Guild Wars 2

So in my travels across Tyria, I have noticed that a good portion of the wildlife are in fact based off things that actually existed.

Now an MMO borrowing from ancient animals is nothing new, but what pleased me about Arenanet is that they chose species that aren’t your normal run of the mill “Jurassic Park” cast.

So far I’ve been able to identify some of the following

Sea Scorpions, Something I haven’t seen in a video game since the now very rare OCEAN HUNTER: 7 seas adventure Arcade game. Granted they move a bit too quickly for something that had very little need to move at high speed. I’d imagine fighting a sea scorpion would be relatively easy so I can understand why Arena would sprouce up their speed a bit.

Siamoths

Based heavily off of ancient ungulates, though I debated with a guy about what kind of ungulate they were based off of. Based off their feet they are either a very ancient Odd-toed ungulate (Given that they were called Tapirs in the Beta, this also makes sense) or a very early Proboscebia(Early ancestors of Elephants). Their head screams Proboscebia but we couldn’t come to an agreement. It appears arena net might have based the creature off a skeleton, because we both agreed that the nose of the creature seems fabricated.

Plated Behemoth

This Creature seems very rare, though I assume it’s native to a part of Ascalon that I haven’t explored, given that Ascalonian grazing animals in Charr territory are all based off Mammal like Reptiles.

The Behemoth is clearly a Mammal like Reptile, though I was unable to conclude exactly what it was. The closest thing I could link it to would be a dicynodont, given it’s beak, tusks and semi crested head, and lankly arms.

Triop

Massive version of an ancient crustaceans that are still around today. You can buy them as an alternative to Sea Monkeys.

I’m sure there are others, given that the wiki’s beastairy is lacking, so feel free to contribute.

As a player from New Zealand, I’ve always been amused at the inclusion of moas in GW1 and GW2.

If you’ve ever seen pictures of what real moas are like, they’re much scarier! Apparently the largest kinds could be 4 metres tall! In NZ we had birds to fill most of our ecological niches, and very few mammals.

yeah the first time i saw a Sea scorpions i bolted strait back to land before i realized it was mostly harmless

the various raptors are pretty accurate especially now that we know that some did have feathers and grubs

I’d like to add the arctodus to this list. They were a real world species of bear taht went extinct long ago. I don’t know how closely their model is based off the real thing, but I rather like their form…..sorta resembles a wolverine.

Megalodon and giant dragonflies.

I was thrilled (though very surprised) the first time I actually saw a Sea Scorpions in-game, since as most of you know, they were a real species that lived in prehistoric oceans millions of years ago and were part of an animal group called the Euryptids. They appear to have mostly died out prior to the Cambrian period (which is the era before the Triassic and the rise of the dinosaurs).

Given that there were still dinosaurs around in the Tarnished Coast 250 years ago, I guess in hindsight it’s not that strange that we would see Sea Scorpions in the oceans too.

Pretty sure the plated behemoths are based off Estemmenosuchus, and when I tried to figure out what the siamoths were the closest I could get was a Pyrotherium without the trunk. The crested raptors look a lot like the basal tyrannosaur Guanlong, and the Tyrian “moas” look a lot more like Earth phorusrhacids (terror birds), although without the predatory behavior apparently.

I love the prehistoric beastie mobs and would be very happy to see more, basically.