Forgive me if this is covered already in the forums or blogs - I read a bunch to double check but I might have missed something - but I'm curious about the artistic process of aging.
I feel like a game with aging in it is a really cool place to have some body positivity going on in interesting ways. I mean, they might be details that people aren't as concerned about in the context of a fantasy game, but y'know. Insert usual arguments about games as art here, blahdy blah, moving on.
The interesting questions I think are - if you sign a parent contract, does that mean the texture of your skin might change as you age? Might you get stretch marks, wider hips? (although I understand that kind of change would be harder to implement than a texture change)
How about laugh lines? I know there's a possibility you'll look more 'weather-beaten' as you age if you follow an adventuring path, but there's also a measure of lightness/darkness in souls - if you follow a 'lighter' path, do you get more laugh lines around the corners of your eyes? Would you look more haggard as someone who embraces the darker side of humanity?
Do you get ruddy cheeks and a potbelly? What about hair? When does it go grey or white, does that change between genetics? I know some people go straight to white at surprisingly early ages, while others who slowly go grey over time and don't progress to white hair until the very end of their lives, as an example.
I know that there's already a lot of work going into just making the basic level of this mechanic work, and tweaks like that are probably over-scoping, but I'm curious. A lot of MMOs and games in general glorify youth and beauty - or even just the internet, as youth is preserved in images and videos and it can become easier to hide behind older content, or edit images to hide age - but this is a place where we can look forwards to aging, normalise it as a natural process in a digital space, reintegrate the cyber reality with the biological reality.
So, is there anything anyone here looks forwards to (IRL) in your old age? What do you love about your grandparents, or yourself? What would you want to see mirrored in a game with aging? (Whether in Elyria as it is so far intended by Developers, or a "dream" Elyria with more resources, or what you think deserves to be created but maybe fit into a game that isn't this one?)
Might just be pipe dreams here but maybe it's just a nice topic to talk about anyway :)
