The newest hero to join Hearthstone Battlegrounds, the Pandaren, Master Nguyen, has a story behind him.
Ben Thompson, Hearthstone's former Lead Artist who left in 2019, was the artist behind this tribute piece and the only piece he has made for the game since leaving the team. The piece is a tribute to one of the first members of the Hearthstone team, Dan Nguyen, who has sadly passed away.
Dan was responsible for a piece of art for Acidic Swamp Ooze in Hearthstone's alpha (thanks to Ben Brode for posting this):
Read on to see what Ben Thompson had to say about the piece and how it reflects Dan.
Quote From Ben Thompson This piece of art is bittersweet for me for many reasons. This is the only piece I have made for Hearthstone since my leaving at the end of 2019, and it was commissioned as an in-game memorialization for one of the very first members of the team Dan Nguyen. Dan was one of the kindest souls I ever had the privilege to work with, and the team and I agreed it was important that the game he loved remember his dedication and spirit in a meaningful way.
Master Nguyen is seen here wearing a garment of iconic fighting game attire, calling out Dan’s love for the genre; but, at the same time, his staff is placed behind him, indicating that his fighting days are over. He wears an orange sash in reference to the color worn by monks at Dan’s funeral, and the stone on his waistband is Dan’s birthstone. He has set a satchel down next to him to indicate that he has set off on a journey, but is pausing for one last game and a bowl of BBQ with friends before he goes. The cloud motif on his sleeves, the wall, and the floor are meant to be a nod to the western “heaven” whereas the cherry blossoms signify Spring and rebirth.
Goodbye my friend. You are missed.
If you are going to seek out feedback from other artists (and you should ALWAYS be doing so), make sure to go to those who know their craft. In the case of Pandarins, you would be hard pressed to find a better artist than Laurel Austin and I appreciated her feedback and thoughts on this piece throughout its creation.
Comments
One other detail I caught, although I don't know if it was deliberate: the chopsticks stuck vertically in the bowl. Asians will never do that in real life, because it's reminiscent of the incense sticks you plant in a bowl of rice to honour the deceased during a funeral. It's therefore quite fitting to have them in this position on this tribute image.
Probably one of the last tributes. Because seems like they want to remove reference to real people in games going forward (at least judging by Overwatch news)
Perhaps the rule doesn't apply to people who have passed away. Very unlikely to have new skeletons revealed at that point.
I think another big thing to point out about potential tributes is how it sounds like Overwatch just doesn't want a main character to be an exact real-life reference to someone anymore. Having some random character in a story is much less risky. I fully expect we'll continue to see players in World of Warcraft get items and characters as a tribute and Hearthstone we will certainly still see flavor text and cards that relate to players, especially if one could feign ignorance about it.
Just, no game-defining characters. Having to rewrite a major character that gets used in promotions and out-of-game content is too much of a risk if you want to keep things clean.
Mccree is a big character but the first name change stuff they did was just random NPCs in WoW referencing Afrasiabi. I think they probably want to stay away as much as possible from now on.