Having been in development for so long, the artists behind Guild Wars 2 had literally years to put together an immense volume of images detailing the game's world and inhabitants.
It's all impressive stuff - so impressive it's been featured here on Fine Art multiple times - but tonight we're going to put it all in the one place.
This is The Art of Guild Wars 2, a book that has just a ton of publicly-available pieces of art for the game. It's an impressive collection; where most game art books are full of giant white spaces and pages being dominated by shiny promotional art, from front to back The Art of Guild Wars 2 has nothing but paintings, sketches and everything else you expect (and want) to see when you're interested in the creation of a game, not in how it's sold.
I got a copy last week and absolutely loved it. There's just so much art from one of the most talented teams in the business that it makes my head spin. Topping it all off are brief but informative notes from the artists themselves, a rarity when books like these are often written by a single PR-smoothed representative or editor.
About the only downside is the quality of the book itself; it ships as a paperback, which given its size means it feels more like a thick magazine or Ikea catalogue than a coffee table book.
That should only worry those who give a shit about what's on the outside, though. On the inside, there's enough beautiful imagery and insightful commentary that I really think this is the best video game art book since Half-Life 2's Raising the Bar. Which for fans of the field is certainly something.
You can grab the book here.
UPDATE - No you can't! Clicking through reveals the book has been sold out for, well, a long time. Something I wasn't aware of when thumbing through my review copy, which was shipped last week. Sorry for getting your hopes up!
To see the larger pics in all their glory (or so you can save them as wallpaper), right-click on them below and select "open in new tab".
Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game artists, showcasing the best of both their professional and personal portfolios. If you're in the business and have some concept, environment or character art you'd like to share, drop us a line!