Today I want to write about something which is not just a horrible picture on the Internet. Instead it's a game series I actually like a lot. Trine is a fantastic platformer video game, which is made in my own country, Finland. The game features three as-generic-as-you-can-imagine fantasy characters; a knight, a thief, and a wizard. The knight is fat and wears a shining armour, big sword and a red cape, the wizard looks like a Lego wizard (blue Gandalf) with Fu Manchu moustache and the thief is a cross of Altaïr from Assassins Creed and an oriental belly-dancer.
My favourite character of them is the thief, not because I like to watch her polygons, but because she is the most fun to play with, jumping and flying around with a grappling hook like a female Tarzan. She also has a bow to shoot enemies with. I've played the first two games of the series through, haven't yet bought the third one, and I just heard that a fourth one is also coming out, hopefully later this year.
Now I want to talk about the thief and her archery. Mainly from the concept art and cover images of the games, since arhcery is done relatively well in the games themselves, although the bow is hopelessly underpowered compared to any real life bow.
The first picture (in the top of this post) is the cover of the first Trine game (2009). The cover art is not of high quality, which is typical for Finnish games, unfortunately.
Mistakes: The bow is way too small. You could possibly make a bow this short, but it would need to be a lot thinner to be able to be bent with human arms. This is the size of an arc of a crossbow. If a bow is this short and this thick it would need some mechanism to be pulled, like a crossbow has. It is way too short to be a working bow. The bowstring loses some potential of the already very short bow by tying itself not in the ends of the arc, but several inches inward from the nocks. Looks like the maker of that bow also didn't know how the bostring should be attached so it is wrapped around the bow limbs many times, which is certainly not how it is done. One look at a decent bow woul've fixed these errors. (Also if the bow would be this short and this thick, so that it has the power similar to a crossbow, the bowstricg would need to be thrice thicker, otherwise it would just snap)
Russian version of Trine for Linux. This represents Russian game art, which is obviously of higer quality to Finnish one. They have although "localised" the characters to fit more Russian tastes. The knight being not fat anymore and infinitely more handsome than the original, and his armour being more realistic. The thief being even more sexualised than in the original, the facecover changed to a see-through cloth like oriental belly dancers have (at least in our fantasies), and her clothes decorater with Russian patterns. The wizard has been given more serious look compared to the comical character he was in the original, and he has also been dressed in a gown resempling a bit Eastern European cossack coats. All the characters' facial features look Russian to me. Interesting details all.
Good: The bow of the thief has been made more realistic, being long enough to be actually usable. The decorations are kind of elvish, from Legolas' bow from Lord of the Rings most probably. Another good thing is that she has an archers bracer only in her bow hand.
The cover of Trine 2 (2011). Mistakes:
1. The thief shoots a fire arrow (which she can in the games), even though there is no purpose. Fire arrows were never shot against people (or trolls) on purpose. They were used to light buildings on fire, and were very rarely used, and only in sieges.
2. The more problematic thing in this picture is her bow though. It does not bend. It looks like a bow looks when the string has not been pulled at all. This is a rubber band stick, not a working bow. It might shoot an arrow a few meters like a rubber band could, but it is not a weapon of any kind.
3. The thief has been given bracers to both forearms, without any reason.
The cover for Trine 3 (2015). Mistakes:
1. The bow is now bigger than before, and more recurved, which is okay, but it is too thick. It should be altogether thinner and then also thin towards to ends of the limbs. This would be very hard to pull. It also looks uneven and unfinished, as if somebody just put decorations on a random tree branch.
2. What's the purpose of those bronze elements? To my knowledge no bow ever had these kind of huge bronze elements. They would make it unnecessary heavy, especially the bronze pieces on the end of the bow limbs.
3. In this other picture the bowstring goes way too close to the handle of the bow. The distance between the bow arc and the string in the middle is called a fistmele, and in longbows it should be approximately the length of the users fist and thumb combined. In recurve boughs however the distance is even greater. This is way too small and makes the bow unnecessarily difficult to use.
4. The thief has bracers on both forearms.
Cover for Trine 4 (2019).
The writer and art director for this game are women (I actually know the writer of this game), which can be seen in the changed appear of the thief character. She is de-sexualised, cleavage is gone, and she has been given pants under her openly flowing white robe. Sadly the bow has not improved, quite the contrary.
Mistakes:
1. The bow now has a useless metallic arc "protecting" the hand holding the bow. This king of arc was never built in a real bow, because it's both useless and harmful to the performance of the bow. It can also interfere with the flight of the arrow.
2. In the cover picture the thief is shooting in Mediterranean grip with three fingers it seems, which is correct, but the arrow is on the right side of the bow, which is extremely rare, although done occasionally in Europe. But when the arrow is on the right side of the bow, it rests on the thumb of the bow hand, not on the index finger.
3. In the gameplay itself the thief shoots with a Mediterranean grip but only uses two fingers two draw. This is not good, she should use three. The arrow is also misplaced on top of all the drawing fingers, when in reality it should be between the index and middle fingers of the drawing hand. Here the arrow goes on the left side of the bow though.
4. The "bracers" in this game feature the grappling hook mechanisms she uses for climbing, but it makes a very bad bracers used for archery. The left bracer has some metal rod in the inside of the forearm, which would severely interfere with the bowstring and could even snap it in two (even that overly thick bowstring we see here). That's very bad.
Good:
The main good thing I can say about the archery in this series is that the thief uses a hip quiver, and not a back quiver, throughout all the games. This is more believable and works great!
