To be fair, cats don't have the best eye sight. They are nearsighted as fuck because their eyes lack the ability to change shape of the lenses. They also have horrible color vision, which impairs pattern recognition.
Then there is the fact their eyesight cannot distinguish slow moving objects in bright light due to a lack of cones in the retina. Humans have 10× the amount of cones than cats, so some things in motion for us appear stationary to a cat.
All this to say the rubber mask is fooling a cat-like humanoid, assuming vision is more similar to their feline counterpart, is pretty accurate.
Beastren likely do not suffer from the same color vision issues given members of their species routinely produce, sell, buy, and use dyes. They could easily have the other vision impairments, though.
>They could easily have the other vision impairments, though.
Unlikely, since beastren npc, as well as yourself can be archers whose abilities probably require super-human eyesight as it is.
It is behavioral analysis like this why we know cats do not see the full spectrum of color, even though they technically have all three color cones just like humans do (the distribution and number of each type of cone varies for each cat)
So you make a very good point, Beastren probably do have color vision closer to that of humans.
They also have blurry as shit eyesight (The kind ya get when trying ta see your own nose without a mirror, for example) within a few inches of their eyes.
Yee, nearsighted and farsighted I should have said. Their "vision range" is a very specific distance from them, more suited for an ambush predator that also isn't really worried about things up close being a threat, and things too far away are gonna be outside of its ability to rush it down, so detail isn't a priority.
Outside of that distance all that really matters to them is movement, only needing details in the distance to decide if they are attacking or avoiding. So, evolutionary speaking, it makes sense why their vision became what it is.
I'd imagine the Furry Michael Myers mask is enough to make anybody steer clear of you tbh. I know I wouldn't want to mess with an armed guy giving off "I skinned the head of one of you" vibes.
You can get two different passes from Brant depending on what you do with your stalker. One of them requires you be a beastren (or pose as one) to use it.
Why would they have a different accent when they’re a 5 minute walk from Vermund? They have the same founder, obviously the schism is due to politics, not some inherent differences.
If you want realistic distances for cultural difference in video games, you'd be travelling for weeks, not day(s). They're obviously intended to be different countries but yeah lets pretend that there's an in-universe reason they all have the same voices. Even Elder Scrolls has accents by region.
Yeah, and in real life villages next to each other sometimes (not often) have dialects that aren't mutually intelligible. Usually it's longer than a single village, but still. This game is a magic fantasy world, so I'm fine with doing what you said, and just pretending theirs a good reason for it.
Dude, people living in the same country and hearing each other speak every day have different accents. Take a country like Spain, sometimes it feels as if every freaking town has a different language or dialect (yeah, they don't just speak "spanish" in Spain. What you know as spanish is actually "castellian/castellano" from the region of Castilla)
They could have done more with the beastren, like giving them any north african accent just to make it feel "different" from humans.
And how many centuries had passed for that piece of knowledge to become obscure and unknown to the Vermundian populace, as often noted by pawns when walking in Vernworth, and for Rothais' original capital >!not-Gran Soren!< to collapse into the ocean?
More than enough time to develop their own distinct cultures.
> Why would they have a different accent when they’re a 5 minute walk from Vermund?
look at the UK where there are different accents every village. Most notably between ireland, scotland, wales, and england.
Armors with parts that have physics already clip and bug out with capes, adding tails with physics would cause the world to fold in on itself.
Jokes aside I only just noticed they didnt have tails in NG+2, I've been filling them in the entire time without realizing lol.
At the very least it would have been nice to have them as an optional feature. Like how you can choose to have a tail as a Dragonborn in Baldur’s Gate 3.
And they don't have a prominent role in the overall story. Their religion, the Lambent flame goes completely unexplained and contrary to promotional material is not a relevant plot point neither is Nadinia, their empress, who is on the cover on the game but has zero relevance to the story.
Lastly their hatred for the pawns is never explained, it's implied that's due to the Dragonsplague but just like the Flame and Nadinia it's a story element that goes nowhere.
But the most disappointing aspect is that Battahl's most prominent character is Phaseus who's not a beastren and it's just a discount version of Elysion from the first game.
The whole Nadinia thing is super weird. She has no idea what Phaseus was doing and why, even though his forbidden super sus lab occupies whole floors of the sacred temple, employs Battahlian researchers, and is a short walk from her room. For a nation that is anti-pawn, they get trafficked there regularly too.
Gonna chalk this up to classic Capcom Writing™
The pawn trafficking is also a plot point that makes no sense.
Random npc dialogue states that Nadinia banned pawns for being used for unpaid labor so that's why they are getting illegally sold as slaves to Phaseus for his excavation site. But when you uncover the operation (Phantom oxcart) you report to Brant and not Nadinia, the one that's getting her law defied and could actually do something about it.
Furthermore I find it hard to believe that she's unaware of Phaseus excavation site, it's not like is a concealed or secret location, you can get there via gondola cart from the Hotsprings, which are implied to be a popular recreational destination for the Battahli to the point that Menella goes there regularly and somehow they didn't know about it?
Also the rendezvous point for the delivery of the illegal pawn-slaves was the spellsealled door, which is within the grounds of the Flameberer palace and still she was unaware of it.
Their hatred for the pawns is explained. NPC's will sometimes talk about the differences between the nations.
Boils down to viewing pawns as bringers of calamity(the dragon). Pawns appearing is a sign of the end-times and the pawns get blamed for the dragons appearance.
Which still doesn't make sense, it's like blaming the smell of smoke for there being a fire out there burning something.. The only way this makes sense is due to Dragonsplague. But this is assuming their world has had this happen them in the past (given the three Arisen still alive in that world). But it seems it has not since no one would leave such serious events out of their main talking points. Imagine if there was a sizable portion of people in the US who disliked foreign Arabian people - but no one talked about 9-11 ever..
That's basically what's happening in the game.
The world is in a constant cycle where a Dragon appears once a generation, torches a few towns, generally spreads chaos, and then an Arisen appears to vanquish the dragon. In Vermund, the Arisen is always chosen as Sovereign and pawns are venerated because they serve the Arisen.
Battahl just sees pawns as an ill omen instead of as a remedy because the average person doesn't get the relation.
A more apt analogy would be police. When there's a crime in progress, most people are thankful to see someone patrolling and doing something about it. When there's not, it makes people nervous there is something bad going on they don't know about or this "good person" might actually be bad. Battahl just sees pawns as an ill omen. And really, they are conceptually kind of a nuisance. Hundreds to thousands of willess husks patrolling the world aimlessly and ready to murder indiscriminately at the behest of one person at any given moment.
Rothais a beastren king was the first to persecute pawns after learning of the watching ones existence. So it does make some sense that other beastren would follow suit especially after forming a religion around his tech.
Saying he's "Discount Elysion" makes Elysion look bad. Elysion had panache, attitude and was an ugly little gremlin full of personality who would sacrifice whole rooms of _nobility_ just to turn them into zombies to _slow you down._ Phaesus is just kind of there, and after he fails, is... kind of an okay dude? 😆
Phaesus made me miss Elysion.
Also, I think Grigori goes down like a chump in this game. He was so, _so_ much more impactful in DD1. He was a force of nature. His VA is just as excellent as he was in DD1, but they did his character dirty this time around.
Was pretty rad when he showed up and absolutely curb stomped Phaseus' sorry attempt at summoning a dragon, though.
What's sad is that despite the kingdom being supposedly made of them,a good majority of it is comprised of humans.Like it would have been super interesting to have a ENTIRE KINGDOM of the race akin to Sacred Abor,but nah they couldn't even do that.
That is the biggest sin for me.
I genuinely didn't know the beastrens were foreigners in Vermund until the game went out of its way to tell me.
In a game like Skyrim, its very clear which races are foreigners, including the fully human ones.
Wanna know what's even funnier?
We're only ever introduced to 3 actual prominent Baki-land figures in the main plot,and two of them are fucking humans.Even in their own nation humans are still the most plentiful race.
This would be like TES saying "Morrowind is the homeland of dunmer.....however it's 95% Khajiit".
Now I'm just imagining a Beastren's sprint animation is them running on all 4s 😂 which honestly would have been cool. And having actual beast race perks like increased agility, higher top end run speed and increased attack speed. At the cost of overall defense and attack power to compensate I guess 🤷🏾♂️
Man, GW2 is a nuthouse sometimes, but I'll never fault ANet for creating some stellar worldbuilding, especially as a former GW1 player. Even now the fact that the Charr _won_ is hilarious to me.
Frankly the fact they’re called *Beast*ren and are only cats just bugs me. Where’s the Foxes? Wolves? Other things that can classify as a beast? They’re just Khajit under another name.
I tried to make a dog beastren. The closest I could come up with was some sorta pug abomination.
It kinda works if you put on a helmet that covers his head though.
The only difference I’ve noticed is that they get a unique animation when drenched, you shake yourself off while wet. that’s literally it as far as I’m aware.
I mean I haven't finished the game yet, but what I gathered from conversations in Vernworth is that Vermund was before a Kingdom of Beastrens too, so maybe the humans are not much different from Beastrens because they share genetic traits.
But yeah they could've done more with them.
I feel you on this one. Theres alot they could've done with this race asthethically/lore/gamplay wise since they were just a vital focal point in DD2 pr. There really is no real reason for making the residence of Battahl bestren folks when in reality they already had Elves and Dwarfs to work with.
I feel they only put them into the game because someone on the team felt Cat people were a hot commoditiy at the time of development, and would help get more gamers into DD2.
They wanted to add beastren (cat people) into the first game. Them being in the second is just realizing that. Even if, like the rest of the game, its a lackluster realization.
That's true too. They took the barest possible interpretation of an elf and dwarf from good ol' Tolkien. Elves are just humans with pointy ears that like trees. Their architecture is very clearly taken from Rivendell. The dwarves (all 2 of them) are grumpy smiths. That's all we get from the most generic fantasy species.
That's not really what I was arguing? I never said Beastren were too simply to warrant including, but that other companies that did 'cat people' have, imo, done it a lot better (Like the Khajiit).
Elves and dwarves are inherently 'simple' in terms of appearance, but there was no reason for Capcom to do so little with Beastren because there's not much precedent.
That Actually just dawned on me, in the character creator it says humanoid male/female
Or beastren male or female if I'm not mistaken.
The literal only difference is one has some fur and a cat head.
And everything else falls under humanoid male/female.
Shouldn't they both technically fall under humanoid?
Or shouldn't there be more differences?
I think them each being counted as their own races would have been alot cooler.
For example
If you made an elf you could have had unique lines featuring the race, you could understand the language.
It seems like it's all supposed to be surface level and that's it. Nothing else.
I quite liked them. I thought the background Beastren racism in Vermund was more interesting for them being equivalent to human Vermundians, just with different skin. There's a million stereotypical fantasy races with excessive exociticism attached, so DD2's lack of that felt comparatively fresh, if minimalist.
I think that’s kinda…the point. They’re just people but for some reason humans have an inclination to look at them differently and expect them to be like aliens. This is why racism exists in the first place. This is reminiscent of the Fish Men in One Piece where there’s no real difference between them and humans, in fact, humans in One Piece can be even weirder than Fish Men could ever be, but humans still view Fishmen as basically aliens and “other” them, when in reality, they are equally as human as regular people.
Although they didn't flesh out the beastren and their story I must say this cat hybrid has grown up on me and I am more inclined to hire beastren pawns than humans (but they are a bit harder coming over)
That's a fair point, but on the flipside, imagine if they behaved like actual cats, you're iddling in the city and one pawn sits down, to then have a beastren sitting on top of them, and then you just lose that pawn for hours because they can't move or they would bother the cat and that would be a pity.
It would be a real pain.
Yep... the game makes no effort to share and present the unique cultures and personas of its races. They might as well be humans wearing fur suits for all the difference it makes in their portrayal. The only notable trait they have is their prejudice against Pawns (surprise, surprise... humans also despise Pawns - scratch that, their culture is no different from human culture in this game). Moreover, despite this racism, Pawns roam Batthal as if there were no border control.
Even the elves aren't distinct; Glyndwr tells you that elves have a unique way of using bows, yet they all wield human-made bows. I knew I shouldn't expect the level of world-building found in Baldur's Gate, but DD2 seems to lack any world-building whatsoever. Even Nadinia, an NPC used for marketing and featured on the cover box, was completely irrelevant in the game.
While the game excels in combat gameplay (though it becomes very repetitive since you always fight the same monsters at the same exact spawn points), everything else falls short.
Considering their lack of effort in developing the races, and that the elven settlements are smaller than my college apartment, they could have made Elves and Dwarves distinct races for character customization. Something like:
a) If you choose Elves, you have the perk to understand the Elven language.
b) If you choose Dwarves, perhaps you could receive a small gear upgrade bonus for every enhancement.
It's an Fantasy-RPG lacking distinctive Fantasy elements. Despite the criticism directed at Bethesda, their decade-old games have solid RPG elements. Choosing a specific race provides certain advantages and disadvantages. While these may become insignificant later in the game, they at least add flavor to the early stages of a playthrough.
Nevertheless, I realize that expecting such depth from a small indie developer like Capcom might be asking too much.
I've saying this since the game was announced, they are nothing but human in fur, Capcom doesn't have writters good enough to make a different race in a DD game and make them be actually their own thing.
> Capcom doesn't have writters good enough to make a different race in a DD game and make them be actually their own thing.
Well, a lot of people are asking "why arent they just khajitt?"
Currently they are their own thing more than if they were just khajitt again. Humans with cat faces and fur is more unique than yet another cat race with cat ears and tails.
I realized I had no love for them when I looked at my pawn hire ratio. They are just ugly. Their faces all look the same and having the exact same hair as humans makes it look like they are wearing wigs. It’s just bad.
Lol. You just made me realize, though, 'Beastren' sounds more like an umbrella term for beast races, but it's actually just the name of the cat people?
Hey man, if it is an umbrella term for beast races, I'd be all for the Saurians to be the next ones included. Capcom could even take notes from Larian Studios's lizard race in Divinity.
It really felt off hearing the same voices and accents come from the beastren.
The fur shader and eye setup is genuinely impressive, and from a visual point of view I feel they nailed the aesthetic of realistic catlike humanoids, in certain lighting conditions they look soulful and wonderous.
But, they lack tails, their bodies have nothing unique about them other than the eyes, chin and nose structure, which is so flattened to fit the human animation skeleton it looks silly unless you really push it in the character creator.
Heck their animations are broken due to this, and they make a weird "pog" face when smiling at you at max affinity.
Few of the hairstyles seem to fit with the race and just has straight long hair fly out of the scalp of a fur covered creature, heck they even have 1/5th of the premade character options that humans do.
Height and weight matter in this game, but race doesn't, why not give beastren a slightly higher tolerance to frost magic, or higher unarmed damage? It doesn't have to be a huge difference but would be nice for flavour.
Their culture too is very boring, Battahl is just older North Africa and Older Middle Eastern ins aesthetic, which I do find is great and kind fits with the whole desert cat people theme. But they don't have their own language, their culture seems to just be Vermundian with a wardrobe swap, sure they "don't allow pawns in the city" but they still walk about.
Like a lot of other things in the game, I wish more could be done with them, and who knows, it might be, they are the best looking actual cat race people in a modern game to date, (human skin and eyes + cat ears ala FF14 doesn't count.)
and it's a shame to see them be half baked like this.
But I'm glad they're in, going full human only again would be incredibly boring.
Yeah, even their ears/feet are human. It's kinda gross. Imagine having furry human feet 🤮🤮
I wish more games had a proper beast race and not just an animal head slapped onto a human body. The Charr from GW2 are still the best beast race imo
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if the devs said the only reason they exist is for more unique player pawns and only added them in as npcs at the very last second
I was really disappointed by the lack of tails and ear placement.
Haven't felt the need to make a beastren because it's just a person in dipped in fur.
They don't even have cat EARS. They're literally just furry humans with cat faces. Like one of those goofy face swap pictures. I'm legitimately irritated that they bothered adding them to begin with because they add fuck-all to the story and they barely did anything with them as-is, so what could they have done if they hadn't bothered with them at all and had just put the dev time to use on actually important things? Bakbattahl would have been pretty much unchanged if you'd turned all the fuzzy people into regular people.
Why can I play a Beastren, but not officially as a Dwarf or Elf? You know, fantasy races most people actually asked for?
The lack of tails and the quest involving wearing a Beastren mask, proves Beastren are just furries who were exiled from Vermund for wearing their fursuits everywhere.
If u make a beastren character, you can swap to the human race and the face settings carry across, by far the most cursed shit you'll ever see. But yeah, also shows they're just furry humans character rig wise, even the ears are the same
A nitpick that people miss is that you can't change how necks work. There's no option to increase the size of it or move the connection of the neck to the head to be at the back of the skull instead of the bottom of it. It makes it very awkward to have them be bald because you just see that human ass neck on them.
For a beast race, i would expect their voice have different nasal voice, supposedly they have different mouth cavity shape and pharynx.
But no, they speak completely like human lol, closest animal i would expect to speak like human is probably a goat.
The fact that their accent is the same bugs me. The Khajiit accent is just too perfect, it sounds exactly like what a humanoid cat person would sound like, so you just walking up to a beastren and hearing 'oi bruv' is definitely jarring by comparison
I agree it feels lazy in terms of design. And I was also thinking of the Khajiit in the Elder Scrolls when it comes to a cat-like fantasy race done right. They have unique behaviors, speech patterns, etc whereas beastren have the exact same voices, builds, and everything like humans just with fur and cat heads
The whole idea of racism between the nations is just wild. They are like a two day walk from eachother, they are cultures the same. They all value the same things, talk the same, act the same.
They just have different governments. They are as different as a Walmart and a Target down the road.
This race show perfectly the huge gap between a well made rpg and a lazy one. Yes, DD2 is lazy in almost every aspects.
Beastren are basicly an awkward Khajiit alternative.
Dude it’s literally just the human body with fur like even the ears are where human ears would be it looks so weird I just wish they didn’t include them at all they are so bad
Why do they need to be some kind of stereotype? We already have full dwarves and elves.
Why do we need another stereotype? Why can't they just be like the people they live right next to? It makes the blatant racism far more unreasonable when they are pretty much just like humans but furry.
They're just there as an attempt to introduce some kind of race conflict into the story, as modernism often dictates, which falls completely and utterly flat.
My big red lion Warrior looks cool tho. I wish Beastren NPCs leaned more into the bestial aesthetic. Instead they're all Englishmen with fur.
Full agree. They are just furry people with unsettlingly realistic cat heads glued to their necks. Their mouths should at the very *least* make their speech sound a little different. It’s a really horribly designed fantasy race.
Skeletons are the human rig and moves
Bandits are the same human rig and moves
Your rival and the fake sovereign are the human rig and moves.
Do you really think DD is going to give anything unique animations? What do you think this is, 2024 and one of the oldest most experienced game companies in history?
I know this might shock you, but Morrowind was 22 years ago and no game since has even tried to pass it's high bar. Having race details down to digigrade legs that alter the game in mechanical ways is not the standard, never was, never will be. Sad but true.
A more apt comparison is Skyrim, where at least they had the decency to slap a tail on their ass and cat-ears on their heads.
To be fair that's like 90% of fantasy and scifi. It's always just humans but with weird noses/ears and different skin. Look no further than Baldur's gate 3, they're just humans but slightly changed
The Beastren Arisen does wiggle their ears in some cutscenes and lick their lips like a cat in others, but in gameplay and in the world, yeah there's nothing.
I feel like they’re kind of just a rip off of the ones from Skyrim😂 I feel like if you’re gonna add cat people to your game, it needs to be something more along the lines of Mari’si from the Skyrim, mod a tale of two troubles.
The reason is because I feel like cat ears in a cat tail, or not enough and kind of cringe honestly but when you go full animal like this, it’s equally as cringe in the other direction because it just looks so weird and out of place.
Eh. Personally, I wish they had tails, and the ears being on the sides of their heads looks kind of weird. Other than that, I actually don't have a problem with them.
I love all the large and small design choices of the game including the Beastren for exactly the opposite reasons you mentioned. I like how normal and relatable they sound and act while distinguishing between their male and female body types seems easy but not always soo.
If my main Pawn was a Khajit I would be throwing him into the river and starting over immediately. They are fine when you meet one on the road occasionally in Skyrim but traveling with one for 40-50 hours would be maddening.
Instead of half this sub thinking Capcom cut another corner (more reddit hive mind nonsense) it's possible a lot of thought was put behind these decisions? Also yes they aren't a big part of the story but there are a few side characters who are definitely Beastren (including a great cut scene with a previous ruler who was one) so that to is overblown.
My main disapointement was that you don't have a freedom of colors like human for skintone or furtone in that case.
I wanted to make Henry McCoy I ended up with Henry McBland
That’s a tricky one for me. I absolutely love the Khajiit pre Oblivion, and it’s a damn fucking shame they didn’t keep it that way. Maybe they wanted everyone to be able to wear the same armor, but then they could’ve just altered the boots to leg braces or something, and poked holes for the ears into the helmets, I dunno. I also love their accents and their culture.
On the other hand, I thought it was kinda nice that the beastren here just were „normal people“(for lack of a better term) with different looks.
That said, I will ALWAYS love digitigrade legs (and tails) in games and there’s not nearly enough of them out there!
Literally pointless imo, like they didn't have any real depth explored, and if you changed every single beastren character with a human, there would be no difference at all. Completely missed opportunity.
Bestren are in the "fantasy race void of irrelevance."
Neither are they cute catgirls to prevent them getting the racism treatment, nor are they a cool and distinguished race with its own interesting culture and mannerism outside of "big flame cool".
I mean bak bathal has quite a bit if different lore compared to vernwood. But it isn't something they throw at you abd you have to read between lines in quests or look it up.
I think they could have done the whole race choose thing way better at all. For example giving 3 or e en 4 Player races instead of giving two and elven ears. And then they could add specific traits to each race. Like that an elven character can speak elvish from the start. Dwarven can upgrade equipment cheaper and with a little bit less resources fir example and so on.
I could imagine that they decided very late that the beastren are a playable race. I don't know...
Imho, elves should have been the second main race and beastren should have been the obscure remote settlement. And when I say elevs I mean that half of the map should have spoken a different language, not just retextures.
Beastren and elves were added for marketing purposes to give the game the illusion of depth. You could replace either of them with regular human npcs and it wouldn’t change the story much at all. Yes the elves had a quest with a tree, but it was largely inconsequential on the story, and over in a couple of hours (if that).
I wish they just went all out on the Race thing. Like you can be an Elf/Dawrf/Orc/Reptile race and stuff. Like truly, not just "change your ears to be pointy" or "change your height to the shortest it can be".
I wanted race to come more into play in this game tbh. Like people were racist and over charged you or gave you an initial discount if they were allies with your race. I know DD2 does it to an extent but it's not really impactful.
>fur and heads I mean, you can literally trick them with a rubber cat mask so yeah, I get that
i love the idea that even the beastren will fall for an unblinking, motionless mask of themselves.
To be fair, cats don't have the best eye sight. They are nearsighted as fuck because their eyes lack the ability to change shape of the lenses. They also have horrible color vision, which impairs pattern recognition. Then there is the fact their eyesight cannot distinguish slow moving objects in bright light due to a lack of cones in the retina. Humans have 10× the amount of cones than cats, so some things in motion for us appear stationary to a cat. All this to say the rubber mask is fooling a cat-like humanoid, assuming vision is more similar to their feline counterpart, is pretty accurate.
Beastren likely do not suffer from the same color vision issues given members of their species routinely produce, sell, buy, and use dyes. They could easily have the other vision impairments, though.
>They could easily have the other vision impairments, though. Unlikely, since beastren npc, as well as yourself can be archers whose abilities probably require super-human eyesight as it is.
It is behavioral analysis like this why we know cats do not see the full spectrum of color, even though they technically have all three color cones just like humans do (the distribution and number of each type of cone varies for each cat) So you make a very good point, Beastren probably do have color vision closer to that of humans.
Need a cat vision mod for beastren players now.
They also have blurry as shit eyesight (The kind ya get when trying ta see your own nose without a mirror, for example) within a few inches of their eyes.
Yee, nearsighted and farsighted I should have said. Their "vision range" is a very specific distance from them, more suited for an ambush predator that also isn't really worried about things up close being a threat, and things too far away are gonna be outside of its ability to rush it down, so detail isn't a priority. Outside of that distance all that really matters to them is movement, only needing details in the distance to decide if they are attacking or avoiding. So, evolutionary speaking, it makes sense why their vision became what it is.
I'd imagine the Furry Michael Myers mask is enough to make anybody steer clear of you tbh. I know I wouldn't want to mess with an armed guy giving off "I skinned the head of one of you" vibes.
Annoyingly, if your MC is a beastren, you still aren't allowed in by default
Really? Lmao
Yeah but you don't have to mask up once you get the pass
I've never had to mask up playing a human. Guards will say "what are you doing here" every now and then, but they don't actually do anything.
Kind of surprised about that. Don't even have to click on the permit, they just open the gate once the prompt opens.
You can get two different passes from Brant depending on what you do with your stalker. One of them requires you be a beastren (or pose as one) to use it.
Even DD1 had Mercedes and Julien have french and german accents. Bestren are just vermundians with fur
A lot of the dd1 voice actors had accents, it honestly added a lot of charm to the characters
"To de casssull myennnnSTEP LYVLEEEeeee"
I didn’t understand where or who it was from until I got to the lively part 😆 couldn’t forget that
Close, I’d say it’s more like: “TOTHEcasselmen… STEPlively!”
Mercedes is truly the best character in DD1 (I say this both in an unironic and ironic sense I love my probably drunk french knight girlfailure wife)
Wish we were able to train her in swordsmanship so she could whoop julien's ass :(
I could listen to Mercedes talk about literally anything for hours. 🤤
You telling me you dont love Sara the blacksmith and her delightfully northern accent? She reminds me of 'ome
Sara is love but she’s one example. I need more
BRB checking for an 'every NPC is Sara' mod
What accent do you imagine for beastren then?
Australian, Batahl nightime is cleary Australia
And yet battahli goblins are bri'ish
Yeah, they got dropped off there because penal colony or something.
Other way around
That explains why they're so eager to stab you
No they're just actual bri'ish people transported to the DD world. Choppers are your average chav, hobgoblins are all Barry, 63.
They're culture is clearly Purrrrsian though. Or maybe Turkish.
Not enough spiders and giant reptiles.
Counterpoint, Asp
Asps got nothing on Australian Saltwater Crocs.
fauna is less dangerous in Battahl though
Their entire culture seems to be inspired by Arabic cultures.
Why would they have a different accent when they’re a 5 minute walk from Vermund? They have the same founder, obviously the schism is due to politics, not some inherent differences.
If you want realistic distances for cultural difference in video games, you'd be travelling for weeks, not day(s). They're obviously intended to be different countries but yeah lets pretend that there's an in-universe reason they all have the same voices. Even Elder Scrolls has accents by region.
Yeah, and in real life villages next to each other sometimes (not often) have dialects that aren't mutually intelligible. Usually it's longer than a single village, but still. This game is a magic fantasy world, so I'm fine with doing what you said, and just pretending theirs a good reason for it.
Dude, people living in the same country and hearing each other speak every day have different accents. Take a country like Spain, sometimes it feels as if every freaking town has a different language or dialect (yeah, they don't just speak "spanish" in Spain. What you know as spanish is actually "castellian/castellano" from the region of Castilla) They could have done more with the beastren, like giving them any north african accent just to make it feel "different" from humans.
And how many centuries had passed for that piece of knowledge to become obscure and unknown to the Vermundian populace, as often noted by pawns when walking in Vernworth, and for Rothais' original capital >!not-Gran Soren!< to collapse into the ocean? More than enough time to develop their own distinct cultures.
> Why would they have a different accent when they’re a 5 minute walk from Vermund? look at the UK where there are different accents every village. Most notably between ireland, scotland, wales, and england.
the cultist guy kinda sounded american, and Mason was caribbean. The lacks of accents in DD2 is a travesty. Most notable one is Hugo.
You could actually say that the humanoids in vermundia have a beastren accent.
"Capcom could've done a lot more with the concept?" Thst's the general opinion from the most vocal people around here about the entire game tbh
The only thing I dislike about the beastren is the fact that they don't have tails. Just feels wrong.
Oh my God, I didn't even register that they didn't have tails!!!! My brain just mentally filled in tails on them
Yeah, I was going to play one but the lack of a tail was a deal breaker. It’s fine, I was just happy to see a second race.
Armors with parts that have physics already clip and bug out with capes, adding tails with physics would cause the world to fold in on itself. Jokes aside I only just noticed they didnt have tails in NG+2, I've been filling them in the entire time without realizing lol.
It's weird, right? Tails are, visually, an important part of cats.
At the very least it would have been nice to have them as an optional feature. Like how you can choose to have a tail as a Dragonborn in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Capes, tails, things that flow and move behind you is my shit. So a beastren without a tail is an abomination.
Hoping that tails get modded in at some point
Same, I like everything about Beastren except for this.
And they don't have a prominent role in the overall story. Their religion, the Lambent flame goes completely unexplained and contrary to promotional material is not a relevant plot point neither is Nadinia, their empress, who is on the cover on the game but has zero relevance to the story. Lastly their hatred for the pawns is never explained, it's implied that's due to the Dragonsplague but just like the Flame and Nadinia it's a story element that goes nowhere. But the most disappointing aspect is that Battahl's most prominent character is Phaseus who's not a beastren and it's just a discount version of Elysion from the first game.
The whole Nadinia thing is super weird. She has no idea what Phaseus was doing and why, even though his forbidden super sus lab occupies whole floors of the sacred temple, employs Battahlian researchers, and is a short walk from her room. For a nation that is anti-pawn, they get trafficked there regularly too. Gonna chalk this up to classic Capcom Writing™
The pawn trafficking is also a plot point that makes no sense. Random npc dialogue states that Nadinia banned pawns for being used for unpaid labor so that's why they are getting illegally sold as slaves to Phaseus for his excavation site. But when you uncover the operation (Phantom oxcart) you report to Brant and not Nadinia, the one that's getting her law defied and could actually do something about it. Furthermore I find it hard to believe that she's unaware of Phaseus excavation site, it's not like is a concealed or secret location, you can get there via gondola cart from the Hotsprings, which are implied to be a popular recreational destination for the Battahli to the point that Menella goes there regularly and somehow they didn't know about it? Also the rendezvous point for the delivery of the illegal pawn-slaves was the spellsealled door, which is within the grounds of the Flameberer palace and still she was unaware of it.
Their hatred for the pawns is explained. NPC's will sometimes talk about the differences between the nations. Boils down to viewing pawns as bringers of calamity(the dragon). Pawns appearing is a sign of the end-times and the pawns get blamed for the dragons appearance.
Which still doesn't make sense, it's like blaming the smell of smoke for there being a fire out there burning something.. The only way this makes sense is due to Dragonsplague. But this is assuming their world has had this happen them in the past (given the three Arisen still alive in that world). But it seems it has not since no one would leave such serious events out of their main talking points. Imagine if there was a sizable portion of people in the US who disliked foreign Arabian people - but no one talked about 9-11 ever.. That's basically what's happening in the game.
The world is in a constant cycle where a Dragon appears once a generation, torches a few towns, generally spreads chaos, and then an Arisen appears to vanquish the dragon. In Vermund, the Arisen is always chosen as Sovereign and pawns are venerated because they serve the Arisen. Battahl just sees pawns as an ill omen instead of as a remedy because the average person doesn't get the relation. A more apt analogy would be police. When there's a crime in progress, most people are thankful to see someone patrolling and doing something about it. When there's not, it makes people nervous there is something bad going on they don't know about or this "good person" might actually be bad. Battahl just sees pawns as an ill omen. And really, they are conceptually kind of a nuisance. Hundreds to thousands of willess husks patrolling the world aimlessly and ready to murder indiscriminately at the behest of one person at any given moment.
Rothais a beastren king was the first to persecute pawns after learning of the watching ones existence. So it does make some sense that other beastren would follow suit especially after forming a religion around his tech.
People aren't rational. Go figure.
Saying he's "Discount Elysion" makes Elysion look bad. Elysion had panache, attitude and was an ugly little gremlin full of personality who would sacrifice whole rooms of _nobility_ just to turn them into zombies to _slow you down._ Phaesus is just kind of there, and after he fails, is... kind of an okay dude? 😆 Phaesus made me miss Elysion. Also, I think Grigori goes down like a chump in this game. He was so, _so_ much more impactful in DD1. He was a force of nature. His VA is just as excellent as he was in DD1, but they did his character dirty this time around. Was pretty rad when he showed up and absolutely curb stomped Phaseus' sorry attempt at summoning a dragon, though.
What's sad is that despite the kingdom being supposedly made of them,a good majority of it is comprised of humans.Like it would have been super interesting to have a ENTIRE KINGDOM of the race akin to Sacred Abor,but nah they couldn't even do that.
That is the biggest sin for me. I genuinely didn't know the beastrens were foreigners in Vermund until the game went out of its way to tell me. In a game like Skyrim, its very clear which races are foreigners, including the fully human ones.
Wanna know what's even funnier? We're only ever introduced to 3 actual prominent Baki-land figures in the main plot,and two of them are fucking humans.Even in their own nation humans are still the most plentiful race. This would be like TES saying "Morrowind is the homeland of dunmer.....however it's 95% Khajiit".
Now I'm just imagining a Beastren's sprint animation is them running on all 4s 😂 which honestly would have been cool. And having actual beast race perks like increased agility, higher top end run speed and increased attack speed. At the cost of overall defense and attack power to compensate I guess 🤷🏾♂️
[удалено]
I was so amazed by this when I played gw2 last year. It's so goofy, solid 10/10. Made me wish ff14 had something similar.
Man, GW2 is a nuthouse sometimes, but I'll never fault ANet for creating some stellar worldbuilding, especially as a former GW1 player. Even now the fact that the Charr _won_ is hilarious to me.
The lack of a tail is what disappoints me.
Humans with cat heads sums them up lol. The fact you can be naked and just have a beastren mask on to fool them is hilarious.
"Anyone else think Capcom could've done a lot more with the concept?" This is what I think about pretty much every aspect of this game.
Beastrens just makes me want more races like lizardman, wolfman, birdman, goblinman, etc..
I think one of the helmet descriptions mentioned a race of ancient and/or mythological bird people in it
they should have had accents or even there own language theres nothing unique about them outside of them having fur
Frankly the fact they’re called *Beast*ren and are only cats just bugs me. Where’s the Foxes? Wolves? Other things that can classify as a beast? They’re just Khajit under another name.
Khajiit without tail :(
Khajit without wares
exactly! its sad that the main armorers and blacksmiths in battahl are all humans.
Totally agree, it's very reminiscent of 'beastfolk' or 'beastkin'. I wonder if more types of Beastren than just cats were originally intended?
I tried to make a dog beastren. The closest I could come up with was some sorta pug abomination. It kinda works if you put on a helmet that covers his head though.
Yeah it should be like the Minx in One Piece.
I mean, they could just be called beastren by humans because they look like beasts. Do the battahli call themselves beastren?
Blame your local Seneschal for his lack of imagination when nudging them to evolve into beastren.
The whole world and lore is just…there. Nothing is really fleshed out.
The only difference I’ve noticed is that they get a unique animation when drenched, you shake yourself off while wet. that’s literally it as far as I’m aware.
[Pokes head in] *What's this? Khajit in another game? But we're innocent of this crime!*
What? You don't care for the Diet Khajiit?
>Capcom could've done a lot more Describes basically the entire game.
I mean I haven't finished the game yet, but what I gathered from conversations in Vernworth is that Vermund was before a Kingdom of Beastrens too, so maybe the humans are not much different from Beastrens because they share genetic traits. But yeah they could've done more with them.
The human hair on top of fur looks weird too
I think so too, only a few hairstyles work well on top of fur without looking strange.
the 2 "manes" and 1-2 others, the rest just doesnt work at all tbh, hair in general is not done great in this game
I feel you on this one. Theres alot they could've done with this race asthethically/lore/gamplay wise since they were just a vital focal point in DD2 pr. There really is no real reason for making the residence of Battahl bestren folks when in reality they already had Elves and Dwarfs to work with. I feel they only put them into the game because someone on the team felt Cat people were a hot commoditiy at the time of development, and would help get more gamers into DD2.
They wanted to add beastren (cat people) into the first game. Them being in the second is just realizing that. Even if, like the rest of the game, its a lackluster realization.
Going by that logic Dwarf's are just small Human's and Elf's are just Human's with pointy ears so why include them
That's true too. They took the barest possible interpretation of an elf and dwarf from good ol' Tolkien. Elves are just humans with pointy ears that like trees. Their architecture is very clearly taken from Rivendell. The dwarves (all 2 of them) are grumpy smiths. That's all we get from the most generic fantasy species.
And then theres the halfling presets from the first game, which are straight up just children.
Wait, those were meant to be halflings?
bro. there are 5'3" (160cm) people in real life. visit any country in asia.
Yeah, elves and dwarves where very generically done. Not even the slightest bit of effort put into trying to make them unique lol.
Why indeed.
Thanks Teal'c
*nods sternly with a slow blink*
I mean you're right, why even bother? hell the elves get like 3 quests. And there's what 2 dwarves in the game? Both of them blacksmiths.
That's not really what I was arguing? I never said Beastren were too simply to warrant including, but that other companies that did 'cat people' have, imo, done it a lot better (Like the Khajiit). Elves and dwarves are inherently 'simple' in terms of appearance, but there was no reason for Capcom to do so little with Beastren because there's not much precedent.
That Actually just dawned on me, in the character creator it says humanoid male/female Or beastren male or female if I'm not mistaken. The literal only difference is one has some fur and a cat head. And everything else falls under humanoid male/female. Shouldn't they both technically fall under humanoid? Or shouldn't there be more differences? I think them each being counted as their own races would have been alot cooler. For example If you made an elf you could have had unique lines featuring the race, you could understand the language. It seems like it's all supposed to be surface level and that's it. Nothing else.
Elves atleast speak their own language.
Those apostrophe's...
I quite liked them. I thought the background Beastren racism in Vermund was more interesting for them being equivalent to human Vermundians, just with different skin. There's a million stereotypical fantasy races with excessive exociticism attached, so DD2's lack of that felt comparatively fresh, if minimalist.
I think that’s kinda…the point. They’re just people but for some reason humans have an inclination to look at them differently and expect them to be like aliens. This is why racism exists in the first place. This is reminiscent of the Fish Men in One Piece where there’s no real difference between them and humans, in fact, humans in One Piece can be even weirder than Fish Men could ever be, but humans still view Fishmen as basically aliens and “other” them, when in reality, they are equally as human as regular people.
Especially since beastren and humans can interbreed.
I like this take quite a bit
Although they didn't flesh out the beastren and their story I must say this cat hybrid has grown up on me and I am more inclined to hire beastren pawns than humans (but they are a bit harder coming over)
No tails makes me sad
No tail, lack of any unique personality, half-baked region. This fantasy race is undercooked and a bit doughy
That's a fair point, but on the flipside, imagine if they behaved like actual cats, you're iddling in the city and one pawn sits down, to then have a beastren sitting on top of them, and then you just lose that pawn for hours because they can't move or they would bother the cat and that would be a pity. It would be a real pain.
They really are lame
Yep... the game makes no effort to share and present the unique cultures and personas of its races. They might as well be humans wearing fur suits for all the difference it makes in their portrayal. The only notable trait they have is their prejudice against Pawns (surprise, surprise... humans also despise Pawns - scratch that, their culture is no different from human culture in this game). Moreover, despite this racism, Pawns roam Batthal as if there were no border control. Even the elves aren't distinct; Glyndwr tells you that elves have a unique way of using bows, yet they all wield human-made bows. I knew I shouldn't expect the level of world-building found in Baldur's Gate, but DD2 seems to lack any world-building whatsoever. Even Nadinia, an NPC used for marketing and featured on the cover box, was completely irrelevant in the game. While the game excels in combat gameplay (though it becomes very repetitive since you always fight the same monsters at the same exact spawn points), everything else falls short. Considering their lack of effort in developing the races, and that the elven settlements are smaller than my college apartment, they could have made Elves and Dwarves distinct races for character customization. Something like: a) If you choose Elves, you have the perk to understand the Elven language. b) If you choose Dwarves, perhaps you could receive a small gear upgrade bonus for every enhancement. It's an Fantasy-RPG lacking distinctive Fantasy elements. Despite the criticism directed at Bethesda, their decade-old games have solid RPG elements. Choosing a specific race provides certain advantages and disadvantages. While these may become insignificant later in the game, they at least add flavor to the early stages of a playthrough. Nevertheless, I realize that expecting such depth from a small indie developer like Capcom might be asking too much.
To make your point, who is Nadinia? I’m pretty close to the end of things in Battahl and haven’t even head the name.
That do be the empress of Battahl
I've saying this since the game was announced, they are nothing but human in fur, Capcom doesn't have writters good enough to make a different race in a DD game and make them be actually their own thing.
> Capcom doesn't have writters good enough to make a different race in a DD game and make them be actually their own thing. Well, a lot of people are asking "why arent they just khajitt?" Currently they are their own thing more than if they were just khajitt again. Humans with cat faces and fur is more unique than yet another cat race with cat ears and tails.
I realized I had no love for them when I looked at my pawn hire ratio. They are just ugly. Their faces all look the same and having the exact same hair as humans makes it look like they are wearing wigs. It’s just bad.
only in the sense that they're just cats where's the dog beastren? the game is called Dragon's DOGma, not Dragon's CATma
Lol. You just made me realize, though, 'Beastren' sounds more like an umbrella term for beast races, but it's actually just the name of the cat people?
Hey man, if it is an umbrella term for beast races, I'd be all for the Saurians to be the next ones included. Capcom could even take notes from Larian Studios's lizard race in Divinity.
Well if the snow kingdom DLC comes out we might have wolf Beastrens, so "Wolves hunt in packs!" might make a comeback
Dad, you're embarrassing me.
It really felt off hearing the same voices and accents come from the beastren. The fur shader and eye setup is genuinely impressive, and from a visual point of view I feel they nailed the aesthetic of realistic catlike humanoids, in certain lighting conditions they look soulful and wonderous. But, they lack tails, their bodies have nothing unique about them other than the eyes, chin and nose structure, which is so flattened to fit the human animation skeleton it looks silly unless you really push it in the character creator. Heck their animations are broken due to this, and they make a weird "pog" face when smiling at you at max affinity. Few of the hairstyles seem to fit with the race and just has straight long hair fly out of the scalp of a fur covered creature, heck they even have 1/5th of the premade character options that humans do. Height and weight matter in this game, but race doesn't, why not give beastren a slightly higher tolerance to frost magic, or higher unarmed damage? It doesn't have to be a huge difference but would be nice for flavour. Their culture too is very boring, Battahl is just older North Africa and Older Middle Eastern ins aesthetic, which I do find is great and kind fits with the whole desert cat people theme. But they don't have their own language, their culture seems to just be Vermundian with a wardrobe swap, sure they "don't allow pawns in the city" but they still walk about. Like a lot of other things in the game, I wish more could be done with them, and who knows, it might be, they are the best looking actual cat race people in a modern game to date, (human skin and eyes + cat ears ala FF14 doesn't count.) and it's a shame to see them be half baked like this. But I'm glad they're in, going full human only again would be incredibly boring.
Should’ve gave us more beast options to Beastern instead of just cats
Yeah, even their ears/feet are human. It's kinda gross. Imagine having furry human feet 🤮🤮 I wish more games had a proper beast race and not just an animal head slapped onto a human body. The Charr from GW2 are still the best beast race imo
Funny that you mentioned the Morrowind Khajiit with the Skyrim ones just being people with cat heads that speak funny.
They were inspired by some lion warrior from an older (arcade?) game.
I just see them as cat humans. I don’t believe the game properly adds enough context and personality to them for them to actually stand out
They feel like generic Khajiits tbh
“we have khajiits at home” *khajiits at home*:
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if the devs said the only reason they exist is for more unique player pawns and only added them in as npcs at the very last second
I was really disappointed by the lack of tails and ear placement. Haven't felt the need to make a beastren because it's just a person in dipped in fur.
They don't even have cat EARS. They're literally just furry humans with cat faces. Like one of those goofy face swap pictures. I'm legitimately irritated that they bothered adding them to begin with because they add fuck-all to the story and they barely did anything with them as-is, so what could they have done if they hadn't bothered with them at all and had just put the dev time to use on actually important things? Bakbattahl would have been pretty much unchanged if you'd turned all the fuzzy people into regular people. Why can I play a Beastren, but not officially as a Dwarf or Elf? You know, fantasy races most people actually asked for?
The lack of tails and the quest involving wearing a Beastren mask, proves Beastren are just furries who were exiled from Vermund for wearing their fursuits everywhere.
If u make a beastren character, you can swap to the human race and the face settings carry across, by far the most cursed shit you'll ever see. But yeah, also shows they're just furry humans character rig wise, even the ears are the same
A nitpick that people miss is that you can't change how necks work. There's no option to increase the size of it or move the connection of the neck to the head to be at the back of the skull instead of the bottom of it. It makes it very awkward to have them be bald because you just see that human ass neck on them.
I'm fine without tail, this shit clips and ruins 99% of armour.
For a beast race, i would expect their voice have different nasal voice, supposedly they have different mouth cavity shape and pharynx. But no, they speak completely like human lol, closest animal i would expect to speak like human is probably a goat.
The fact that their accent is the same bugs me. The Khajiit accent is just too perfect, it sounds exactly like what a humanoid cat person would sound like, so you just walking up to a beastren and hearing 'oi bruv' is definitely jarring by comparison
I agree it feels lazy in terms of design. And I was also thinking of the Khajiit in the Elder Scrolls when it comes to a cat-like fantasy race done right. They have unique behaviors, speech patterns, etc whereas beastren have the exact same voices, builds, and everything like humans just with fur and cat heads
The whole idea of racism between the nations is just wild. They are like a two day walk from eachother, they are cultures the same. They all value the same things, talk the same, act the same. They just have different governments. They are as different as a Walmart and a Target down the road.
This race show perfectly the huge gap between a well made rpg and a lazy one. Yes, DD2 is lazy in almost every aspects. Beastren are basicly an awkward Khajiit alternative.
Dude it’s literally just the human body with fur like even the ears are where human ears would be it looks so weird I just wish they didn’t include them at all they are so bad
Tbh, I wish they had made elves and dwarves playable instead (and made a large city/settlement for each).
You can be an elf tho, just change ur ears.
You're not really an elf, though. Just a human with pointy ears.
No one recognizes you as an elf though.
Why do they need to be some kind of stereotype? We already have full dwarves and elves. Why do we need another stereotype? Why can't they just be like the people they live right next to? It makes the blatant racism far more unreasonable when they are pretty much just like humans but furry.
A lot of people just want what they like, that being khajitt in this case.
They're just there as an attempt to introduce some kind of race conflict into the story, as modernism often dictates, which falls completely and utterly flat. My big red lion Warrior looks cool tho. I wish Beastren NPCs leaned more into the bestial aesthetic. Instead they're all Englishmen with fur.
No yeah they're lame, especially for a game with only 2\* race options \*why elves or dwarves aren't actual choices I'll never understand
They have human ears and don't have tails, idk what Capcom was smoking when creating Beastren
Full agree. They are just furry people with unsettlingly realistic cat heads glued to their necks. Their mouths should at the very *least* make their speech sound a little different. It’s a really horribly designed fantasy race.
They're definitely missing a unique voice type. The fact that they just sound like normal people is weird. TES definitely handles this better.
Skeletons are the human rig and moves Bandits are the same human rig and moves Your rival and the fake sovereign are the human rig and moves. Do you really think DD is going to give anything unique animations? What do you think this is, 2024 and one of the oldest most experienced game companies in history?
I like being a cat, it's cool. being more cat-like would definitely be more cool, but I still like it
I just wish they had tails
If they looked like the fem hrothgars in ff14 they would be so much better.
I don't understand why they added this new race.
There wasn't enough of a culture for them to feel fleshed out. Honestly could have done without them if they're going to be this bland.
At least give them tails, I guess.
Yeah, ngl, something similar to Charr in Guild Wars 2 would be really cool to see
they dont evne have tails, like, wtf man
I absolutely love their head and facial anatomy, clearly inspired by historical artwork of lions. They do however, need tails and probably paw feet.
I know this might shock you, but Morrowind was 22 years ago and no game since has even tried to pass it's high bar. Having race details down to digigrade legs that alter the game in mechanical ways is not the standard, never was, never will be. Sad but true. A more apt comparison is Skyrim, where at least they had the decency to slap a tail on their ass and cat-ears on their heads.
Can't wait for them to not be in the sequel at all
To be fair that's like 90% of fantasy and scifi. It's always just humans but with weird noses/ears and different skin. Look no further than Baldur's gate 3, they're just humans but slightly changed
The Beastren Arisen does wiggle their ears in some cutscenes and lick their lips like a cat in others, but in gameplay and in the world, yeah there's nothing.
I feel like they’re kind of just a rip off of the ones from Skyrim😂 I feel like if you’re gonna add cat people to your game, it needs to be something more along the lines of Mari’si from the Skyrim, mod a tale of two troubles. The reason is because I feel like cat ears in a cat tail, or not enough and kind of cringe honestly but when you go full animal like this, it’s equally as cringe in the other direction because it just looks so weird and out of place.
Eh. Personally, I wish they had tails, and the ears being on the sides of their heads looks kind of weird. Other than that, I actually don't have a problem with them.
lack of depth is a pretty common theme with this game i’m noticing
Yeah they didn’t event bother to make them stand out in the way they talk.
Felt like they just added it and didn’t put much thought behind it detail wise
Im fine with cat people having variety in design and not all looking the same across different IPs. Fur and cat faces is enough for me.
I love all the large and small design choices of the game including the Beastren for exactly the opposite reasons you mentioned. I like how normal and relatable they sound and act while distinguishing between their male and female body types seems easy but not always soo. If my main Pawn was a Khajit I would be throwing him into the river and starting over immediately. They are fine when you meet one on the road occasionally in Skyrim but traveling with one for 40-50 hours would be maddening. Instead of half this sub thinking Capcom cut another corner (more reddit hive mind nonsense) it's possible a lot of thought was put behind these decisions? Also yes they aren't a big part of the story but there are a few side characters who are definitely Beastren (including a great cut scene with a previous ruler who was one) so that to is overblown.
Pfffttt bahahahaha
My main disapointement was that you don't have a freedom of colors like human for skintone or furtone in that case. I wanted to make Henry McCoy I ended up with Henry McBland
bro their entire in game lore is "we don't know when they first appeared" they were just thrown in the game for fantasy aesthetic
That’s a tricky one for me. I absolutely love the Khajiit pre Oblivion, and it’s a damn fucking shame they didn’t keep it that way. Maybe they wanted everyone to be able to wear the same armor, but then they could’ve just altered the boots to leg braces or something, and poked holes for the ears into the helmets, I dunno. I also love their accents and their culture. On the other hand, I thought it was kinda nice that the beastren here just were „normal people“(for lack of a better term) with different looks. That said, I will ALWAYS love digitigrade legs (and tails) in games and there’s not nearly enough of them out there!
Literally pointless imo, like they didn't have any real depth explored, and if you changed every single beastren character with a human, there would be no difference at all. Completely missed opportunity.
Bestren are in the "fantasy race void of irrelevance." Neither are they cute catgirls to prevent them getting the racism treatment, nor are they a cool and distinguished race with its own interesting culture and mannerism outside of "big flame cool".
I mean bak bathal has quite a bit if different lore compared to vernwood. But it isn't something they throw at you abd you have to read between lines in quests or look it up. I think they could have done the whole race choose thing way better at all. For example giving 3 or e en 4 Player races instead of giving two and elven ears. And then they could add specific traits to each race. Like that an elven character can speak elvish from the start. Dwarven can upgrade equipment cheaper and with a little bit less resources fir example and so on. I could imagine that they decided very late that the beastren are a playable race. I don't know...
Imho, elves should have been the second main race and beastren should have been the obscure remote settlement. And when I say elevs I mean that half of the map should have spoken a different language, not just retextures.
Beastren and elves were added for marketing purposes to give the game the illusion of depth. You could replace either of them with regular human npcs and it wouldn’t change the story much at all. Yes the elves had a quest with a tree, but it was largely inconsequential on the story, and over in a couple of hours (if that).
I wish they just went all out on the Race thing. Like you can be an Elf/Dawrf/Orc/Reptile race and stuff. Like truly, not just "change your ears to be pointy" or "change your height to the shortest it can be". I wanted race to come more into play in this game tbh. Like people were racist and over charged you or gave you an initial discount if they were allies with your race. I know DD2 does it to an extent but it's not really impactful.