Road to Restoration - Re-grounding Outfits & Equipment

This is part three of our blog series on the Road to Restoration.

Today's topic covers "Regrounding Items", but many of you have wondered what that actually refers to.

The"Regrounding Items"project is about making visuals and worn items fit better thematically into the world of RuneScape as we work towards something that is more immersive and consistent with the game.

In short, we want outfits in the game to no longer be obtrusive.

In todays blog we'll cover the rationale with which we are approaching this topic, as well as previewing some of the planned changes coming later this month on the 23rd of February. Further changes as part of this project are planned later this year.

Before we get to that though, there has been some discussion in community as to what "grounded medieval fantasy" for RuneScape might mean, and whether there are beloved elements within the game that would clash with that identity. For example, some folks may have worried that to be grounded means to step back from the fantastical or lean much more into low fantasy as a concept. That's not the case. We will continue to develop RuneScape as a game with high fantasy themes, where magic permeates every aspect of a world built on medieval foundations. Built on top of those foundations should be a player journey through a world that feels like home - and that may also mean that not every quest or event needs to include an existential threat to the universe.

Grounding refers to making the world feel cohesive and consistent within the outline above. Having magic with a fantasy world does not mean that just about anything goes - instead, we want to maintain that all things within Gielinor should make sense for our unique world. Our work to reground the game therefore simply means that we want to ensure that the world feels like it obeys a specific ruleset.

With that said, lets take a look at our rationale, approach and also provide a preview of the upcoming changes.

Rationale:

Let's begin with the why.

As a reminder, one of our key goals for RuneScape's Road to Restoration is to curate a game that is consistent and cohesive, and that has a clear visual identity. All existing content should be brought in line with our integrity guidelines.

Over the years we have added a wide range of items and cosmetic overrides that are visually intrusive or thematically out of place. The technical term for something that doesn't fit into the world is "non-diegetic" - you may see us occasionally use this when it comes to discussing visual integrity. You've already helped identify many such outfits and cosmetics which fundamentally break in-game immersion and do not fit within the medieval fantasy theme of RuneScape. An important distinction to make here is that while cosmetic overrides are able to be toggled off as of this past January, item visuals cannot. As some of these items have the same level of immersion breaking impact, they must therefore be considering against the above goal.

Approach:

This project aims to resolve these issues via whatever method is most appropriate. Where possible we'd prefer tweaking or replacing the visuals, but we may need to consider removing particular items, or restricting where certain items can be used (e.g. Snowboards only in the Christmas Hub) as well. We want to consider all options available. One very important caveat: With the amount of items we may need to tackle here, creating brand-new designs for all of them is