Did anyone else feel like the appearance of the charr in the video sequences was too 'cuddly' . . ?

[b k.1648]

"Accurate to charr" is meaningless. Because charr aren't real, nor have they appeared in any other material that may serve as a guideline.

There's all kind of subjective reasons why a fictional race might be designed a certain way, but ANet refined the charr appearance in GW2 because they obviously didn't think the GW1 charr, which had two or three different models that looked completely different from each other, were going to work as a player race.

[Weindrasi.3805]

@"Ben K.6238" said:"Accurate to charr" is meaningless. Because charr aren't real, nor have they appeared in any other material that may serve as a guideline.

There's all kind of subjective reasons why a fictional race might be designed a certain way, but ANet refined the charr appearance in GW2 because they obviously didn't think the GW1 charr, which had two or three different models that looked completely different from each other, were going to work as a player race.

Completely agree.What people liked was how charr were PORTRAYED in GW1: as vicious savages, unknowable and unrelatable to humans, animals with scary intelligence.

The thing is, in GW1 we were looking at charr from the perspective of a human who only knew them as relentless conquerors who destroyed Ascalon just to kill. That perspective was NEVER reality.If GW2 had been a game where you only play human, and see everything through human eyes, the charr would have kept their GW1 portrayal. However, Arenanet wanted to tell a story of cultures coming together and relating to each other--thus each race is portrayed to us objectively, not subjectively.

As to design differences in GW1 verses GW2 charr... there really isn't a huge difference. Half of the reason GW1 charr look so much grittier and rougher is because GW1 graphics were grittier and rougher. That, and you only had like 5 charr models, total--all of which were male.The other half of the reason is character creation sliders. In order to create a player-character race, you have to give players a level of freedom in designing their characters. Unfortunately, that means a number of players will create abominations with goo-goo eyes, little teefs, and pink hair. These are not a reflection of charr in lore, and should be disregarded when considering the race from a lore and design perspective.

[Juan.6124]

It's to please the furries.