My main problem with the dragon in Orta running on all fours was that its front limbs were formerly its wings. If a Pern dragon ran on all fours that wouldn’t bother me because the front limbs are actually legs and always have been. But with Orta I have difficultly believing that damaged wings make a good substitute for an extra set of legs. They weren’t originally meant to be used as legs, so can they really be that effective at supporting the dragon’s weight?[/quote]
Orta’s dragon had hands on it’s wings. So they acted as forward legs.
So, there is a reason why the dragon in Orta was able to run along the ground and why the pup at the end of the game had four legs. Without the Heresy program, the dragon reverted back to a more ‘animalistic’ form.
perhaps it would help to actually show other people what they are talking about in specific. gehn, show me which imperial ships in particular offend you.
and i couldn’t even find an image of a hopper. but seriously, those designs don’t actually bother me- they don’t make me hate the old games. i’m just pointing out that the old games had laughable designs the same way the new one does. but for some reason it is such a big deal with orta.
what about the arachnoth do you find laughable?
it’s an insect/spider like design, very nausicaish and therefor true to panzer.
do you know the opening sequence from nausicaa where master yupa is hunted by a wild ohmu? this is exactly the same scene as the arachnoth encounter. and look at the ohmu design, especially the snout.
I begin to believe that you have bad taste man, where are you from, the states? j/k
I agree the hoppers were a bit odd, but only because they are kinda generic and too simple, not because their design is too extreme or something.
there is a differnce between cheesy and simple design however, and given the obvious ALIEN similarity of the dragonmares, and the doglike/superman like movement of the catharp (cat-harp?) I think Orta’s design is way more cheesy than Saga.
so that’s all it takes to be accepted as true panzer by you guys?
the arachnoth’s head is larger than its entire body. it’s head is also a nonsensical shape and it’s body ends in a red ball. i did in fact recognize the nausicaa reference in the encounter but there is a large difference. the ohmu looked like a reasonable creature and the arachnoth looks like something a four year old would draw.
i bring up the hoppers because they are hardly believable as animals. most of the panzer animal kingdom seems feasible, but a few are just ridiculous.
i recognize the ALIEN influence on the dragonmares but i do not think it is excessive. i have studied H.R. Giger’s work and find it to be much more about organic architecture and patterns- which the dragonmares lack. their only similarities to the aliens are the elongated heads and lack of eyes.
i hope your complaint about the catharp extends to the golia since they were practically the same concept.
the golia moves very different imho, and way more dynamic than the catharp. I think avorall running animations look much more doglike than cat like (I prefer cats for their elegance). also the catharp’s limbs were way too thin to support that body. it looked rather funny than threatening, something I can’t say about the golia.
I also had preferred the dragon to run on its hind legs, the whole concept of the coolia was a biped birdlike creature., like a biped dinosaur.
think about it, if the dragon was supposed to go back to his animal roots, why was the design totally different when we actually saw these animal roots in PDZ? it was just not consistent.
The thing that always bugged me about the dragon supposedly “going back to his animal roots” is that the heavy and glide (especially glide) forms are still just as absurdly abstract and artificial looking as ever. Again, kind of inconsistent.
By the way, I don’t see a whole lot in common between the Catharp and Golia, aside from the obvious. I always thought the Golia moved kind of like a Gorilla. And being a completely non-artistic person, I’m just going to leave it at that.
i think it is pretty much conclusive that the dragon in orta was the same dragon in saga. i can explain that if anyone doesn’t understand. but there are suspicions about the dragon(s) of the originals. were they the same dragon? was it the same dragon reborn in different bodies? were they simply different dragons?
in anycase, the early stages of the dragon in saga looked to have come from a different origin than the dragon in zwei. that question of heredity is enough to make any coolia consistency statements only theories.
beside that, in my lagi development theory i show how orta’s dragon was growing through intermingling its DNA with enemy DNA. that throws everything to the wind.
thirdly, as solo pointed out, the coolia did have fore-limbs. they may not have been using them in their current evolutionary state, but creatures doen’t grow arms that they doesn’t use. my point being that the coolia probably walked on all fours at one time.
i suppose ‘revert’ wasn’t the right word. i meant more that it was losing influence from the heresy program and was returning to the psuedo-natural world for its continued growth. it’s reverting in one sense, but also a bit unclear.
I know it did, but it still doesn’t look right to me that limbs serving primarily as wings should be able to take that kind of heavy running. If he was just walking around on all fours, sure, no problem. But that dragon was doing some serious ground pounding and that puts a lot of weight on the legs, weight that normally would never go there and quite likely (if we were being realistic) weight that it would not have the muscle strength to support, given that the limbs would use different muscles for flight than it would for running and the dragon to our knowledge has never run on all fours before. With wings, it would never have had a need.
Also, what would have been so bad about making the dragon run on two legs? It would have been easy, given the previous PD dragons had walked or stood on two legs (or even ran like coolia Lagi).
Just because a creature has hands on its wings doesn’t me you can turn it into a racer. Comparing the dragon to a real world critter, a vampire bat can manage a walk about on all fours due to the structure of is wings (its forearm bones are heavier than other bats’ to support the weight), but it can’t run on all fours. Its wings are meant to be wings, so while they’re serviceable legs as well, they can’t fully function as a pair.
I always thought it looked silly to me, as I sat and thought about it one night when I was doing some PD sketches.
I would rather have the dragon run on its four limbs than on two. It would just look silly seeing a dragon with heavy armor and a horn (I dearly wonder how much it weighs?) run on these thin legs when those legs have to support all of that weight.
It is the same idea that applies to Tyranosaurus, why the arms are so small. But you would notice that the skull is very large and very heavy, if such a creature were to have “normal” size arms those legs could not support such weight!
well thats what I think anyways.
The dragon is a creature ment to be flying and not running (to me anyways) and with strong wings/muscle to help support that weight!
I did liked how the dragon was more animal-looking in Orta, however as the Normal form, not the Glide or heavy wing, which is abstract.
you are contradicting yourself you know? strong fligh muscles mean exactly that he can not run very well with his wings. the muscles are anchored in a totally different place.
and btw, the dragon dragon from the old games is more a bird like creature with suposedly hollow bones (like a bird and some dinosaurs).
you assume that i actually care. no one won this, i don’t think there was anything to be won. it was a clash of opinions with a teaspoon of immaturity and a dash of stupidity. and now you’re just trying to find a way to gracefully back out.
which is just as well, i was about to leave anyway.
actually, it was a tie between nuckles87 and raizen1984
You know the cool thing about those Saga designs you posted Mega?
The two of them which actually suck (imo) were not included in the game.Those are the last two in case you don’t know.
The Arachnoth ain’t no beauty queen but I can cope with it.It doesn’t strike as “ridiculous” to me eyes anyways.
Concerning the ship designs you requested, well apart from the Ep boss I can’t think of another Imperial ship design I dind’t like.I can cope with them.
But they didn’t convey the word coolness as older designs did.Just look at the intro FMV from Orta and tell me if that one Airship next to Vermana in once seen isn’t the coolest of all the Imperial crafts in the game.
[quote=“lordcraymen”]you are contradicting yourself you know? strong fligh muscles mean exactly that he can not run very well with his wings. the muscles are anchored in a totally different place.
and btw, the dragon dragon from the old games is more a bird like creature with suposedly hollow bones (like a bird and some dinosaurs).
imagines a T-Rex tunning on all fours[/quote]
That?s you ideas on the game thought. GOD if people want to add really world physics ect to the Panzer world Then half the spaceships and creatures just couldn’t fly. Or do you mean to tell me that those huge spaceships could fly with just those puny wings on either side.
PANZER DRAGOON is made up , at the end of the day. All things are possible in that world.
[quote=“GehnTheBerserker”]You want a good exmaple on how the change in the art department can’t really be explained by the XBox’s garphical power?
Just look at the unlockable Blue and Panzerwing dragons.Those are gorgeous in terms of art.Are they better with XBx garphics than they were with Saturn ones?Of course.But are they anything like the Glide wing for example?No.
It’s not because XBox is more powerful that they HAD to change the style in any way.
Oh and about Ep8’s boss.I don’t care who the designer is.Like I stated in a previous post the notion of a constructed-world (LOTR,Pandra,Dune…) can be manipulated in any way imaginable by it’s authors.But for those that were used to stable changes dratsic stuff like we see in Orta hurts the eyes.
Regardless of the art’s and music’s originality they suffered drastic changes.
And since we are all expressing ourselves as the PD fans we are we tend to comment about the differences and not necesserilly on the quality.
If a PD game would have a soundtrack made by Spock’s Beard (probably my fav band) I would love th score.Thing is it doesn’t really sound Panzer now does it?[/quote]
Here we go again, lets forcus on ORTA. You want a better example try the boss to EP 3 on the the very 1st Panzer game. He looks like something out of the Transformers.
Don’t see people going ape oh that’s not fit or right for the Pazner world. And pelase Takashi Iwade forgotten more than any of us on this board will know about the Panzer Art. He was there when Team Andromeda was 1st set up. In fact there a good chace that anything to do with the Panzer series people pick will see his work. As he desgined the front for the Pazner Dragoon logo/Title for the series
[quote=“lordcraymen”]you are contradicting yourself you know? strong fligh muscles mean exactly that he can not run very well with his wings. the muscles are anchored in a totally different place.
and btw, the dragon dragon from the old games is more a bird like creature with suposedly hollow bones (like a bird and some dinosaurs).
imagines a T-Rex tunning on all fours[/quote]
I dont think I am really contradicting myself, I am just trying to make sense out of a fantasy world. The dragon is meant to be flying but I think if it has too, it must be able to run as well. Thats what I was pointing out. =D
Like what Team Andromeda says, it is just a world that does not exist, but I cant help but be guilty of figuring out the creatures’ own unique anatomy.
Anything can happen in a fantasy world.
Now you’ve probably noticed that I’m trying not to take either side in this argument, but I think this is an important point: even if this is a science-fiction / fantasy world where anything is possible and anything can happen, should all things be possible and should just anything happen? I’m sure it goes without saying that any kind of narrative - be it a novel, a film, a game etc. - needs to have a sense of continuity and a definite style for it not to seem disjointed. Somewhere along the line all sorts of lines have to be drawn, otherwise we could end up with a huge pink bunny rabbit as the dragon-riding hero by the time Panzer Dragoon Saga III rolls around.*
But of course that’s being extreme, so take this case of the dragon running on all fours: even if this could technically happen given the science-fiction setting of PD, should the dragon do this, seeing as it ran on two legs throughout Panzer Dragoon Zwei? And should the dragon do this, considering that it’s flown as if it was a bipedal bird-like creature up until this point? Even if this can be explained away by the sci-fi background, is it not just an unnecessary break in continuity?
*Yes, I read that topic on GameFAQs. :anjou_embarassed:
