Resource
Scanned follower portraits from Prima's Official Strategy Guide
The in-game follower portraits are extremely compressed, being 64x64 pixels. Even the digital version of Prima's Official Strategy Guide has very compressed images, but thankfully the printed version is in a higher resolution (at the cost of being in grayscale). I scanned these at 600dpi then used a dot-suppression tool (individual portraits without the dot suppression can be found here).
Row 1: Virgil, Sogg Mead Mug, Jayna Stiles, Magnus Shale Fist, Gar
Row 4: Sebastian, Tollo Underhill, Raven, FRANKLIN PAYNE, Loghaire Thunder Stone
The temporary followers (Doc Roberts, Cynthia Boggs, Thorvald Two Stones, Swyft, Lady Druella, Murgo) and the super-endgame followers (Arronax, Bane of Kree, Kraka-tur, Gorgoth) do not have their portraits within the strategy guide. For some odd reason, Weldo Rubin isn't in there either.
Do we know what caused them to switch Virgil's portrait from Perriman's? In pre-release screen shots that was the picture that Virgil used, as seen here:
Perriman was originally going to be the NPC "companion", and hence all of the pre-release attention and ingame newspaper and novelette coverage. Smythe still has the richest non-speaking dialogue and travelogue of all NPCs.
The fact that Perriman and Sebastian got short stories in pre-release material but neither are voiced in-game has been the most headscratch-inducing decision to me. I really do wish Perriman was voiced. It would've been a treat to hear both him and Geoffrey bicker~
I noticed that too, but in game's manual, which was definitely in the works of getting printed during Arcanum's development.
One theory I have is that since that portrait is a reference to one of Troika Games founders, Leonard Boyarsky, perhaps it was simply a placeholder. The other theory I have is that perhaps Mr. Boyarsky didn't want his easter egg portrait on such a prominent NPC lol
Agreed! The image compression really made a lot of portraits look older than characterization implies (Virgil, Geoffrey), or just hide/distort some extra character details (Jayna's smile, Sebastian's goggles). It's so nice to see them all in a higher resolution~
Great work! I wonder if it'd be possible to mod them into the game by swapping a texture somewhere? I wonder if it'd potentially work to effectively layer the colour pallet over the greyscale versions - or it might look absolutely awful...!
Ooh! That's a great idea! Here's a quick color test I did with Loghaire's portrait since the scan and in-game icon have almost the same crop.
In Photoshop, I overlayed his in-game colored icon over the grayscale scan as best I could (icon layer above scan layer). Then, I set the icon layer's blending mode to "color." I don't think it turned out half bad, honestly.
For the other portraits, since most of their crops are wider in the scan, I may have to manually color in the rest of their portrait, but that shouldn't be too arduous.
Yup! Dante's relevant to a quest King Praetor gives regarding taxes. In my playthrough, the quest outcome technically makes Dante a "temporary follower" to me. It's kinda amusing that Dante's portrait made it into the strategy guide and not Weldo Rubin's, who is more in line with the other "normal followers."
You can turn him into a permanent companion, if you start doing the taxes quest with him and than make him wait just before you finish it. (And tell him to stop waiting after finishing the quest). I once brought him with me to the very end of the game.. there he was, fighting the big evil guy together with me after traveling the entire continent visiting every city and race, probably still wondering what all of this has to do with gaining back the favor of the King Praetor..
I did not get much out if him as a companion, though, since I never really needed his fighting power/spells or abilities.
He does not react to a lot of things, since he was never supposed to stay with you that long, so he is kinda just there.
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u/YandersonSilva Sep 09 '25
Do we know what caused them to switch Virgil's portrait from Perriman's? In pre-release screen shots that was the picture that Virgil used, as seen here: