Guild Wars Interview
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Q: Tell us about the way the art team is approaching character design from a visual standpoint. In a game as fast-paced as Guild Wars--in which players duel each other competitively using a huge combination of different skill sets--it seems imperative to create distinctive-looking characters that can be quickly recognized for tactical reasons (so that players can incapacitate frontline fighters to get at vulnerable enemies or so that players can attack a healer to cripple a group, etc.). Yet the game will also feature plenty of loot and other items to help players make distinctive-looking characters as they play online, over time, so that not every fighter looks exactly the same. How is the task of character design being approached to accommodate both these needs?
A: Just as the blending of the strategy and role-playing genres generates unique game design challenges, it also creates challenges when designing the player characters. It is very important that you're able to identify a character's profession visually, since knowing the profession of your teammates and your opponents is a major component to your strategy in both cooperative and competitive play. In a fast-paced game like Guild Wars, you don't always have time to click on a teammate, and you can't even hover over a status bar to find the information that you need. When you have been the target of spells such as blackout, life siphon, and hamstring within the last five seconds, you want to be able to identify friendly monks immediately. However, it is also very important for a role-playing game to give you a wide variety of options to customize the look of your character. It would be difficult to feel a strong sense of identity in an online world if you walked in to town to find 20 other characters that looked just like you!
To resolve these somewhat competing goals, we designed a set of materials, colors, and physical attributes that would give each profession a unique visual style. Some examples of these physical characteristics include warriors with short hair, monks with fully or partially shaved heads and tattoos, rangers with long hair, mesmers who are taller than average, and necromancers with pale skin. Each profession also has a distinct material or fabric set. Only warriors can wear metal, monks always wear spun cloth, necromancers wear dyed leather, and rangers wear armor and clothing made from natural materials, such as leather, bone, and feathers. Finally, each profession has a unique color theme that affects not only the natural color of its armor and items but also the manner in which it takes on player-applied dye colors that can be found throughout the world. For example, blue dye applied to a warrior's gear will result in a bright, enameled blue that is appropriate for metallic surfaces, while blue dye applied to a monk's robes will result in a pale blue color more consistent with a natural cloth dye. The combination of these guidelines for physical attributes, materials, and color give each profession a distinct and easily identifiable appearance but leave plenty of room for our character artists to create a wide variety of armor, clothing, hairstyles, and faces. Your online character should be as unique as you are, and we are confident that you will have the options to build a character that is uniquely your own.
