ArenaNet’s developer blog has received another update and in this instalment they take a look at the race of giants called the Jotun. The blog comes with a stack of lore as well as some developer notes on the Jotun.

Even though we had established the jotun in the original games, we wanted to really bring them to life in Guild Wars 2, particularly for the norn areas of the world. We wanted them to be more than “nasty customers with big clubs,” and the way we chose to do that was to give them a long history—but a tragic one. We wanted to make the ogres an old race and follow that with the jotun, since the two species are interlinked. Giving the jotun a history that had been lost—ruined by their own flaws—gives them a lot of depth and plays into the overall story of Guild Wars 2.

The new jotun art depicts the race as being taller and more intelligent looking than the art from the original Guild Wars, which helps to better illustrate the race’s history and the fact that they are sentient, smart creatures—not rock-tossing droolers. The primitivism we see in their clothing and weapons is a sharp contrast to the magical monuments located at their camps—and that, too, is deliberate. Showing the decline of a race from power and civilization into primitivism, all because they could not stop fighting amongst themselves, is important to the game’s theme. It illustrates what might happen if the player character races can’t give up their old arguments and unite against the threat of the Elder Dragons.