'Oh no, it has an anime element present within it!'
Battletech was originally inspired by anime like designs. Especially these early humanoid mecha.
In fact its the fans hatred for anything anime design which has led to this particular centurion not coming out looking like a centurion - FD has done his best to compress it into a more militaristic, western style which does just not work for these types of mechs which NEED to keep the default humanoid look they started with if they want to keep to the original style.
I like alot of the design itself, and the shield arm doesnt bother me. I could completely see a battlemech using such a shield, especially given that melee combat is hardly uncommon within the BT universe. I like the rest of the curves, and its great and consistent with the other designs. I like the fact it has kept the general humanoid form, just to make the people who moan about their giant robots looking like giant robots annoyed.
However, theres something i just cant look past in this design that is going to irk me. You can see that in an attempt to militarise the centurion, to cut down on that aforementioned influence, we've lost alot of the dynamic feel of the original. For example, the head no longer exists as a separate entity, instead having been crushed down into the torso area.
As a poster on the thread stated:
'Black Sunder 9 hours ago
Why was the ability to turn its head taken away? In fact none of the mechs shown so far have heads anymore.'
For me, personally, i would have found it much more TRO faithful, and also more intimidating, if the head had been kept as in the original on top of the redesigned body. The hunched shoulders, along with the head , make the centurion look like its hunchbacked, and crippled, as if it would have trouble co-ordinating its arms. As it is, it feels slightly too heavy for what it is.
This worked really well with the Atlas, but doesnt so much here.
Having said that, i fully intend on still taking this sucker for a drive or two in MWO. The centurion always was a bro mech, and im sure itll play well within the game. Its not an AWFUL design by any means - its visually pleasing, its just i was not expecting the final result and hold mixed views on it. Ive liked all the other redesigngs, especially the hunchback alot, so one 'decent' out of 'fantastic' is pretty good considering how radical the visual aesthetic has changed.
