Garlean Playable Race (?)

[Lauront]

You don't care about the lore or how poorly they fit into the setting, I don't care about playing a round earred elf with a dot stuck to its head. It is what it is.



They're probably right about Viera. I've said before, even in this thread, that I don't think they were handled particularly well. I also don't think that's a very compelling reason to make the same mistake again though. The work required to integrate playable Garleans into the setting and story is greater than the Viera required, and IMO simply too great to be worth it.

And what effort have they gone to in order to integrate Au Ra, Viera and Hrothgar into the story retroactively? They have a ready-made blurb on why a Garlean should be able to use magic, even if it is rare, so to claim this contravenes the lore is simply fanciful. Much as any of those races could conceal their features, so could a Pureblood hide their third eye. I really don't see what the massive effort here is. This isn't WoW, where you get zones and dedicated story lines to new races. The Au Ra got lucky in SB in that regard, and even then it is not a starter zone or an effort to integrate them into the earlier story.

In terms of resources? That strictly depends on where SE is with the engine overhaul if and when it decides to add new races over the game's projected future life span.

The only compelling reason to add something from a business standpoint is sufficient demand for it relative to cost. The lore is negotiable.

BTW, it's a trifle disingenuous to claim Theodric doesn't care for the lore. Rather, it's that the objections being raised here are not difficult at all to surmount, particularly because they can lean onto the lore book. And until they explicitly contradict that source, there is no real reason to assume it is wrong.

[Jandor]

The only compelling reason to add something from a business standpoint is sufficient demand for it relative to cost. The lore is negotiable.

BTW, it's a trifle disingenuous to claim Theodric doesn't care for the lore. Rather, it's that the objections being raised here are not difficult at all to surmount, particularly because they can lean onto the lore book. And until they explicitly contradict that source, there is no real reason to assume it is wrong.

Their ability to cast magic or not is not the main issue, they are the primary antagonists for the base game and one of the expansions. A good chunk of the story would come across as rather silly, at best, unless they changed chunks of it for Garlean characters, that's a rather large negative for a game that features its story as a big selling point.