Demonhunters

Author:      Flosha  
Created:     20.03.2024  
Last change: 06.09.2024

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Attire

Sequel Demonhunter Armour Concept

Sequel Analysis

The Sequel contains three work in progress armours for the Demonhunters. It is not to assume that they were final.

It was common practice to create a new armour by reusing existing textures and their layout as a basis. In case of the demonhunters they reused the boots and the pants from an old standard body texture for the entire lower body and in that early stage of the sequel development they had not (yet) introduced any modification to it. For example, it is exactly the same texture as it is used for the legs and boots of the possessed.
The upper body was based on the GRDH (the heavy guards armour); the layout remained the same, but the texture underwent several changes. It is very likely, that the lower body was supposed to receive a similar treatment.
It can not be repeated often enough that the development of the Sequel was in its early stages and highly work in progress.

The existence of renderings by Uwe Meier of the armour is not a proof that the armour was considered to be finished. For one, the artworks as released by us were not released officially and could as well have served internal purposes. For example, renderings like these were sometimes printed and sticked to the wall for designers to look at and improve upon them. Uwe also used to draw over renderings like these digitally as he did with the Gothic 1 renderings before they were released to the public. In this way, conceptualisation and realisation were not necessarily a linear process, sometimes they may have went back and forth between them, sometimes they may have started to model something in an experimental way like a sketch, then later improve upon the execution.
No matter whether this particular armour was considered to be finished or not, it is a great misunderstanding in the community and a condition that some of the Sequel developers who still care for the project are really not happy about, that their project is judged in an incomplete state, that they never wanted to release in this form. It is the same as if a painter was working on a painting and had to give up the work after only a quarter of what he wanted to do. Years later the painting fell into irresponsible hands and was released to the public without asking the painter for permission, who did not want it to be released like that. Now the painting is judged as if it was exactly what the painter wanted to do, while he actually wanted to improve and add many things. The work has to be appreciated for the vision and the design direction, for the potential, instead of confusing an “execution in process” with a finished work.

Other than that there is a clear differentiation between light and medium armour, but the heavy armour is identical with the medium one except for the addition of the helmet, which I do not see as an adequate “heavier” version.

Additionally, the helmet used on the heavy armour does not appear to be finished either. While there was a dedicated texture for all the other helmets, the DHT helmet had none (yet) and just used parts of the armour’s texture, which can safely be assumed to be a placeholder mapping, especially in case of the front.

Also, due to the overall appearance of the armour itself, which, apart from the scales, is almost entirely made of leather, as well due to the (work in progress) mapping of the “helmet” that seems to be almost entirely made from leather too, it might be better wording to speak of it not as a helmet, but to describe it more correctly as a mask.

Analysing the style of the armour, I think most noticeable about it is…
(1) its obvious “DIY” appearance, of it being made from whatever is readily available in this world of misery that the Sequel was aiming to present
(2) the blue scales that are partially protecting the arms and legs
(3) the thick and long rope that is wrapped around a shoulder and is so dominant in appearance that it wouldn’t be too far-fetched at least to dream that it could be more than just an optical detail, that it might actually serve a purpose
(4) the unusual shape of the helmet/mask with the face completely covered in difference to all the other helmets so far and…
(5) the wide, loose pants in the style of the shadows, held by legwraps very much like it was once common in the military, especially so for paratroopers and other units that had to have as much freedom of movement as possible (which is more noticeable since every other NC armor before did not use such a pattern)

Scales

While the blue colour could come from magical ore, their irregular and asymmetric shape suggest them to be scales of a creature (and due to the spread of the more powerful red ore, the blue ore has become rare; they would rather have chosen red in that case, which makes this unkikely). It could also be that they are scale-shaped, thick, hardened and dyed pieces of leather.

But it is by far the most obvious explanation that hunters of demons use demon scales for their armours, just as the former regular hunters of the NCs organisation used fur and leather from their prey. No demonic mutant in the Sequel has scales fitting to the look of those of the armour (and most of them habe no scales at all), but as a matter of fact: several demonic monster variations were not yet created.

Therefore I will argue that the most more likely would be that they are scales of demonic crawlers. Even more so since the NC already used crawler scales in the past (crawler plate armour). The crawlers are one of the creatures which were not yet designed in their demonic form, and by associating this armour design with them, it can at the same time help us and give us a design direction for the crawlers themselves.

Phoenix Solutions

Based on the considerations above, we will go with the following solutions.

We conceive of the Demonhunters as a special unit with a two-fold purpose: On one hand they are specialised in hunting demons, on the other hand as followers of Lee and the KDW (evolved from surviving former Orgas and Mercenaries as well as some new followers from the City) they are renegades in the eyes of the crown. In this role they fight against the royal forces including the inquisition (that they conceive as “demonic” too), in a guerilla kind of way, with their faces covered and with unusual weapons and tactics, they participate in battles on the streets.
The rope that some of them have wrapped around their body (we’ll also create textures and models without it) we conceive of as a grappling hook in the tradition of the former Orgas (which were called Ore Pirates among other names and used the metaphor of boarding a ship as breaking into the Old Camps castle and robbing their convoys). In German, a grappling hook is called an “Enterhaken”, which serves the purpose of boarding (german “entern”) a ship. In the context of Act 2 they will thus “board” the city and occupy one building at a time.

In the Comic, Diego could also be seen using a grappling hook when entering the house of the barons in course of the intrigue against Brabak.

Due to the mask being the only difference between medium and heavy armour we will threat both as medium and design a new heavy version on our own; a (simpler) mask can be part of the light version already and the mask could and should evolve in course of the playthrough.
Since the medium version “lengthens” the armour by adding more scales as a protection of the upper thighs, our heavy version will evolve further into the same direction with the protection reaching further down and around.
Due to our modular armor progression there will obviously not be three fixed different armours, but a more granular and fluid progression from light to heavy, where these three armour versions serve more as three examplatory steps within a progression, with several more steps inbetween and some degree of variation.

DHTL

As with all the other armours, the DHT will be based on a simple basis that the player receives first, more basic than the original DHTL (“Grundrüstung”). This basis will be the leather pants (+ red belt + legwraps) and leather shoes, with a light leather shirt reaching to the elbows (as seen under the original DHTL) and a dark studded leather top atop covering the shoulders and the chest.
The first version of the mask has a simple form like a balaclava as criminals or special units would wear it to cover their face - a new texture is needed for the mask - it still should be made from leather already,
At this most basic level the armour would look very “bald” though (even if it will already look a bit more interesting by the addition of stuff in slots like a leather bag as the Orgas used to wear it and so on), therefore, both to give it more coherence with all the former armours of the NC and for more variety, we may add some fur cover in the old Orga style, differently shaped asymmetric leather covers (from strangely coloured demonic leather) and we also could add scarves.
Since at the beginning of the game no one should know who these guys are, operating in anonymity and without any obvious visible signs of belonging to a specific faction, a blue scarf would destroy this ambiguity; thus we will dye it black, with only a hint of the blue it once was, by having a faded-out black with traces or a slight shine of dark turquoise, while there are still enough accents of colour from the demonic materials used.
The belt model at least of the DHTL has to be changed a bit as it appears way too thick for what it is, compared to e.g. a very similar belt on the novice armour which is modeled completely flat.
As for variations, the leather may have three slightly different colours (darker, less saturation) and patterns of use.
At this stage as for upgrades he can get the mask, some fur cover and can wear a scarf or not and the armour will look more similar to a darker, more neutral and slightly better protected version of an Orga armour with wider pants.

Grappling Hook

There has to be a version of every armour with and without the grappling hook (with the texture of the rope), while the hook itself will be an item attached to a slot at the body, which, when picked up from the floor or an NPC handling it to the player or another, will also let the rope appear on the armour as a texture variation and disappear when taken into the hands - at this point the rope is dropped to the ground and the player stays there with the hook in his hand and the camera floating down angled upwards, ready to throw it at a window, a balcony or whatever.

DHTM

One of the first additional things the player will be able to acquire is the central metal plate attached to the studded leather cover on his shoulders.
He can get a long armed leather shirt to replace his old and the DHTM gloves
He can get the demonic crawler plate attachments as protection for the arms and legs
He can upgrade his studded leather cover with the DHTM version with the neck protection
The mere linnen belt now gets a wide black gladiator style leather belt underneath as it is only hinted at slightly in the original DHTM - the execution has to be improved so that it is also seen above and does not end so suddenly in the brown horizontal leather bands around the waist; a potion belt can be attached there.
He can upgrade his sword belt with demon spikes as seen in the DHTM
He can replace his shoes by better boots. The original boots should be reduced a bit in their thickness, as they now take away from the desired military knickerbocker look and hide the legwraps, while the original texture as used on the naked model lays emphasis on the wraps which also serve as closures of the boots.
And he can upgrade his mask by additional leather protection and partially crawler plates in the neck area (DHTM), with a dedicated texture and new mapping for the front of the mask.

DHTH

In the last stage he will be able to elongate his crawler plate protection around the legs or rather: Attach an additional set of plates.
He may replace his gloves by some made with a more sturdy leather from some strong demonic creature.
Same with his boots and the mask
There may be some additional longer scarf variation that covers parts of the back of the character and hangs down below the hips similar to a cape, giving him a more intimidating appearance.
Later he will have to upgrade his mask by a gas filtering function with a primitive leather tube running towards a filter attached somewhere at the body, wherein there are some magical herbs soaked into a magical protective liquid made by the KDW in order to not breath in the toxic air.
There should also be a variety of different demonic scales used from member to member, so that there will be a difference in colour and shades (alongside the same variation among the monsters); e.g. different shades of blue and green.