The longer I dwell on this, the worse it looks. After seeing the genuinely breathtaking sun bear, clouded leopard, proboscis monkey, and leaf insect, I thought that the binturong should've been an easy slam dunk but that couldn't be further from the case. I'm part of the group who were looking forward to binturongs as probably my most wanted and favorite realistic animal addition, and now I'm also part of the group who wouldn't have been able to say with confidence that this model is supposed to be a binturong if I didn't know better. I think it's hands down, unambiguously, the worst model they've shown us in this game. And that's such a huge disappointment, because I know Frontier is capable of so much better, we all do.
This doesn't look like a binturong. The biggest part of that, for me, has to be the overall shape of the head, its lack of angularity. This model's face is too round, too conventionally cute. It looks like a binturong teddy bear. Their heads should be shorter, with much more pronounced and awkward snouts. The whiskers, despite being far more prominent than most in game species, still don't seem nearly prominent enough. The eyes are too clean and teddy bear-esque. The ears... everyone else has spoken to death about the ears. I definitely agree. But honestly? I could probably ignore the ears, and the fur not being quite right, and them being too chubby, as long as the head looked right. As it stands, this really does look like a modder's first effort in turning a red panda into a binturong. I was more than willing to accept that our misgivings about the tapir were based on weird angles being caught in weird places in their animation, and reserve final judgment until we see them in game. But there's no camera tricks going on here, there's no room for misinterpretation. This binturong model is bad.
I hope this isn't coming across as too pointedly negative. I'm saying this all from a place of genuine love for the game, and for animals, and for Frontier as a dev. It's just very disappointing that the animal I was looking forward to most comes out like this. I'll still buy the DLC, of course. I'm still excited for it, and still ecstatic that we're actually getting more animals. But as it stands, I don't think I'll be using these binturongs in my zoos. And that's arguably the worst possible outcome this DLC could've had, even worse than not including them at all.
