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It is due to the idea that engineer’s “rifle” is actually a shotgun. They just didn’t split it to it’s own weapon in development for some reason. Hip shooting a shotgun is easier than hip shooting a rifle and it makes more sense with the other shotgun like abilities our “rifle” has.
Hip shooting a shotgun might be marginally easier than hip shooting a rifle, but that doesn’t mean hip shooting a shotgun is ever a good idea.
Ugh, i really really hate hip shot’s animation.
Being that both male and female both “wear the pants” how do the two coexist under one roof, or is their divorce rate rather high?
Actually one of the most common root causes of divorce is the uneven distribution of household chores, so i’d say the fact that both “wear the pants” bodes well for their marriage statistics.
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Although with polar bears, they generally feed on seals that are hiding in their burrows within the ice sheet. They listen carefully to hear the seals (usually young pups) moving around in their burrows, then use their strength to break down through the ice to grab them. (This is also why global warming is affecting the polar bears so badly. The melting ice means that they can no longer use this tactic of hunting.)
Yes, but another common polar bear hunting strategy is called still-hunting, which is when the bear lies in wait near a seal breathing hole, then when it smells a seal exhaling it reaches down and pulls the seal up with its forepaw. That’s what i was refering to.
This hunting method too is getting harder to use with the melting ice since more open water means seals don’t have to rely as much on breathing holes.
Also, concerning
#1. It defies their very concept of honor.
So why would that even happen? It’s so confusing! The incredible Anglo-Saxon style of culture that the Norns hold makes thievery near impossible.
I know of no culture that does not consider thievery dishonourable, and also of no culture that does not have thieves. This includes the anglo-saxons and other germanic cultures.
And
you want to talk out of place? Since when do the brainy asura value something like hitting a person with a blunt object until they’re dead like a caveman? Why would a Silvari, a creature made from wood specialize in fire-based magic, or even poison based attacks like a Necromancer? Magic’s looked down on in the Charr society, why would any of them focus on being a mesmer, elementalist, or necromancer?
Firstly i’d have to say that intelligence and head bashing are not at all polar opposites. Intelligence simply makes us better able to find the most efficient solution to a problem, the nature of the problem is what determines whether bashing in a skull or firing up the flamethrower is the most efficient solution.
Secondly as to your objection to sylvari using poison, i think you need to take a long hard look at all the poisonous plants out there then decide if it’s really that big a stretch.
And about magic in charr society, there are many things in human society that are looked down on, that doesn’t mean that people don’t do them. Why should charr be so conformist?
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Just a pet peeve of mine, but big does not equal slow, stupid, unskilled, or loud.
This. In fact, generally speaking, larger predators are more sneaky than their smaller counterparts, this because a long chase burns too many calories for a large heavy predator.
Take for example the siberian tiger compared to the wolf, both live in cold climates and so do not risk heat exhaustion on long chases, but while wolves often chase prey for many kilometers, tigers are not known to give chase if the stalk is unsuccessful.
Besides, sneakiness is not so much about not being discovered when looked at, it’s about being where they’re not looking. This is why polar bears are one of the sneakiest predators there is, as by the time a seal is in position to check if there’s one lurking up there, the bear’s already got him by the face.
And if you consider humans (or something humanlike, such as a norn), never has there been a negative correlation between size and intelligence or skill, and if anything, longer, stronger legs are only gonna make you faster (and give you more options as to where to plant your feet without making any noise), and longer, stronger arms can only give you a larger window of time in which to stop or deflect an attack.
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Anyway, back on topic.
It seems to me that since the norn are a shapeshifter race and can shift into many shapes, not just bears, especially given that the shapeshifting seems to be a gift from some kind of magical animal spirits, that a more likely scenario is that the kodan were simply norn permanently shifted by some sort of polar bear spirit.
This would fit with the kodan legend that the norn were a tribe of kodan, since oral history tends to reinterpret events in a way that puts the oral historian’s people center stage (no less true for regular history i suppose).
Personally I find either possibility facinating, because pretty much every culture that has ever shared habitat with bears has considered them sacred, or somehow more than an ordinary animal.
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I know the idea is a stretch but I always find humor in those artistic promotions of evolution, the kind that show mankind directly evolving from a salmon, or Dennis Hopper playing a race of human that supposedly evolved from T-rex in that terrible Mario movie.
Yeah, my analysis was mostly an amusing thought experiment, video game evolution is rarely constrained by logic. :P
As for Kodan keeping bear traits that aren’t useful for a bipedal species.. perhaps they have some use we aren’t completely aware of.
I was thinking those traits might be linked to other, more beneficial traits, making changes to that part of the genome unlikely to stick. Although i suppose it might be sexual selection keeping the bear-traits alive. ^^
Usually, in evolutionary terms, … doesn’t the previous step …. vanish/die out? Unless it just happened recently maybe.
That’s a common misconception, but evolution is not a ladder, it doesn’t have “steps”. Evolution is the accumulation of genetic changes within a gene pool, eventually those changes will have turned the creatures within that gene pool into brand new creatures. If a group is separated from the gene pool, then their new gene pool will still accumulate changes, and they will evolve in a different direction, to better suit their needs. There is no such thing as evolutionary leftovers, you’re either in the one gene pool, or the other.
Take for example chimps.
Many people think that humans evolved from chimps, and that when humans separated from chimps, chimp evolution suddenly stagnated, as if the universe was somehow done with them now, and was now busy creating humans and couldn’t be bothered with plain old chimps.
The reality is that when the chimp and human lineages separated, chimps kept evolving to fit a jungle environment, where tree climbing is king. Humans instead evolved to better fit a savannah environment, growing tall and bipedal. The chimp diet would have consisted of mostly nuts and fruits, which is low in calories, and since brain matter is the tissue that consumes the most calories in a mammalian body, for chimps, evolving a bigger brain would have meant they’d starve. Humans on the other hand started to find strategies to aquire meat, giving us the calories needed to grow bigger brains, which in turn let us figure out even better ways to find high calory foods such as meat.
Humans aren’t at the top of any “evolutionary ladder”, and the evolutionary tree doesn’t have a high or a low, it only has branches of common origin. Evolution doesn’t work towards a goal, and that goal is not us, we are merely a very successful variant of primate, no more, no less.
/Lecture over. Okay class, next time, we’ll talk about the history of spoons and their place in modern society!
Hrrmpf, another wall of text, I must learn to contain myself.
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I’d like to think that you’re wrong, and that the question of norn origins will never be answered. I hate it when game developers, or anyone weaving a story, just up and answers the questions built in to it – I like my mysteries mysterious dang it!
But you’re probably right. Night elves are now definitively decended from trolls, and it now seems that the chantrys version of world history is in fact factual, to name a few. I mean, I liked to believe that night elves were in fact a species of troll, but now it’s no longer an exciting theory, it’s boring fact.
As to Ursus Sapiens, i’d say that it both is, and isn’t a stretch. For example, a bipedal species of bear, especially a predatory one, would probably evolve a short, flat face much like humans to move the center of mass closer to the spine so as to stabilize their vision when running. They would certainly also evolve long, strong legs to better capitalize on their bipedalism. Bears are already plantigrade, so no issue there, and kodan have thumbs, so this is a trait norn and kodan could have both inherited from a common ancestor.
On the stretch side though, why are the details of their faces so human? For example, humans evolved from arboreal ancestors who would not have had much use for a strong sense of smell. Bears however, have an excellent sense of smell, so why would the norn evolve tiny, weak, human noses? Then there’s the issue of body hair, humans evolved hairlessness in concert with a major increase in sweat glands as an alternative to panting and hairy insulation, this to better cope with heat exhaustion as a diurnal predator in very hot climates (at the cost of much higher water and sodium requirements). Norn would have evolved hairlessness (and probably sweat glands, do norn sweat?) in a frigid environment, which makes very little sense.
There’s also the question as to why the kodan would have retained so many bear-like traits that are obviously detrimental as a bipedal species.
This all of course doesn’t account for any and all wizardry and goddidits.
I realize this is probably way too technical an answer to your question, but as a man who studies human evolution i couldn’t help but explore the idea from a strictly evolutionary viewpoint.
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