Guild Wars 2

Interesting a-net art I’ve stumbled across while looking for reference pics.

You sure that’s not a centaur fighting a Norn in Raven Form?

Oo, yeah that looks like it might be a centaur after all. I don’t really see a raven though. And raven form doesn’t have wings.

Well, technically the Tengu don’t have wings either. Their wings are their arms.

It could be any number of things I think. A lot of the art for Guild Wars 2 (in my opinion) looks as if it wasn’t actually made specifically FOR Guild Wars 2 and was just used because it was “close enough”. Artists like Kekai Kotaki (Who’m I THINK made that picture?) do art for a lot of different things. Or maybe it was a concept of something that never made it in game. I don’t know the details of why the artists used what art for what purpose, but that monster could just be something that isn’t in Guild Wars 2 or an early concept of something that is.

I’d guess that was the art for the Norn raven form.

Norn raven uses his wings as arms. In the picture is more likely a griffon.

This concept art is very old, I think it’s atleast from 2009. Back then not everything was set in stone, so yes this could be a Norn in raven from, just an early iteration. I even think it was confirmed by ANet at one point on the Guru in an Q&A, but maybe I’m just misremembering.

It may have been concept but it doesn’t look like that concept was a raven to me. it looks more like a bird of prey like an eagle or hawk than any raven.

That is one of the earliest concept art we players got, it was made by Kekai Kotaki and the title to it we’ve received is “Versus”. What the OP put up is just a portion of it, the full of it can be seen here which clearly depicts a centaur fighting something – most likely an early rendition of norn raven (or owl) form.

I do believe this was some early concept art for the Norn Owl form. Though I could be wrong.

To me it does looks like a Norn in a Owl shape form, which looks REALLY nice!!!!!!
And the Norn is fighting a centaur.
I doubt Tengus has any gods.

If I recall correctly, the Tengu believe in ancestor worship where the souls of their ancestors ascend to the heavens to live in the “Sky Beyond the Sky”, although it’s unknown if this refers to the Mists or a different afterlife (such as the Underworld) altogether. We’ve certainly never seen any Tengu spirits in the Mists before.

But as we know, the Mists are vast and could have any number of creatures in them, be they beasts or other sentient creatures. Maybe Rytlock is having tea with the Mist tengu.

As for the creature fighting the centaur, I think that looks like an owlbear.

Owls have flat faces with beaks that point downwards. In this picture, the beak is elongated and rounded before it curves downwards into a point (resembling an eagle or falcon). I remember when this picture was first released. I don’t have any references or quotes, but I do remember it was the concept art for norn raven form. They only had bear form in the game, and they weren’t sure how they were going to do raven form. It was either going to have wings on its back, or incorporated into its arms. They ended up incorporating the wings into the arms. The long fingernail talons were kept. The “teeth” within the beak were kept, but changed slightly. There was also a female version of raven form in the early concepts as well.

That’s not really a “female raven form” concept art, but rather a raven-themed female norn, or mid-tranformation. It isn’t very clear what it’s meant to be, and we only see it titled as “Raven”. Given that it looks like a standard female norn (Kekai’s style of norn at least), I doubt it’d be a completed raven form.