The cat's (or femhroth in this case) outta the bag

[Vahlnir]

Sooooo question for all you people who may know more of what the actual book entails, bozja lore and maybe thoughts as far as timing go...

What do you think the likelihood is that the picture from the book was created prior to femhroth truly being a twinkle in the Dev's eyes? Could it be that they just drew something feline'ish to satisfy the art/lore of Bozja as they never expected femhroths to come to life?

This concept art is pretty much in line with the murals we've seen in Bozja regarding female hrothgar and those weren't very detailed. I highly doubt that they were being worked on before this content was created. All in all I think it's going to be inaccurate when it comes to the final version of this race/gender. All this really shows is that they exist.

[VictorTheed]

I agree. I love how SE are implementing new races, it must take a lot of work and time. It demonstrates they do listen to what the gamers want.

But Viera and Hrothgar are still lacking options and I have modern aesthetics that I still can’t have access to. I just wish they sorted out the pre-existing issues before implementing new races to the game.

I don’t think majority of headgear will ever be accessible to viera, that could just be me being pessimistic. I’m fine with circlets and the occasional hood… I’d just like something else to work with, something else to substitute what I’m missing.

You got a point, I forgot about the hair options male hrothgar and female viera are missing out on, ty for putting that out there, plus I wonder if the missing genders of hrothgar and viera will suffer the same head gear fate as the male and female ones we have now?

I go hrothgar every now n then when I get bored on my main race lala, but I always switch back to lala cause I can't wear the cowboy hats or turbans on hrothgar like I can lala, plus I hate missing out on the hoods and bunch of other cool head gear this game has that would look really cool on hrothgar if they could wear it.

[reivaxe]

Sooooo question for all you people who may know more of what the actual book entails, bozja lore and maybe thoughts as far as timing go...

What do you think the likelihood is that the picture from the book was created prior to femhroth truly being a twinkle in the Dev's eyes? Could it be that they just drew something feline'ish to satisfy the art/lore of Bozja as they never expected femhroths to come to life?

According to YP, the graphics team spent about 6 months after the release of ShB to draw up a proposal on how to fit in the genders into their pipeline and that's when he gave the thumbs up to start working on em. So I'd say for over half a year before the relic quest would even go live the devs knew they would make these genders and were working on em.

There's also the fact that they went through the effort to make canon in universe art of Hrothgals (The mural) for that quest line that look like this Queen. People can have w/e opinions they want, but I personally don't think the devs would willy nilly fk with the lore like that. If they don't know what they want something to look like, they wouldn't half ass a depiction of it and put it in the game for a tiny narrative beat that didn't need to be there. They're also good at their job, so I'm sure they know how to make a "generic cat face" that doesn't look human if they desired.

Occam's Razor (or Thaliak's, as I've noted people say in-game) is defined on the Wikipedia page as:

Having applied that, given the choice between:

A) they built a special new body model to represent female Hrothgar even though they stuck a Roegadyn head on it, which does not particularly match the mural, despite the fact that they are otherwise so low-priority that the devs are putting 100% work into male Viera before turning their attention to Hrothgar, or

B) they decided early on that she had to be a Roegadyn, but wanted her to look prettier so they used a different female body model,

...B is the simpler answer and does not make the huge assumption that because it is a "new" body model, regardless of exactly how they arrived at it, it must be a Hrothgar model.

The irony in your reply is that your logic is failed from the start by making assumptions.
"Putting 100% work into male Viera"
We have absolutely no reason to assume that they haven't worked on Hrothgals, we simply know that they're focused on releasing Male Viera first for 6.0 and Hrothgals "when every we finish them". There's no reason to think that stages in the development cycle that are less taxing on development haven't been met with Hrothgals as yet or that they're sitting on their hands until 6.0. The hardest part about making a race boils down to implementing them. Making animations for them, making changes to the 1000s of items that will make up their body, QA and so on. These are the things that suck up time, man power, and are why it's so much harder to make new races the longer this game lives. Iirc both Viera and Hrothgar were designed by 1 artist respectfully as that's something 1 artist can do solo, so we can't assume that the very concept for this gender wasn't done long ago.

Furthermore, making a single unique NPC that doesn't "do" anything but a few animations isn't hard. It's pretty much the logic behind making any boss, and they do this often. Gaia is a NPC with a unique face/ hair/ outfit (AKA body), Lyse has an outfit that they can't give us yet because it wasn't built to be player friendly and Yotsuyu's outfit is apparently a complete no-go because it was only built to work for the animations she did in the story. Making something like that isn't hard, and all the queen did was float, pose and sit in a chair, so that's not outta the ordinary. We've also seen with Au Ra that they're willing to make a modified, custom NPC to indicate what a race will look like before they're ready to show.

And B makes no sense, as this art shows us finalized art of the queen without a femroe head. So if she was meant to have a Femroe head "early on" then said art would show a Femroe's head. Again, looking at the art books shows that they put finalized art of these types of character in them ... meaning that they intended for her to look like this art work up until she didn't.

Anyway, this is conflating discussions in a bad way, so lets break it down.

Topic 1- Is this a drawing of a female Hrothgar?
I would say yes, this looks exactly like the canon Hrothgal art we have in game. You would have to make a lot of assumptions to think this was a Miqote that ended up having different looking head features "just because" and turned into a Femroe face 2 instead of having a rando Miqote head for w/e reason. Given what we see, the simplest answer is that this drawing it a Hrothgar.


Topic 2- Why did the Femroe queen in game have a unique body, different from every other female?
If you accept the above as true, then you would have to accept that this character was intended to be a Hrothgar female up to the point of this finalized art. This would be a reasonable explanation as to why this character doesn't look like an arvg Femroe or any other female.

If your take is that this was always a Femroe character or one "from early on" and she got a unique body for no reason but to look pretty, you'd have to assume that this isn't finalized art, which would be in direct contrast to how they depict bosses in these books. So you'd have to assume that they're, just for this 1 character, using ... what? Ancient theoretical art instead of showing the Femroe finalized art they "should" have if they decided to make her a Femroe from early in the concept stage?

(as for the topic related to other things attached to this, if this is what the devs think a better looking Femroe looks like then ... it's a clear indication of what they feel a "better looking femroe" looks like)

Why this character in game has a Femroe face 2 as her head when the finalized art doesn't is a mystery, but this world hasn't been kind in 2020, so it's not outta the question that this may be one of those corners that may have been cut.

Also, the illustration of the Hrothgar queen doesn't look slender in the body at all. I think she looks more like the figure shown in the other mural seen at the end of the prologue with the queen quite frankly looking closer to Dulia-Chai than the slender Roegadyn Gunnhildr. So I have an even harder time believing the body model "must" have been built for the would-be Hrothgar Gunnhildr even if the shrine maidens in the second mural are closer to it.

I can't tell what's going on with the body as she's sitting down awkwardly in a photo being taken with a bend in the page. Can't see her arms and only part of 1 leg, so I don't see the point of focusing on that.

[_Pigzig]

does anyone play this race? not even a joke i havent seen any yet
only up to stormblood

[EtherRose]

Well for one, It's concept art. Also I hope they do add some elegance and beauty to the female Hrothgar and not make them like the male Hrothgar with their hunchback and all. I still want them to be feral but elegant, strong and beautiful. Which is kind of what the concept art shows but hopefully there will be fur.

[MikkoAkure]

*ehem*

Aren't her ears facing the wrong way to be a miqo'te? I'm not sure why people are fighting this either, it's just concept art. I missed a couple of pages but why all the argument?

It also makes more sense that a blue cat girl wearing the garb of the Queen of the blue cats, is the blue cat girl from that country and not the variation of blue cat girls from the other side of the planet, none of whom have any representation in that country at all so far.

[SherlottaEryut]

Aren't her ears facing the wrong way to be a miqo'te? I'm not sure why people are fighting this either, it's just concept art. I missed a couple of pages but why all the argument?

I think people are concerned the female Hrothgar is just gonna be another 'pretty character' as opposed to beast-like. Majority of the races are attractive characters and considering this most likely will be the last race we'll get in the game, it's the last chance to have an actual 'beast race' for the females. The Viera were supposed to be more animalistic but that opportunity was missed.

[MikkoAkure]

I think people are concerned the female Hrothgar is just gonna be another 'pretty character' as opposed to beast-like. Majority of the races are attractive characters and considering this most likely will be the last race we'll get in the game, it's the last chance to have an actual 'beast race' for the females. The Viera were supposed to be more animalistic but that opportunity was missed.

How were the Viera supposed to be more animalistic? We already saw Fran in-game before a whiff of them existing beyond concept art was released and she looks identical to what we have now minus an original face and hairstyle. Viera have never been consistent and even in their debut game, Tactics Advance, some of them have normal hands and feet and others have long hands and feet. If you've been playing XIV for awhile you would know there would be 0% chance that they would give a new race in this game different hands and feet than all the other races. The devs take shortcuts and making something true to FFXII Viera would be extra work they wouldn't bother with.

[SherlottaEryut]

How were the Viera supposed to be more animalistic? We already saw Fran in-game before a whiff of them existing beyond concept art was released and she looks identical to what we have now minus an original face and hairstyle. Viera have never been consistent and even in their debut game, Tactics Advance, some of them have normal hands and feet and others have long hands and feet. If you've been playing XIV for awhile you would know there would be 0% chance that they would give a new race in this game different hands and feet than all the other races. The devs take shortcuts and making something true to FFXII Viera would be extra work they wouldn't bother with.

No, I'm not that familiar with the developers taking shortcuts or anything of the sort considering I've only been playing the game for 3-4 months. I worded my sentence wrong but what I meant to say was, the Viera to be more beast-like was a missed opportunity.

And from a new person's perspective, if I saw Fran at the time of the expansion prior to Viera being implemented as a playable race, I would have assumed the developers would have retained the FF12 Viera's appearance.

[Iscah]

The irony in your reply is that your logic is failed from the start by making assumptions.
"Putting 100% work into male Viera"
We have absolutely no reason to assume that they haven't worked on Hrothgals, we simply know that they're focused on releasing Male Viera first for 6.0 and Hrothgals "when every we finish them".

They said "focus". I take that to mean putting all their resources into the one race before starting on the other.

And B makes no sense, as this art shows us finalized art of the queen without a femroe head. So if she was meant to have a Femroe head "early on" then said art would show a Femroe's head.

Not if the decision to make her a Roegadyn happened after this initial concept art stage but before they moved on to implementing it into the game as a 3D model.

The only facts we can say for sure is that she was a Hrothgar at this concept stage and a Roegadyn in the game, and the plan was changed somewhere in between. That is not proof they started to build it according to this art.

Topic 1- Is this a drawing of a female Hrothgar?
I would say yes, this looks exactly like the canon Hrothgal art we have in game. You would have to make a lot of assumptions to think this was a Miqote that ended up having different looking head features "just because" and turned into a Femroe face 2 instead of having a rando Miqote head for w/e reason. Given what we see, the simplest answer is that this drawing it a Hrothgar.

If you're arguing aganist me specifically then you're the one conflating arguments, because I never sad it looked like a Miqo'te.

And yes, I agree the concept art is of a Hrothgar.

But no, I do not agree it looks like the specific piece of in-game art you think it matches.

As I said last night, I think it looks like this one.



This version matches the proportions I'm seeing in that concept art: a large, rounded torso compared to the head. The angle on the new art also seems to be making her neck look thinner than it actually is, because the drape from her headdress is partly obscuring it.

The concept art actually clarifies some of the oddities of the mural - what is she doing, and where are her arms? They seem to be inserted into the machine and controlling it.

Topic 2- Why did the Femroe queen in game have a unique body, different from every other female?
If you accept the above as true, then you would have to accept that this character was intended to be a Hrothgar female up to the point of this finalized art. This would be a reasonable explanation as to why this character doesn't look like an arvg Femroe or any other female.

As I covered earlier, being designed as a Hrothgar up to the stage of this finished art does not inherently mean that it made it further along to the 3D model stage.

And have we proven that it is a fully unique body, or just unique for Roegadyn? I thought people have said it's derived from a Viera, or from Sophia.

Additonally, even if this art represents a model that they started working on but didn't finish, then (as I said above) I disagree that it would have necessarily been interpreted into the slender model from the other mural.