When developing Skyrim, the werewolves were originally only supposed to be humans with dog heads. We explain what’s behind this in our article.
If you’ve ever trudged through the edge of Heaven, you’ve probably had an unpleasant encounter or two with a werewolf. The fearsome monsters are not easy opponents and will eat you for breakfast at the beginning. Fortunately, because for a (werewolf) hair, the nasty monsters would have become cute lap dogs.
According to former Skyrim character artist Dennis Mejillones, werewolves were originally only supposed to look like humans with a dog or wolf head. But since werewolves were supposed to terrify everyone around and give us players a certain sense of power, Mejillones wasn’t thrilled with the original design, so he threw it around. So terribly cute became just terribly.
A real monster in development too
You know the end result of the werewolf development. But the way there was just as monstrous as the goal, which is why Mejillone’s colleagues didn’t jump for joy. On the other hand, the developer received support from game director Todd Howard, who was so enthusiastic about the new concept for the werewolf that he insisted on implementing the monster in this way.
But just because the boss says we’ll do it doesn’t make the work behind it any easier. For example, the high speed of the werewolf meant that new areas of the world could not be reloaded quickly enough. The developers therefore resorted to a trick and changed the camera settings during the sprint. It now looks to the players as if they are sprinting even faster as a werewolf than they actually do. At the same time, the werewolves still almost reach the speed of the horses from Skyrim – clever!
More exciting background information in the Skyrim documentary
By the way, Dennis Mejillones’ werewolf story is part of a Skyrim documentary by former developers that character artist Jonah Lobe published on YouTube. Anyone who is even slightly interested in game development and is a Skyrim fan should definitely take a look at the video:
Practical: The video is conveniently divided into sections, so you can also pick out specific chapters that interest you. Among other things, the developers also talk about working on Skyrim’s animals, character animations and how bees sabotaged the game’s intro. If the latter sounds familiar, it’s probably because we’ve already reported on this entertaining story:
What do you think of the original werewolf design? Would you have preferred wolf-headed humans to the nasty beasts that now lie in wait for you in the Rim of Heaven? Have you turned into a werewolf yourself (in Skyrim)?
