It's all the more concerning that if we were in an alternate timeline where SE decided to not make a Lupine race in Stormblood. We might have never got to see Hrothgar or any Ronso related race in game. Heck, maybe no Viera since the devs considered putting them in AFTER doing concepts for Hrothgar. Lupine was such a random drop that the audience that wanted a beastly race was louder than even the Japanese playerbase. And while a wolf race would be interesting I don't think it would be just as good or better than Hrothgar. A race with a longer snout and narrow forhead would be even harder to map assets on or make it look good without extra fur textures that the devs said was "too much" for the engine when mapping them on Hrothgar.

Makes me wish that FFXVI would be a chance for varied XIV races and beast tribes to be reimangined/improved in that game without spaghetti code/mmo budget limitations.

The Bozja mural of the possibile fem Hrothgar design is still a "nyan blue catgirl" eyesore to me. Even if it looks a bit like Bagi (Tezuka ova character).

I know that there's a possibility for mural=exaggerated representation but with eastern mmo history it leads me to being skeptical especially when The next bozja raid has a freaking panther/puma esque statue that conflicts with the female mural. That is clearly a icon for diety, science or history.

What anthro cat race would not want to attach their identity to a more primitive animal species to try and understand their evolved happenstance?
Why would females look wildly different from that while males look related to it?
Wouldn't there be extreme sexist interpretations regarding that?
Why can't females not have a more beastly face?
Did anyone not see Cats or WW1984 with how mixing anthro and human faces just looks ugly?
Do you want that rendered in this engine? I'm never going to drop this ^^;

Maybe this is why I'm starting to draw more anthro characters this year other than because quarantine hehe