Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Elves are not Elven - Tel-quessir feed back ;)

Hello Larian Team,

I hope this post finds the team well and I want to offer my congratulations on the efforts of your game designers and the dreams realised with the launch of Baldur's Gate 3 early access. I eagerly look forward to testing future editions of the title and seeing the studio's completed work in a year's time.

To this end, after viewing forum posts and opinions from the game's community, I wanted to more directly convey these player's and my own concerns regarding BG3's portrayal of Elves. Many testers have found the Elf faces off-putting and unrepresentative of the Elven race long time D&D players know and appreciate (And, in many cases, love to hate!). The technical quality of the faces Larian Studios has designed are superb even at this early stage, but their lack of authenticity specifically regarding the Elves has been a disappointment.

Narrower chins and jaws, shifted, widened and slanted eyes, high and prominent cheekbones, an unsettling, inhumanly haunting beauty about them; these qualities aren't being reflected as well as they could be. Tieflings have been brought to life like never before in the artistic medium of game design and I know many of the players and fans would approve of that same life and vivid creative design breathed into Elves.

Current head models don't and shouldn't need to be done away with entirely, but it's my feeling that a not insignificant number of the community would be more enticed to try a race like Elves if they had head model choices that were closer in authenticity to the original material. I hope this has given the team ideas to consider going forward and I would be pleased to correspond further about the matter.

The first piece of feedback that I would like to offer is that, interestingly enough, all of the half elf heads look more delicate and elven than the actual elven heads.



Many of us who have always have a soft spot for elves would be very happy if we could get at least a couple of heads that look more 'traditional', that is, less human and a little more like they belong to a different race. Elves are beautiful, yes, but key words in their description are often overlooked and not given much tought. They are not described as breath-taking, or captivating, although they might be. They are described with words such as unsettling, unnerving, haunting, when it comes to their beauty. This is no casual choice of wording, it clearly states elves are simply not meant to be or feel relatable.

This sketch perfectly examples the physiology of elves; the slanted eyes, triangular/heartshaped features, sharp noses and chins, and a general 'otherly' feel that is not relatable to any of the human heritages of our world.






One of the stances that I have encountered every so often when discussing this around the forums, is people claiming that '5E elves look just like humans in the official artwork', with none of the features that are known to older editions. I disagree with that not as an opinion but simply as a matter of fact, I've done the research around and gathered plenty of official artwork that still depicts these features, if not as prominent as it used to be:



THIS IS ALL 5E OFFICIAL ARTWORK I gathered from the manuals. Many people act like they don't exist. You can still see the high cheekbones, the slanted eyes, the triangular shaped face, all of it is there, if not as extremely displayed as it used to in older editions. Yet none of the current heads look like this. I think we would be happy with a few heads that have this sort of traditional features, the slanted eyes per instance are entirely missing, not a single head has this key feature.

In case you do not genuinelly see the features, here you go:



Likewise, this kind of art is represented in the original Baldur's Gate games, as can be seen in Aerie's and Jaheira's portraits:



I would like for this topic to be open to discuss not just aesthetics and appeareance but also all things elven related. I have not delved into the game deeply enough to give feedback with full confidence yet, but I have had zero meaningful interactions as an elf in the world. The few 'elven' dialog choices that have popped up have been shallow and meaningless, whereas after a quick and short lived gameplay as a drow I was presented with a lot more options (which I was surprised of, very well done there, Larian.)

Elves are also described to be tight-knit as a race, something that manifests not just psychologically or emotionally but, literally, physically, through something known as communion. In short, it is an inborn ability to share experiences, feelings, emotions and dreams with other willing elves. While I do not expect such a mechanic to be adapted in the game -cool as it might be-, it does give a hint to just how important it is for elves to be around, and acknowledged by other elves. I expected to see some special interactions with Astarion and Shadowheart as an elf player, yet there were none. Astarion, vampire or not, simply did not have a single elven trait about him other than the mechanic stats and cantrips.

Nothing to say about elves, as I've no interest in playing one.
While I'm happy enough with the current choice in dwarf beard, I'd definitely be delighted to see more options there...and how come I can't get the stereotypical Scots accent while I'm at it, eh?

Totally agree about the half-elves looking more elven. It's so striking that I'd think it was a programming error if it wasn't for the fact that Larian would've mentioned or fixed it by now.

I wanted to start a thread about appearance variety too. I feel you guys, but my "ask" is about hairstyle. I think right now variety is deeply mainstream, I don't like goblins looking like punk modern girls. I'd like more variety that really looks like medieval hair.

Right? I've also seen zero conflict with drow NPCs, though granted I've only crossed paths with 2. Have you seen any interesting elf-drow interaction?




There's a million threads about general appeareance requests. I don't mind if you post yours here though! I would like more medieval hairstyles too, specially lots of braids and woad warrior war paint.

I definatly think elven faces should be sharp and angular, maybe not quite as bad as the faces in the diagram but elves should definatly have sharper finer features then humans. as for dwarven beards, to be honest I assumed they where limited due to graphics issues, specificly that longer beards may have had clipping issues

I absolutely agree with you. And I say more, they need to solve the clipping with dwarf characters, in every cutscene my character's face enters his chest. It completely spoils my immersion. I made a post talking about it, and I think they (Larian) can change their (dwarves) posture and add bigger, more "fixed" beards.

The dwarf faces are good so far, they just need to add in a large variety of beards. At least 10. I'll never get over Neverwinter Nights giving dwarves two beards. The hell. I'm not complaining about the 2 we have in BG3, since we're still in EA. I do expect a lot of beards later though.

Completely agree. I should be able to say "that's an elf!" even without seeing a characters ears. Their facial features should imo be a bit outside of the human spectrum. For half-elves, one should take a look and think "hmm... either a fine-featured human or a heavy-featured elf?". Same for (half-)drow, of course.

As it is currently, the male elf head makes me think of a particularly sturdy-looking human peasant. Really, the jaw is huge! The eyes slant the opposite way, so to speak, which makes the character look somewhat... spaced out rather than keenly intelligent/of alien beauty as would be expected of an elf. (I wanted to say I was reminded of Oblivion faces, but this would be going too far...)

I would also add that I wish halflings had better proportions. They are said to be more or less like scaled-down humans in their lore, but in BG3 they are more reminiscent of real-life humans with dwarfism.

That illustration of human/half-elf/elf male and female examples is excellent! I'd love if that were followed.

Agreed. The elven males at least look like they mixed with orcs judging their brow.

While the graph is a nice reference point, I doubt larian will shift their design so much to follow it, I do think that they should make the pure elves the most "delicate" looking though, and ramp it up to humans, with half-elves being inbetween.

I agree, it's really ironic that male half-elfs look far more elfish than the proper elfs... Hopefully they will give us more appropriate choices in the future.

I like some of the elf heads, male head 1 is rather good IMO, but yeah, not a huge fan of most of them.

I already saw this thread and agreed with it, and was mostly repeating the same sentiment in my thread.

The issue could be entirely solved with fully customizable characters.

The main issue with most of the preset faces, elves particularly is that the cheeckbones / jaws are completely messed up, its like they just just used a random generator and picked the first bunch of passable faces.

the illustrations perfectly exemplify how it should be. Larian may see this as insignificant, but in an RPG it is very important that races are represented correctly.

+1

As I stated in another post: The elf male faces are to big and rough, and not fine and sophisticated as they should be!

I really hope they will change them more.

Male Elf faces are joke. Most of them look like 80s fantasy-action movie hero with square jaw and hairy chest. LOL
I also don't understand Asian faces, it doesn't make sense for Elves, but makes a lot of sense for humans.

On the other hand elven design of Forgotten Realms changed through years and it's closer to human (the eyes are not that slanted anymore). Ofc closer to human doesn't mean big square jaw.
By the way, did you notice that all Elves in the game are as tall as human?

Why not make all the heads available to all the races. I mean, they are all scanned from real-life human heads. If humans can have such variety, why not elves?

These are scanned faces that were later remodeled by graphic designers (you can find it in their character creation diary). There is variety (in Forgotten Realms lore), but within their racial characteristics. The same as with Chinese people who are different from each other but still share some common characteristics within their ethnic group.

Granted the features are not as pronounced as they used to be, but they can still be found in official artwork. All of this pictures are from the 5E player's handbook:





I don't know whether that's Larian or WOTC's new direction, but I find it nonsensical as well. I've said this before, I'm mixed race myself yet I don't feel the need to see my features represented in a non-human folk from a fantasy land. Elves are not supposed to be human. Half elves though, you can give them a broad fan of diversity in all shapes and colours.

And yes, they're as tall and broad as humans are, same body-type. The wood elf druid is even bigger, If I recall correctly he's a giant hulk of a man.

Have to say I'm lukewarm towards the goblins as well. Larian is allowed creative license but they're not coming across as the pack of conniving, savage little beasties I know and love them to be in their designs. Taste is very subjective but at least I'm not the only one who seems to think so.

A thread about elven faces came up months ago that I remember pitching in on raised this very concern about the Elves looks un-Elven after a gameplay demo aired. What was said there bears repeating despite the masses of people content to have Elves just look like pretty Humans - taste is subjective, again, but good gods these are not pretty.



Wide nose, wide lips, shrunken and far-apart eyes, the feature coming vaguely close to "Elf" is the cheekbones. Drow and High Elves share face models so it doesn't matter much which I'm using.

Elves are distinctly Fey-like, slender and shorter than humans. The jaws, the chins, the facial structure is all terribly off and unrecognizable from Elves. Goldberry's diagram was even posted in the thread of months ago I mentioned, and it still illustrates brilliantly the problems with the Elven head models Larian has gone with. I've long been a fan of the studio, since the first D:OS game came out and have never taken particular issue with any of their design or artistic choices - but for something as strongly pre-established and rich in lore as forgotten realms, there does need to be that extra attention to detail to hit the nail on the head. This nail was missed and the hammer landed on the fingernail instead.

In forgotten realms, High elves are not shorter than humans, in fact they tend to be tall. Drow are supposed to be short, off hand i cant remember where wood elves fit in the height spectrum.

But i agree that elves should have generally more delicate features with more almond shaped eyes that are usually on somewhat more of an angle.


IMO, the only elf-like face the elves get is head 1, it's narrower than the rest with more angular features without being ugly.

They are shorter in other editions, but 5E (the one BG3 is based off) they are around the same height I think. Drow are definitely shorter.




Thank you! For clarification though, it's not 'mine', I just ripped it from a player's handbook manual

actually again no, even in 3.5 and 4e, high elves (sun and moon elves at least) have always been human height. 4'10" +2d10 was the sun and moon elf height in 3.5 and 3e, which was the same as humans, Eladrin in 4e (which is what sun and moon elves got lumped into) were between 5'5" and 6'1", so in 4e they were marginally shorter but able to be as tall as typical humans at around 6' and in 5e, sun and moon elves are high elves and the same height as humans. 5e has high elves as 4'6"+2d10 and humans as 4'8"+2d10. So again pretty similar in height.

I guess you can argue elves are shorter still in 4 and 5e, but not noticeably so. Whereas in greyhawk and i think a few other D&D settings, elves were traditionally a lot shorter than humans.

Well, Wood/Green Elves and Wild Elves (not in the game), should be broader/more muscular and slightly shorter then Moon and Sun Elves... but still, not going off human figures, but elven ones. They also should have more "robust" faces... wider jaws and noses, more facial hair (no beards, obviously, but sideburns and thicker brows). Asian features though? Nope... elven features are, well elven. They shouldn't have an equivalent in human races. Just as dwarven faces are slightly "off", with being too broad and wide, and have far too big noses, compared to humans, elven faces have a structure not found in any human ethnicity either. Especially the eyes. Elven eyes are supposed to be almond shaped and angled, yes, but also very large, not slanted at all.

Actually, looking at the facen in game right now, I think they could even be morphed to fit the general triangle/arrow head shape they should have. Elongate them a bit, angle the eyes and brows, slim down the noses and clean up the skin (even male elven skin is more delicate/smaller pored than human skin). It could work. Also, the hair: It should have a softer texture too it.

...a few axamples from my sidel:

I'm pretty sure I already said it all summarised as 'You can make better looking characters in Oblivion'.

Because the point is that by current standards, Oblivion actually had very atrocious character models and it didn't age well at all, yet somehow BG3 manages to still be worse in 2020.

The small pick of default faces pretty much all look the same. Select a beard then switch through each face and you can barely see any difference at all. They are not sufficient to meet each player's choices or desires in how they want their character to look.

A fully customisable character creation engine like in Oblivion and Skyrim should pretty much be a mandatory requirement for new AAA RPGs.

A little bit off topic, but it still concerns elves, so I'm going to ask around here since you guys seem like-minded. I decided to make a second play-through maining a drow, and going the full evil route. It's going better than I expected, you do get some drow interactions (whereas I didn't get any at all as a high elf, anywhere, with anyone, it was kind of disappointing)

And then I met Kagha. Who expresses appreciation for a drow :| ...What... Happened there? Why? Drow and surface elves are supposed to hate each other. Is there a reason regarding Kagha specifically?

+1 Even the half-elf faces could stand to be a little narrower--or at least there should be the option of creating a less "hearty" looking character. I think my wood elf ranger is pretty (at least when weird things aren't going on with hair sprouting out of her helm), but there's no touch of the ethereal in her appearance. I think the current faces are more or less OK as options, but we should have the choice of making a more delicate-appearing elf.

What I managed to interpret from this interaction was that she appreciates how Drow... protect their own? You know. The society of backstabbers where trust is death. At least they do band together against the 'lesser' races and mostly agree on that. Or it could be the Drow's infamous ruthlessness.

The lack of Drow to High Elf interaction and vice versa is something I hope Larian will catch on to, though having a completely antagonistic and hostile play through for a Lolth Sworn Drow would be a hard thing to manage with all the rewriting probably required. Just things here and there, present but not overbearing, would be nice.



Appreciate the correction, I'm very used to playing and talking in circles like nwn1.

I want my elves to be beautiful, emaciated twinks. Not whatever they are now.

The only Wood elf face I found passable was the second one, tat I'm now trying for a Ranger playthrough.

All the Halfling faces on the other hand made me cry.

Yes I agree.
The full elves should be the more alien and angular, or along the lines of "strangely pretty" but for now the half elf males actually look better. However, the half elves are stuck with body hair we can't edit.
This definitely needs to change, even a simple solution like allowing full and half elves to use both sets of head shapes, and allowing a toggle for body hair. More options for body type (thickness of limbs and waist, muscle tone texture) would be very welcome.

I agree that currently the half-elf faces look more elven than the elf faces in BG3. I want my elves to have angular faces and distinctly slanted eyes.

D&D, and sadly most of the derived fantasy works, treat the common fantasy races as nothing more than humans with funny ears. So I am all for giving them distinct, nonhuman features.
And don't stop with elves. Dwarves, Halflings and Gnomes should also have faces which visibly differs from humans so you can see which races it is just by looking at the portrait instead of having to see how large they are.

Not really... I think this extreme humanization of non-human races mostly stems from movies (like the LotR series) and, above all else, video games... as long as they only existed in written or illustration form, this trend wasn't nearly as pronounced.

More classic elven features would be appreciated. Elves as a race are generally seen as extraordinarily beautiful and ethereal. I found only one of the female heads to be somewhat (but not really) meeting that criterium. Elves are not humans with pointy ears slapped on. They don't have broad features but delicate ones. Some of the heads are distinctly missing the mark, which in itself is fine. No need to remove them. But please add more choices. There should be a range of classic elven heads to choose from. Right now that range is simply not sufficient.

True. The manuals do an excellent job at giving elves a lot of nuance. They go into a lot of detail about their ways, their culture, their economy, their dressing, their diet, their emotion, psychology, daily rituals and a lot more. It is the adaptations that fail to represent those things. I suspect elves are simply a niche, and only us, friendless psychopaths obsessed with the race for one reason or another, only care for all of that :'D

I agree with the criticism here. I'm replaying Dragon Age Inquisition with Bioware's butchered elves...I would hate for Larian to do a repeat of their soddy work.

Not butchered - but defeated. And for good reason. Also, ungodly powerful beyond the veil.

Historically, elves look like all sorts of variations of the human form, mixed with human features. Tolkien's elves were just stretched out a bit but folks who saw the early Hobbit and LOTR animated films in the 70's recall how different they looked from modern super-aryan elves of film. From the early 20th and late 19th centuries they looked more like what we think of as goblins, or tiny children with odd animal features. Basically, an elf can look like whatever you want it to look like, it's all fair game, since it's all folktales, and the DnD art I've seen runs the gamut from traditional folk art to just people with pointy ears. This is a pointless thread IMO. rackham elf

Also, true, but these are Realms (D&D) elves we are talking about, and they have been very thoroughly described and illustrated for abour 30 years now, and one of the biggest reasons why they don't just look "like beautiful humans" is, that they are literally alien to Abeir Toril... like dwarves, they have no genetic ancestry with the planet's native humans, hence why they only vaguely resemble them, at most.

Contrary to, for instance, LotR, where the ancient Elves basically originated all intelligent live... even Orks and Goblins.

I do like "traditional" FR looking elves - shorter, leaner, alien eyes, longer slimmer faces etc, but lets be honest - FR elven designs used to be transformed caucasian features. There is no reason why you could not take asian features and transform them the same way as you did caucasian, it will just add more variety. Use asian features and make the face longer and eyes larger and more slanted towards the nose and you have an elf that is asian-looking. Also as someone said earlier here, Wood Elves do have wider features in general and are stockier.

...Right? I don't know why some people act like the manuals have not gone in depth about this kind of things.

Bump just to announce that I've updated the main post with more information! I might still update now and then, for those interested

I'm definitely interested! And I really hope that the artists in Larian will take into account the number of people who want a change in the elves to a more classic style.

+1

I for giving the option to do either -- keep the existing head but include some heads with the more angular looks and otherworldly feel.

Even if the more elvish look isn't doable for facial animation reasons, etc., I don't think elves and and humans should share the face presets. It's even more funny when you notice that while elves and humans have identical faces, the half-elves don't share the presets. I think Astarion is an ok compromise in that his face is more slender than that of an average adult man, if we could at least get the same slenderness and grace on the elf presets, I'd be content.

I think if you're going to include real world ethnicitites with elves, logically they should be tied to specific subraces. And to cloud the water a bit, High Elves cover Sun, Moon and Star Elves, whilst Wood Elves cover Wood Elves and Wild/Green Elves, Drow are drow, the seldarine drow (if basing them on the description found in the follow on series from war of the spider queen should indeed be distinct too.

High Elves should be more delicate features, more slender based on Moon and Star Elves, Sun Elves can reasonably fall into that category too. Skin colours for these would range from very pale to "bronzed". Hair colours would be pretty diverse with Blue being a thing for moon elves, Sun Elves tend toward blond, red or brown hair. Star Elves share most of their colouration with Moon Elves iirc.

Wood Elves should be a bit stockier and generally a bit more rugged looking, their skin tones would tend toward ruddier tones or browns, their hair toward darker colours as well. Eyes are still reasonably varied.

Drow should be more delicate looking than Wood Elves, but probably have a hardness to them that most High Elves do not. Their skin tones are supposed to purplish black/blueish black/brownish black/grey-blacks. their eyes are more limited in colour with almost all of them having red eyes, some rare few have unusual colours like violet or amber, but its rare, the red eyes are part of the curse Corellon put on them to make them into drow. Their hair would be varied shades of white naturally, but i guess they could dye it as dye would take well to naturally white hair.

Seldarine Drow (which should really be "Dark Elves" would be similar in colouration to Wild Elves, tending toward brown skin and darker hair, but physically resumble Drow in terms of build.

This seems like the best compromise and the one I see the most. Keep some of the heads for the people that like them, which I personally don't understand but hey, and some closer to the material models for others.

I agree that Larian should keep the current heads but add some new ones that look like proper, otherworldly elves (and half-elves). That way they don't have to scrap any of the currently advertised companion designs like Astarion and Shadowheart. At the same time, they'll also please more discerning fans. The more human-like heads I can just pretend are elves with a bit of human ancestry or something.

Your friendly reminder that the yoked AF, 7 foot tall druid Halsin is a "wood elf".

Dude looks like a cream-colored orc.

I'd very much like elves to look like elves.

Shadowheart wouldn't need to change, half elves will have as much from their human side as their elven, often more. Means Half Elves can be super diverse, getting features from both ancestries. Asterion wouldn't need a massive change, he's already more slender and angular in features than almost all the currently available elf heads. minor tweaks to perhaps his eye shape and jawline would probably have him sorted.

All of these problems are solved with sliders.

I actually agree with the OP, but i feel this is western developer-itis that larian caught from hirign too many people from the anglo sphere.
Trying to make the humanoid NPCs look too "realistic" and kind of forsaking fantasy aesthetics as a result, it doesnt usually work.
THo i gotta say BG3 NPCs at least can be attractive and ofthen do work, especialy the githyanki and tieflings, but i admit elves are a strange case.

Another can of worms is the question of ethnicity. Ive said it in another thread , i think larian spent too much time trying to get a diverse cast of actors and thus ended up with very few different actual faces per ethnicity.
Thats fine with Humans, but Elves are ultimatley based on a mixture of norse and celtic mythology and its perfectly fine to have them have caucasian features because ultimatley thats what everyone imagiens them like anyway and thus allowing for more variation within that. . I dont think youll find a lot of people that find the dryads from the withcer series fitting for the role they occupy in the setting.
its patronizing more so than anything else.
This whole thing results in people just picking one and the same face per race, this is most obvious in elves if you ask me.
I know that this particular topic is not to be blamed on Larian but on WOTC who think that having 90s style Tokenism will get them the elusive "minority target demographic", which of course it wont, becuase people buy according to their tastes and not according to their skin colour, but good luck telling that to a corporate suit whose had an overdose of california.

That beeing said, the problem with that is easily fixed if you actually allow people to edit those faces. If youve only got one asian face, thats fine if you can edit said face and end up with, gasp, more variation on it. Which is what most tripple A developers do anyway.

TL;DR: Sliders do the trick, add sliders.

First of all...
It needs to be said just how astounding the gameplay has been so far. Breathtaking graphics where detail in texture has no limit, and captivating character depth where I am certain to replay the game several times just to explore the many, many options! I was skeptical at first, as I always am, but Larian’s artists and development team have done an amazing job yet, and waiting a year to see the rest will be guaranteed torture.
However, it also brings excitement in knowing that we will be seeing more content, and hope that there will be improvements to fully utilize the game’s potential.
As there is the one thing I have been missing, which is what brought me to this thread...

Elves

Naturally, I know they exist in-game. Though in all its stunning beauty, Baldurs Gate 3 Early Access doesn’t yet have the alien features of the so lore-rich world of elves. It sounds shallow, but to me appearance is important— and with what I’ve seen thus far with the graphics, I know it must be important to other players too! Although we enjoy our eye-candy, it’s not just the exotic and odd beauty itself that compelled me to love the elven races, but rather their infinite lore. Elves are more than just humans with pointy ears and keen abilities, and it needs to show. Players need to be able to look at the elves and immediately tell that they are otherwordly beings with magical tales to tell, inviting them to explore.

The OP, Goldberry, and other members of the community have brought up many good examples on how this can be achieved! With BG3’s potential, I pray and roll with glee in hope that we will be seeing more of what makes elves the alien and captivating beings they have been and deserve to be forever more.

Well I was confused about Shadowheart being a human or elf had to examine her to tell for sure. Tieflings are what bought me in this game, I have never seen such a terrifying looking Tiefling (In a very, very good way) in a game before. My first Act 1 was for Tiefling warlock.
I have to agree Elves do not really look like Elves but my guess that is because 5th Editon say so, unfortunately.


Additionally I doubt we will receive any change in the way they look, we might get some new faces but that is it.

He looks like a jacked up half elf to me, and even then his masculine as hell, Chad-like features shatter that. Take the point off his ears and the character is just a large human.

Whoops, I accidentally outlined the problem with BG3's elves.



5e kept Elves very elfy, excusing the changes made to Arvandor and all that business. OP put some art up on Page 1 that's all 5e material.
The Tieflings are amazingly done, seriously impressed by Larian here.

Not only this but the female faces in general are very masculine...

Lol. Right? I must say that after finding half the grove were elves worshipping Silvanus (a human deity) and one wood elf showing admiration towards my drow character it was a relief to see that Halsin at least leaned towards neutral good, and that's all I looked at, I wanted to take the win.



I suppose that's one way to do it!



No, thank you. I find your post very touching. The reason I enjoy fantasy so much, is because it is an escape from reality. The least I want to encounter in a fantasy setting is anything that resembles our world, when it is supposed to be alien and magical.



Well that's cool! If we can get a couple of 'classic' elven looking heads, I'll take that as a win too. We can all be happy

So does Astarion look enough like an Elf?

Responded in the other thread, and actually a few posts earlier in this one to this question.

I feel like Mods should merge the two elf threads. Kinda weird having two threads for essentially the same topic.

+1

first post folks - be gentle

to throw in a related thought, and i may have missed this discussion on the forums already, but after playing around in the character creator is anyone else scratching their head wondering why Drow arent listed as another Elf subrace? I get the love that the dark elves get in the setting, but it just seems odd? Will the gray dwarves/deep gnomes also be differentiated from general dwarves/gnomes? That could be neat from an 'underdark' based race perspective, but idk it that is what larian is aiming for and it just seems like an odd game design/dev choice. Idk, along similar lines i suppose that tiefling could be grouped as planetouched along with aasimar and genasi (if we get all these options), and gith would breakdown into the githyanki, githzeri, (and maybe gith raiders?) so just thought it was odd to have drow separate from elf, but overall just a small observation from a big fan of the og bg games and dnd in general - really hoping for larian to use ea as an opportunity to make this game even better than it is currently as ive been really enjoying ea so far, but still think the game has a lot of growth potential within their current systems that we can give meaningful feedback on. thx!

yeah drow should just be a subrace of elf, its exactly what they are. Im assuming there are technical reasons though

No, please. This one has zero drama, lol. The other one is 8 pages, but probably 4 of which are people throwing accusations at each other. I'd very much prefer if we keep a civil conversation around here, at least being the OP I can -tryyyy- to stir people away from going off-topic and fighting.



No problem, dear! Welcome to the forums

As for your question, I wouldn't know. Perhaps it has something to do with the scripting of the game, perhaps it has to do with the fact despite being elves, they are very, very different, far beyond a matter of subrace. I do remember in NWN2 there was a 'Planetouched' section with tieflings, genasi, and Aasimars if I recall correctly, but we do not know yet if those races will be included at all in this game. We shall wait and see.

D&D 5e phb has the example elf shown as Drizzt. A number of elves in the books refer to some specific drow characters as "elf", they're still elves and from a lore perspective, the only real thing that separates them is the curse put on them for their choice to follow Araushnee after her final betrayal of Corellon due to their slow manipulation by Wendonai. The Lady penitent trilogy had a bunch of drow have their curse be lifted due to them not having the mark of wendonai and their abandonment of the drow ways, similarly, at the end of the most recent drizzt book "relentless" there is another event that shows how similar they still are really. Wont say more than that due to spoilers.

I think it's just a technical thing for drow to be separate from elves - due to them wanting to have drow and basically "good drow" in BG3 for whatever reason, although IMO the seldarine drow shouldn't be called seldarine drow, they should be dark elves and not have drow colouring at all.

p.s. fair point against the merge, it's just I put a reasonably detailed rundown of the subraces for elves in the other one

Oh, I know they're still elves. When I describe them as 'different' I'm merely talking about their culture, their habitat, society, etc, besides the fact that they're intimate enemies. That's what I meant. The differences between drow and elves (any subrace) are more drastic than all of the elven subraces. If that makes sense? But I have no idea why the devs decided to put them in different race categories, I'm just wild guessing. I agree with you it's likely due to a technical reason.



Feel free to post it in here as well! In fact, we can talk in private if you want so that I can add it to the first post of this thread. We can compile all official information that we have to make a stronger case

P.S: I also intend for this topic to be a general feedback on elves. I haven't added a lot more yet because I'm very slow with my playthrough.

The source for the above is Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide for 5e + Races of Faerun for 3/3.5 plus in the case of "Dark Elves" just my observations from lady penitent.

Mmh! I do find it curious the large masses of people claiming that elves are 'white and blonde' and 'too caucasic'. Then you read the descriptions and you find out that the vast majority of them aren not actually white and blonde. There are so many possible combinations, from blues and green hues to very dark skin. Wood elves per instance are said to be the most populous of elves, and they're tan, and dark haired mostly.

On your thoughts about giving subraces ethnic hints, a random thought that occured to me was this elven depiction of 5e Player's Handbook:



She has the classic angular features, but also... Do I have a big imagination, or she kind of looks like Rihanna? :'D This is an excellent example of an ethnic looking elf, in my opinion.

I think using inspiration from African ethnic groups would work well for Wild Elves, Copper Elves would probably be more like mixed background people because Copper Elves are exactly that, a mix of Wild Elves and the other Elven types. Greek ethnic inspiration seems like a good fit for Sun Elves IMO. Moon Elves and Star Elves physically are probably the ones to give the more anglo caucasian appearance. If the were to branch out further, I'm not sure about "asian" (which is a very generic term sadly) inspiration for any of them, Eladrin might be an interesting one to consider tying a bit of Japanese influence to, considering their art in Volo's Guide. Drow would potentially fit following the same pattern as Wild Elves, considering their background as the Dark Elves were originally from the same regions as the Green/Wild Elves.

However, with all the above, I think you'd still want to:

• adjust eyes to be more almond shaped
• add sharper, more angled, more defined jawline and cheekbones
• make the nose a little narrower
• reduce chin width to accent the more angled jawline
• increase the angle of brows slightly
• make the face a bit more slender

Not just you. Totally looks like a Rihanna-Elf!






I like your ideas and would be happy to see something like this in-game in the future

So, what would the above mean for current character creation options for currently available races?

well...
High elves would have more european features, with them ranging from more anglo looking to greek/italian. The colourations would be:
Skin: Pale, tanned/bronze tones, pale skin tones with a blue hue, pale skin tones with a purple hue.
Hair: Blondes, Browns, Blacks, Reds, Blues, Whites, Golds, Silvers, Coppers
Eyes: Blacks, Golds, Silvers, Blue/Green with Gold Flecks, human colours.

Wood elves would be more african and mixed heritage features. Their actual bodies in theory, if a slider system was added, should probably have slightly more room for broader, sturdier appearance than high elves.
Skin: tanned/bronzed through to very dark browns
Hair: Copper, Brown, Blond, Black, Gold, Reds
Eyes: Greens, Hazels, Browns, possibly silver, possibly black

Lolthian Drow would be again more african for their features like Wild Elves, they should be shorter than high and wood elves.
Skin: shades of obsidian, purple, grey. brown or blue undertones, possibly include some lighter versions of those too as a nod to a lot of art.
Hair: various whites and off whites
Eyes: Reds, Purples, Ambers

Seldarine Drow should be pretty similar to Wood Elves for options, but be shorter like drow and lack the mixed heritage faces.

Reminding again that those real world ethnicities would be a starting point for elven faces, but they'd all be adjusted based on the bullet point list above.

+1

Elves should be as tall as humans or even taller like in Norse mythology and Tolkiens work DnD felt Elves were to perfect so they made them manlets but everyone rightfully ignores it.

My understanding is in the older tales and histories elves were always taller, thinner and "more ethereal" than stumpy humans.

Nope, they were tiny in most stories, think "wee folk", or they were monstrous and misshapen like goblins, animals mixed with humans.

Forgotten Realms is not Tolkien.

If you've been paying attention to illustrations in DnD you'll know that no two editions have the same kind of art style, and even within a single edition you'll find a wide variety of depictions, and no two are identical.

Look at the depiction of Drizzt on pg 21 of the 5e PHB, compare to the elf in pg 25, the one on pg 44, the bard on pg 51 (this one is a half elf I think), then you have a moon elf and a wood elf druid on pg 64 and 67 respectively. The ranger on pg 89 and the rogue on pg 91. Then we have another two spellcasting elves on pg 138 and 169. They all look, with like one exception (pg 138), like humans with funny ears and strange colours... But they're all slightly different in style too. The elven faces in BG3 are, afaic, elven enough for me.

FWIW Humans are just as much planar interlopers as the other races. It is vaguely implied that the original humans came from Earth (see the variety of human mythology represented - everyone from Tyr, Tymora/Beshaba (who together were originally the Greek goddess Tyche), practically the whole Egyptian pantheon (Sharess = Bast, for example), and gods from the Babylonian pantheon etc). Humans can also breed with elves to produce fertile offspring (half elves), which implies they are much closer on a genetic level than you'd think.

Z.

No, but forgotten realms elves have been as tall as humans since at least 3rd edition, even when the phb ones were not.

Fair enough. Depictions vary from artist to artist, this much is true. However, some traits have been consistent, and I have attached 5e art to the very first post of this thread, in case you did not see.

It all boils down to the same though, specially considering just how much the art varies... That, ideally, it would be amazing if there were options for everyone's taste.

Thank you for the time, effort and politeness you put in this post Goldberry!
Totally agree with you

Absolutely based.

It does my heart good to see such a sound argument backed up by evidence from all major sources, in this case 5e official material and artwork and descriptions from FRCS. And there is not much that I could add past my total support for the return to source in more way than one. I would like to acknowledge that Larian may have had noble intentions but the reality is that the changes made are not producing the results they had desired or the effects that they had hoped for and there is no shame in that. I don't believe the humanization of elves has done anything other than take away something magical and intriguing from the high fantasy genre in every dimension.

Now that I have played a few more hours of Baldur's Gate 3 Early Access perhaps more than I dare to admit... I feel like the content of this thread is now even more important to lift to attention. The game itself is really great, and certain enemies terrifying, but I haven't seen a single elf that doesn't just look like a human with pointy ears.

I also have other feedback (we need to talk about the bears), but as mentioned somewhere else there must be another way to forward it to the developers of Larian consequently for them to see and be aware of, so if anyone got advice, please share! This thread is otherwise a great place for players to pile up the constructive feedback for our elves!

Thread's too long to read the whole thing but:

I think this is probably just an EA issue? Agreed though, I was definitely a bit sad when I realized that Humans, Elves, Half-Elves, and tieflings all share the same body model. Isn't that probably just because the bodies are lower development priority at this point though?

Also, the female Githyanki is just the generic female model as well I believe.

Elves should DEFINITELY get their own body model at the very least, and yeah, the heads and facial hair feel way too human.

Thanks guys!

+1 Very much agree that the current half-elven faces are more 'elven' than the elven faces we have!

Those looking to make the half-elven faces available for their elves, please look into the mod HERE by AlanaSP: Custom Character Enhancer.

I HOPE it's an EA thing. I wasn't 100% sure since I haven't played EA (so haven't analysed the models/animations closely), but that's disappointing - especially when you look at dwarves, who have their own walking animation.

I would post this in the feedback section if you haven't already; it would likely get more Dev eyes.

Muy cierto me tuve que hacer un semi elfo por que tenían más características de belleza pero igual como tu dices parecen muy humanos los elfos. Esperemos que hagan cambios o tocara esperar a los modders que hagan ese cambio. por cierto como subes fotos aca ?

Maybe slightly tilt the eyes?

Consulta encontraste diferencia en caras ? entre subrazas yo las veía todas igual D;!!!!

OP tis is Larian's version on Elves. They are a fantasy race, you can make them look however you want.

You kind of cant.
You need sliders to create what you want. Otherwise you are stuck with the half a dozen faces that Larian has given you.

I'm talking about Larian can make the elves how they want because they are a fantasy race, and who decides what a made up fantasy race *should* look like?

Elves in DOS2 looked like wood carvings, Elves in Dragon Age looked alien, Elves in Dragon Quest are pink skinned, with fairy wings, and Elves in LoTRs look like Humans with pointy ears.

Stop being the elf police guys :X.

except fatepeddler, this isn't Larian's IP. this is D&D. And we're saying what the IP says elves look like. you're doing the equivilant of saying "ohh well it's just a sciencie fiction game, aliens can look like whatever they want" on a thread telling a video game maker that "no wookies are not bald with squid tentacles for hair"

I mean they can.
And its EA so I guess some people are not a fan of this interpretation and are voicing it.

They are Larian's Elves, and where did DND get Elves from? DND got them from J.R.R. Tolkien! It doesn't matter what they look like, when you read The Lord of the Rings you could've visualised them differently to how they were presented in the films.

They are a fantasy race, the creator can make them look how they wish. The same with a DND playthrough, Elves could be different in one playthrough compared to the next.

And Larian has created an EA specifically for feedback and discussion.
And this is just that.

I will tell you the same thing to other players who try to tell people they can't have X or do Y.
Stop it.
Go do something more constructive.

You're very aggressive.

I don't understand why people can't just adjust it to their liking in their own head canon, why must people have everyone available to them in game?

And I can't understand why people go on the internet, assume they are some sort of spokesperson for a company and defend that said company's actions. As they perceive them anyway. Then proceed to tell any dissenting voice regardless of how constructive they are to tear them down and belittle them.
What is even more interesting these sort of people take some sort of sanctimonious tone like they know better or are revealing facts that were previously unknown to the other posters.

What I find ironic is that such posters accuse others of headcanon when obviously its the otherside that is referencing materials and descriptions of the original authors of this piece of make believe fantasy. Not to mention everything so far presented is under construction and review until a full release and this company has explicitly said is looking for constructive feedback and concerns.

Anyway. To sum up.
Don't be a party pooper and get off your highhorse.