Subject: The same could be said for nonhuman agents in general.
Author:
Posted on: 2015-04-30 17:47:00 UTC
It might be worth noting that my own Falchion predated Zeb by quite a significant margin, so that would make him the first true Pokemon agent to show up in recent years (everyone else was either a trainer or a Pokemon gijinka). Falchion's Steel-type and high defenses make him quite complacent and laid-back, and his Impish nature lends well to wisecracks and snap decisions that his uppity partner may not like. Rashida herself likewise has to live with the prospect of a feline body adapting to a human-tailored PPC environment, though it's her power and quick temper I'm often more worried about.
As for general cases, nonhuman agents do seem to be showing increasing prominence, if the fact that I have at least three of them active is any indicator. Anthropomorphic agents are different because they already have human-like behavior ingrained into their personalities, but agents that are truly animalistic and sapient at the same time would have different morals and patterns of activity which can be harder to work with than human characters. It may be that Falchion unwittingly kickstarted the trend, unless examples of non-anthropomorphic human agents are known from before he first turned up!
Also, what Darkotas was implying goes double for agents whose species is normally hostile to humans in their home continuum. For example, how would Ripper, who is derived from the Velociraptors from Jurassic Park (despite being more scientifically accurate), cope with an environment populated by people, whom the raptors kill on a regular basis? I did take some inspiration from Marsha when considering the possibility of him becoming an agent, but she certainly isn't a meat-eater; I can't find Trask's spinoff to save my life either so I pretty much went in blind in that regard. I think the biggest factor in his favor is that neither of his partners are 100% human, and Falchion is technically the PPC persona of his author and a maniraptor as well, so it would be easier for Ripper to work with him than with a pure human agent.
(Then again, of course, the trailers for Jurassic World do show tamed raptors, so it's not like Ripper can't call a truce with humans at all. That and, well, Rina and Randa obviously didn't get mauled to death during my collab with Iximaz! XD)