[2020] The upcoming new Penguin models no longer resemble Gentoo penguins, which the RuneScape penguins are supposed to be. The new models look like cartoony fictional penguins instead of any real life species.

Thanks for your post, Wahisietel. Considered as always buddy.

I think there's two threads to this conversation: one is whether the RuneScape penguins are all gentoo, whether they should be, and whether we've lost something by making them not gentoo. The other thread is whether the general art direction of the game, of which these penguins are the latest example, is what you want and, again, beneficial for the game.

For the first thread, you can see from the concept sheet that we absolutely considered making the penguins gentoo. In R&D, having increased the fidelity of the model, our animators found that they couldn't get as broader range of expressions from the gentoo concept. The white area by the eye limits expression and makes them perpetually a bit menacing. We didn't want that for the penguins story, either, as we wanted them to be initially benign but Machiavellian once we learn more about them. That's kind of how their story works.

We also considered the KGP - Killer Gentoo Penguins - element, as that would seem like a retcon on the face of it. Clearly not all of the KGP are gentoo, even before this rework, and we didn't like the implications of making the penguins 'racially' segregated into different vocations. If we get to Acheron, we want the penguin society to be more fun and varied than that. So, we saw the KGP as a fun backronym that didn't necessarily limit the penguins to being gentoo, and we could add gentoo penguins in the future. For now, we are updating the core, general penguin.

(There is an argument that moving away from gentoo penguins, which is a real-world penguin, to a RuneScape-specific penguin would actually be more in keeping with what we're doing with the game world)

For the other thread, which is our art style, we're having a lot of conversations internally about it, not just based on the penguins. We hope to bring you into that conversation soon, whether that's through PAGs, surveys, polls or whatever happens. We have not chosen our art style randomly - this was based on focus groups with established RS players - but for a lot of people there's a disconnect with the direction. We're hearing you, but we need to do some work behind the scenes to get to the next step.

I was specifically talking about focus groups on the art style, rather than on penguin hide and seek