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Rehjee

Joined: 12 May 2006

Posts: 59

Location: Cincinnati, OH

i was wondering this evening walking home from school, as i have wondered off and on throughout the last couple years, why did you guys change the look of the Arch in the bay? the arch, as it is illustrated in TBOA is different, the refference to the arch in Riven, you know, the doorframes to Gehn's office resembling the Arch, all have a wider opening and convey a sense of welcoming that i, personaly, dont get with the Uru Arch. it also doesnt seem like boats would fit through it very well. Embarassed

i guess from an artistic standpoint/oppinion, a wider arch, like that in the book, would frame the outerlying lake, and may convey a greater sense of aw, specificaly when imagining the great Kerith riding the boat back to D'ni
but all of that is my oppinion.
What, dear cyantists, is YOUR oppinion?
*open onion? Very Happy

*

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Corona

Joined: 13 May 2006

Posts: 245

The opening in the Arch is wide enough for those ferry boats to go through.

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Bongmaster

Joined: 09 May 2006

Posts: 120

Location: Norway :)

also the harbor was sposed to be in the city not Ae'gura (which would lie to the left of the arch in uru if u were looking from the top of the great stairs.. but the cavern is too dark to see it Sad

.. wish we could see the city from Ae'gura)

another question for Cyan Smile

will we get to see the old city too? Smile

aloys

Joined: 11 May 2006

Posts: 503

Location: France

The DRC said about the city proper that it's the area of the cavern that has suffered the most during (and after) the fall of D'ni, and so it needs the most restoration.
Any plans to open the city proper are probably still quite far away..

[ooc]
The city proper is a huge area that hosted around two millions D'ni people. It is a lot of work to build and my guess is that there is still some work to be done on Ae'gura and other work priority has probably been aimed at more Ages.

But I agree that seeing the city proper and some more of the caverns would be the greatest thing. Smile

Alahmnat

Uru Live Moderator

Joined: 09 May 2006

Posts: 1683

Location: Spokane, WA

Bongmaster wrote:

also the harbor was sposed to be in the city not Ae'gura

Nope, it's always been attached to Ae'Gura. The diagrams in the Book of Atrus depict the island of Ae'Gura, not the City Proper, and even though the Arch is drawn incorrectly (and not exactly to scale either, from what I've noticed), it is attached to Ae'Gura, and Atrus and Gehn's adventures - along with those of the D'ni when rebuilding in BoD - took place on Ae'Gura (when they weren't hanging out on K'veer Wink

).

As far as why the shape is different from the one in the BoA, I would imagine it's mainly because the drawing doesn't really fit the D'ni aesthetic that Cyan developed for Uru. I would be interested to know whether Gehn's stuff in Riven inspired the D'ni architecture for Uru, or if the D'ni aesthetic had been hammered out, at least to some degree, and Gehn's buildings were based on that. Either way, the similarities are rather obvious, and as far as the difference in the ratio between the width/height of Gehn's office doors and the width/height of the opening in the Arch is concerned, it's mainly a point of scale. Gehn's office doors are rather small, and need to be wide enough to walk through, hence the wider opening. Kerath's Arch is easily 260 feet tall (assuming 20 spans [at 13 feet per span] from the harbor to the Tokotah courtyard, which is about eye level with the top of the Arch), and even with as narrow as that opening is, with a 260-foot-tall gap, the width of that gap is still going to be considerable... it just looks tiny because of the width to height ratio. I'll let someone else do the math on exactly how wide that opening is, though Wink

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Corona

Joined: 13 May 2006

Posts: 245

I flew through it once. It's dark in there.

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K'Dahta

Joined: 09 May 2006

Posts: 36

I also flew thru it once. I haven't done the math, but visually, it looked very narrow inside. Just barely wide enough to fit one of those ferries (which I also flew over, and are quite large).

blackhole

Joined: 04 Jun 2006

Posts: 43

Location: Ohio

I would like to have part of it opened for exploration. Just a small bonus link like other balconies in Ae'Gura. The view from the top of Kerath's arch must be absolutely breathtaking!

StarLion

Joined: 10 May 2006

Posts: 339

Location: California, USA

For those who have not seen the sketches in BOA, would you like me to plop my book on my scanner so you can see what the arch looked like?

As for the topic, I do prefer the layout suggested in BOA, the island of Ag'aur was much larger there, and the cavern was smaller.

hogarth

Joined: 22 May 2006

Posts: 82

StarLion wrote:

For those who have not seen the sketches in BOA, would you like me to plop my book on my scanner so you can see what the arch looked like?

As for the topic, I do prefer the layout suggested in BOA, the island of Ag'aur was much larger there, and the cavern was smaller.

It's moot whether the Arch of Kerath in the game should look as it does in the book illustration. The thing is done, and it's very unlikely that Cyan have an interest in doing it over. They certainly knew what the illustration showed when they designed their version, and I accept it, just as I accept that the Cavern is not in Africa. (For those who haven't read the books, the tale related there places the Cleft, Volcano and Cavern in Africa, not New Mexico.)

I personally find the design of the Arch ungraceful, though it certainly is dramatic in scale.
I don't believe we can fairly criticize the game version of Ae'gura as too small, since we can only visit a small portion of it. I am sure that Cyan have plans to let us see more, given time.

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