As we move from the Knights to the Clerics, we come across an unusual situation. Normally, I'm all a fan of maintaining as close a look to the original, albeit improved, as possible unless the original is a terrible looking character like Mirlanda or Clavius. However, among the Clerics there are three characters that really look too much alike: Rion and Loynis in particular, are almost identical. Ingham is also similar, but has enough of a different look that he's not subject to the following, but I decided that Rion and Loynis were just too similar. I was always mixing the two of them up anyway, so I decided that at least one of them needed a more radical change, so that I could easily tell that it was a different character. Not only are they too similar, but it's not a super exciting design anyway; a young man's face poking out of a hooded cloak or habit. I put all of them alternates in Rion's folder, because Rion came up first, and I decided that Rion would get the different look. Rion and Ingham are both pretty lame heroes; Rion's specialty is First Aid, which is a sucky specialty best used for junior heroes who ferry troops to the front lines, or who sit in castles in case of an attack. Ingham's specialty is fine, but he comes with Mysticism, which is arguably one of the worst secondary skills in the game. Loynis is the best of the three by far, with his specialty in the Prayer spell, which is a pretty good spell, and he starts with it.
Anyway, you'll see the alternates I came up with, and the one that I ended up choosing. They mostly all come from the WoG Neutral Heroes options, which I would never see in game, and even then, they mostly come from the ensrick take on the WoG Neutral Heroes.
dtnmang's selection reminds me of what I ended up using for Lord Haart, curiously. The two stable diffusion options aren't as good; Stable Diffusion 2 has that weird red light limning the hood, and Stable Diffusion AI has all kinds of funkiness going on with the hood; weird folds or horns or something. Also, he somehow picked up a moustache, which was otherwise not a bad idea. I wondered if I could select that face and put it back in on the Original, but that sounded like more work than I was willing to do.
Charles is a hero that is meant to be an "arctic sharpshooters" specialist, and both his original and ensrick version look pretty good. I decided that although it looks different, it's still pretty the same idea; a dark-haired young man with a face poking out of a hood. Melfis has the same problem, except that his face looks more like Strider from Fellowship of the Ring and the foggy forest behind him wasn't right. The actual character is a Rogue specialist, and he kind of looks a little bit too much like that for me.
The old cleric, with the stained glass window and the heavily brocaded hood, on the other hand, is perfect; he's clearly got that cleric of the Medieval church look going on, which Rion needs, but he also looks very different from Loynis and Ingham, and has a stately, dignified look to him. It's a bit of a radical change, but I liked it, and quickly decided that one of the two needed the update. I decided to give it to Rion.
WINNER: ensrick's Sergiush alternate.
No comments:
Post a Comment