Aurorans’ Appearance. [SPOILER]

Parasaurolophus

Adamowicz was, in my opinion, a brilliant artist. He had already worked on Knights of the Nine and later gave us all those wonderful and memorable designs from Shivering Isles and Skyrim. Sadly, he passed away shortly after Skyrim’s release. But he undoubtedly made a huge contribution to the visual style of the entire series.

Anyway, he had an unused concept for unarmored Aurorans made for Knights of the Nine, and it was never implemented. Of course, no one was obligated to use old concepts, but for me this very accurately reflects what ESO tends to do. Was it really so expensive to make a unique head model for Aurorans instead of just painting Nords gold?

NoticeMeArkay

Golden Saints are golden painted Nords
Dark Seducers are greyish painted Nords
Chaos Bloods are....red Nords.
Shrikes are long-haired Nords.

That's a lotta Nords in the humanoid-form daedra pool, not gonna lie.

Skaafin and Herne are yellow dunmer with long horns. The horns being the custom part.
Spiderkith are altmer with about 4 different generations of paint jobs (?)

Xivkyn, Xivilai and Dremora are thankfully part of the base game, so they got their own fully modeled heads and textures.
And the Ruinach got probably lucky because they required a new model simply due to having 4 arms instead of 2.

Yes, it's probably a lot cheaper to just repaint an existing model. I mean, Zos didn't bother giving the golden saints in fargrave or even the assistant an updated model of their own armor set (The costume). They just dressed them in silken ring and I believe meridian motif pieces? It's cheaper. - They don't lack the income but it's cheaper.


Edit, because I forgot: Yes, I also absolutely would have preferred to see something new and exciting.

Soarora

I totally didn't realize the guy has his helmet off. Yeah, there's no way I'd consider that canon. He looks exactly like a golden saint... unless he is one in Auroran armor. The Auroran polymorph doesn't even look like that-- it's more like a zombie with glowing eyes.

Meridia is gold and white and glowing, angellic... but she IS a fallen angel, she is purples and greens and has a hatred for free will. I cannot imagine her Daedra would look anything short of a glowing husk. Why would the Prince who hates free will craft her minions with free will?

colossalvoids

Visual representation is indeed not the strongest part of ESO, especially in recent years with lots of reuses and them not always making much sense. That looks like an easy avenue to win back some players but seems like they treat it like not something important, clearly.

Gabriel_H

colossalvoids wrote: »

Visual representation is indeed not the strongest part of ESO, especially in recent years with lots of reuses and them not always making much sense. That looks like an easy avenue to win back some players but seems like they treat it like not something important, clearly.

To be fair to ZOS, they don't have the final say. They are effectively licensing TES lore from their sister company, and it seems they have the final say on some things, but who have also demonstrated that canon is flexible.