appropriate would be a huge potential.

Guild Wars isn't the only game that tends to never touch non-human bones, which is fairly disappointing. I recall when I first went through Dragon Age: Origins, and found an army of human skeletons in the dwarven thaigs.... couldn't even shrink their heights...

[derd.6413]

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@derd.6413 said:if i'm not mistaking it would make lichform the only skill that does something different per race.

As one example, Thieves' Guild will summon 3 thieves who's appearance is dependent on your race. It will summon 1 male thief, 1 female thief, and either a thief, deadeye, or daredevil depending on which and whether you use an elite specialization. If you're a charr thief, you summon three charr NPCs, if you're sylvari, they're sylvari, if you're human, they're human.

Even though the mechanics are 100% the same, as a unique Lichform model would be, the aesthetic differ on race and elite specialization.

That said, the simple world building of having asuran and charr skeletons (or even wooden sylvari skeletons) for adding such where appropriate would be a huge potential.

Guild Wars isn't the only game that tends to never touch non-human bones, which is fairly disappointing. I recall when I first went through Dragon Age: Origins, and found an army of human skeletons in the dwarven thaigs.... couldn't even shrink their heights...

got me there, completely forgot about them.

[ugrakarma.9416]

in our real world, skeletons tend to be first thing covered by erosion stuff.

by the way, the game designers can add skeletons in places to remark big battles, like in our "real world" we have stalingrad(the amount of dead in Stalingrad is so insane that theres still many unburied skeletons) or Vilnius "the city built on the bones".

Thousands of corpses of the footsoldiers who perished in Napoleon's disastrous 1812 retreat from Moscow have been discovered in a mass grave in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, offering a rich insight into the conditions and circumstances of history's most tragic military march. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/sep/03/artsandhumanities.research

but to make some justice lets remember theres the Jokos bone palace and their centaurs bones.

[Narcemus.1348]

@derd.6413 said:no one would notice/care about skeletons and if i'm not mistaking it would make lichform the only skill that does something different per race.

People would notice ?

[squeegee.4320]

Were there charr skulls in the original Guildwars?No but we decorated out armor with their pelts and made helmets out of their heads.

[Oglaf.1074]

@narwhalsbend.7059 said:

Were there charr skulls in the original Guildwars?No but we decorated out armor with their pelts and made helmets out of their heads.

And the Charr in turn roasted alive and ate human captives.

How far we’ve come, eh?