Another Guild Wars 2 /Utopia connection?

1st Official Post

    I was watching one of Wooden Potatoes videos (LOVE watching them!) and I noticed something familiar during his Glint video. Towards the end you see an enemy mounted on a creature, who is then defeated and falls off said mount. I paused the video then returned to the scene because I was sure I'd seen the creature before. It took me a minute or two but then it hit me, Utopia was said to have mounts. I Googled the image and sure enough, there it was. Tbh, there really wasn't a lot that was changed about it, and even the rider was using the same weapon in the original art.

    GW2%20Utopia%20Mount_zps1j2yeyua.jpg

    The head is altered but the resemblance is pretty hard to dismiss. Stance of the creature, number of claws on limbs and a lance for the rider. Just how far did Utopia really get? Not only that, but the creature is a separate model from the rider. So I guess GW2 really does have a mount, lol.

    • Official Post

    You're vastly overestimating the similarity of the two. It would be fair to say that they share a common influence (i.e, the T-Rex), but aside from that the differences are pretty stark. One has soft skin (hence the armor) while the other is tough. Their heads are not remotely similar. The weapons are completely different, both in terms of type (lance vs sword) and style (reasonably realistic vs stupidly oversized jrpg nonsense). The shoulders are in different positions, meaning their arms could be used for different things. Their hips/legs are similarly different. The expressions of the creatures also suggests the relationship between rider and mount could be different. Frankly, these two creatures have next to nothing in common.

    As for the Utopia development, it's hard to say. Concept art is one of the first things that gets done. For all we know, that image could have been created when NF was at the end of it's development cycle, prior to the realisation they wanted to transition to GW2.

    The skin of the model isn't relevant to the comparison because that's a choice made by the model builder that's suited to the content. I'm talking about the over all form of the creature, and how it's being ridden.

    The heads aren't remotely similar and I mentioned that but again, not really relevant. I'm stating that they altered it to suit the needs of the game the way they altered the Mursaat and Charr models to fit the needs of the Destroyer characters.

    The weapons aren't the same but they are lances. There's no sword I've even seen that has a grip the length of the one in the concept art, and the Mordrem cavalier clearly states it's a lance in the wiki. It's kind of hard to dismiss that.

    The shoulders might be in slightly different positions as well as the legs because one of them is concept art, and the other is a practical game model. There's countless examples of art not turning out the way the finished product looks, but again, the form, the rider, and the weapon support my theory.

    The expression of the creatures, the difference between looking like a good guy or bad guy, armor or any other surface texture is also not relevant to my theory that this was at some point, a GW Utopia design that's been repurposed.

    • Official Post

    Your argument: if you ignore everything they don't have in common they're pretty much the same. That's got to be one of the biggest cases of cherry picking I've ever seen. These two creatures have three things in common: that they're being ridden, which is a very primitive concept that is not at all unique (some GW examples would be Dagnar Stonepate, who rides an ice drake, and some Stone Summit Monks/Mesmers who ride armored dolyaks), that they both have three toes on each foot (inconsequential), and they they have large weapons (which is a direct consequence from being mounted, so not significant). Absolutely everything of consequence is different. It's very possible that the writing and/or design and/or gameplay teams wanted a larger focus on mounted creatures in GW2 and referred back to the Utopia concept you posted - among many others they would have made for every game - but within the scope of the concept they're massively different.

    I'm not ignoring the differences, I'm just pointing out that your points are superficial or cosmetic. I've given examples that GW models can and have been used multiple times and look drastically different.

    It's very strange that you can't see that the images are both bipedal, digitigrade creatures with similar body forms and a rider with the same types of weapons. I'll have to repeat what I said before, that the differences you mentioned aren't relevant. Saying they're not the same because of skin type or a different weapon held by the rider, doesn't negate the idea that this could entirely be a Utopia model or design that was later used for GW2.

    It's puzzling how you see them as so far apart that the idea isn't feasible.

    • Official Post

    The difference between us is scope. What you're saying is akin to declaring that basketball and American football are the same because they both require a ball and the time is split into quarters. If that's the level of analysis you want to perform then sure, those two designs are pretty similar. Certainly a lot more similar than say, basketball and knitting or basketball and sleeping. My point is that such a comparison is so shallow it's not very relevant. If you asked 1000 people on the street whether they thought basketball and American football are basically the same I'd would expect the vast majority, if not all, to say no: oval ball vs round ball, grass surface vs hard court, highly specialised roles vs more general ones, players split between offense and defense vs no distinction, infrequent scoring vs very high amounts of scoring, large active rosters vs very small rosters, frequent substitution vs very limited substitution, high amounts of body protection vs little, contact vs no contact, relatively few games played per season vs a lot (meaning the significance of any one game is much higher), etc. Would you be happy to declare all of those to be "superficial or cosmetic" differences? I'm betting your answer will be no. I've never doubted that the two designs have some basic biomechanical similarities (though still fewer than you think there are), or that they've got big melee weapons. It's that beyond those simplistic views of the creatures they have very little in common.

    Two minor points:

    -Commenting about the weapon types was a mistake. The artistic direction of the equipment between the games is entirely different so there's no value in evaluating whether one influenced the other. The GW1 weapon is clearly a practical weapon. The GW2 weapon, regardless of whether it's intended to be a lance or sword, is clearly not. Hard to take anything of value away.

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    I've given examples that GW models can and have been used multiple times and look drastically different.

    False equivalence. Adapting a resource (a technical issue) to save time has nothing to do with the design of the creatures, unless they designed the creatures specifically so they could reuse those assets, but that changes everything.

    I'm sorry but everything you posted there has nothing to do with refuting my theory that the model is either based off the concept art, or is actually a scrapped Utopia model being reused for HoT. The form of the model, the bipedal digitigrade stance, the rider, the riders weapon, the number of claws on limbs are all solid reasons. If only one or even two of them were present, then sure it's reaching. But you have a very close model to the concept art with the exception of the head. The differences are cosmetic for the most part and as we all know concept art doesn't always represent the final product. The fact that there's still so many similarities to the concept is quite telling imo.

    The artistic direction you're bringing up also has no relevance to the discussion. GW2 has a direction that leans to a WoW style of art with oversized shoulder pauldrons and sparkly weapons that I personally dislike. The practicality of the weapon has zero bearing on the fact that in the concept art the character is holding a lance and the GW2 character? Is holding a lance. That's the only fact one needs to focus on.

    They possibly had an unused model from Utopia, or they wanted to create a mounted enemy and built it. The one they built shares a majority of similarities with the concept art. Nothing else to focus on.

    As an aside, I get the impression that you're not fond of GW2, nor are you comfortable with people challenging you. You seem to use a hard line dismissal to hopefully end a debate in one fell swoop. The problem is that you never really addressed the specific points I was making and instead, went off on these long form explanations as to why you didn't agree or used odd reasons as to why you didn't see what I was seeing. I was hoping you'd tackle my points specifically instead of giving me sports examples with knitting and sleeping.

    So if you'd just rather end it here, that's cool with me. It's not like either of us is going to win a prize.

    • Official Post

    Evidently my previous post didn't establish the point I wanted it to. I have been addressing your points, though perhaps not as directly as you might have liked, so I'll do so explicitly now in an attempt to hopefully put the matter to bed. Your argument consists of two points:

    Firstly, that the two creatures are both digitigrade and mounted and that the riders have a lance. This is clearly the case and I haven't disputed it.

    Secondly, that the details are more or less irrelevant. We agree that the details of each creature have nothing in common as once again it's quite clear that that is the case, it's just that our evaluation of the significance are polar opposites. This is what I was trying to explain to you above. You have labelled the details as "cosmetic", "superficial" and "irrelevant", as if they could be casually slapped on on a whim five minutes before the design was due. This could not be further from the truth. Real life creatures evolve such that every single element of their being is as best suited to their environment as it can be, and digital creatures ought to be no exception. Evolution is not an accident and neither are the designs. Every element of the design will go through a dozen or more iterations to ensure it makes as much sense as it can.

    Take eyes for example. Some creatures have eyes on the front of their face while others have them on the sides. The significance of the former is that being able to put two eyes on something allows your brain to triangulate the position of something, creating depth perception. The downside, or the significance of the latter, is that you sacrifice field of view. Predators typically have front facing eyes because they need the precision to hunt, while prey typically have the latter because getting caught by a predator is the most significant threat to their existence. There are exceptions - monkeys do not hunt but need precise vision to move through trees, and crocodiles have side facing eyes but hunt primarily through stealth rather than pursuit. There are also many other eye related factors to be aware of - nocturnal creatures benefit from having larger eyes so that they can collect more light, for example.

    I explain this because artists, good ones at least, know this kind of stuff. They scrutinise every element because a single difference in a single element can be the difference between a creature being viable in it's environment and it's extinction. By labelling the details the way you have you trivialise the effort and expertise that goes into the designs. They don't get paid just because they're good at photoshop. Once you understand how much effort goes into getting from the starting point (mounted digitigrade creature, rider with lance) to a finalised creature it's clear to me that the assertion that the GW2 creature is adaptation of the GW1 design seems unlikely. You can see that American football is an extension of rugby because there are key similarities in the rules and the general objective, but there's no way in which you could take basketball and morph it into American football without scrapping the whole thing. As I said in an earlier post, I'm sure when they wanted to revisit mounted creatures in GW2 they would have dug up old concepts if they felt there was any value in doing so - it's certainly not unusual - and it's possible the GW2 creature borrows from several of these designs (including the one you posted), but I see no reason to believe that it's a direct implementation.