Dragon Age 2 To Explore Different Standards of Beauty

As we know, Dragon Age 2 is Bioware’s attempt to etch out a distinct visual style for their franchise–this is the real intention behind the otherwise dubious claims to ‘hot rod’ the art. And with good reason, too: if you take a look at any old Dragon Age Origins screenshot, there’s nothing there outside generic fantasy fare. It could be Lord of the Rings, for all an uninformed bystander knows.

So, how do you give Dragon Age a visual flair? Bioware thinks they can do this by making distinct race archetypes. The Qunari aren’t the only ones getting a makeover–as you might guessed after taking a look at the picture above. Each race is meant to depict a different standard of beauty unique to them. This would, hypothetically, translate to very distinct character models in-game, too. Those who played Origins know that there was little differentiating humans from elves and dwarfs outside of height and ears.

Of course, one should note that the “human” standard of beauty they’re pushing for here is actually only the western standard of beauty. Still, it’ll be interesting to see where they take this, to see what they can draw out from these visual concepts.