It looks ethereal to me, just not energy-infused. :P
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It looks ethereal to me, just not energy-infused. :P
Yip. I've always been disappointed with the SC2 Archon. Even beyond simple aesthetics, it makes more sense that two High Templars energies would fuse to become an energy being, not a larger, semi-Protoss shaped entity that magically sprouted different armor.
This is more what I would have expected:
http://i.imgur.com/E1enMDi.png
http://i.imgur.com/sJkFHfW.jpg
Same. Minus the armor. Where did that armor come from?
Needs more smoke and "swirly stuff" to obscure it more, I reckon. I don't mind the armour as such, but it kinda makes the archon seem more "solid" which doesn't really help convey the spirit-y nature of what it is.
Also, with everything looking "hard" on that Archon, the lack of legs on the thing just makes it look weird since it pretty much looks just like a regular but shinier and light-emitting Protoss. Is the lack of legs supposed to be the visual sign that it's an energy/spirit being? Even disregarding that, I'm pretty sure that in Sc1, the in-game model of the Archon did show a hint of legs in certain angles.
Yep, the original archon did have legs. In fact, the the ball of energy and the body were separate sprites, so you can see the legs very clearly in ripped spritesheets:
http://i.imgur.com/5vphnkz.png
That said, if the manual render is to be believed, even this archon was actually wearing armor...
http://i.imgur.com/PM9TbAd.jpg
Armor that was re-used from the high templar sprite with some of the pieces deleted. Which itself was reused from the zealot armor with some pieces deleted.
http://i.imgur.com/1fPKxKj.jpg
In that manual render you can see the circles by the elbows, the shoulders, the same collar armor, the same hips, and even the little black cables running along the chest. Just no shoulder bands or psi blade emitters and with the pointier upper part of the shoulder pads and leg armor removed (high templar below kept those last two, archon didn't).
http://i.imgur.com/Kcfy2i3.jpg
It's hard to tell, but I'm pretty sure that the manual render there is in fact the same as the sprite model, because it has the same weird bent asymmetrical leg. So, even in 1998, someone wanted it to be armored, and we just couldn't tell.
(That said, you don't run into the issue of 'where did this new armor design come from,' since it's made out of the same pieces as the high templar armor.)
I'm always impressed by your guys' ability to do all this image stuff. It must be great to be able to mod.
It's not that there's armor. It's that the armor is now massive and a different shape than it was. Why waste energy on changing the armor when you could just be an even more badass energy being.
Yeah, that I'll totally agree with.
I'm more convinced they're confusing cutscenes for cinematics. If that's indeed the case, 30 means squat in number. If they have 3000 or more, THEN it'll be fineQuote:
Originally Posted by Visions of Khas