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

An example — There is high phenotypic diversity among horses, and thus very different breeds of horses with unique traits. So yes…they can look very different even though they are all horses. But a horse is not a donkey. Sure, they can mate…but no one would ever confuse a horse and a donkey.

I think of mythical races like that. Drow elves and wood elves and whatever other elves are different horse breeds. Humans are different Donkey breeds. Etc.

But maybe different species is an unfair comparison for mythical races. Another example….dogs. Lets say all the humanoids are like dogs. Gnomes are shitzus, humans are dobermans, elves are poodles, halflings are dashunds….whatever. Are you seriously telling me those breeds look the same? They can all interbreed, they are all dogs, they all pkay together in the park. Each breed has within -breed phenotypic diversity (ie, I can pick my overweight shitzu with the spotted nose out of any crowd). But even a child can see the overall physical difference between a poodle and a doberman.

If artists are not talented enough to convey such subtlety when creating their versions of mythical races, I think they need to go back to art school. Plopping ears on a human face is very cheap and borders on a Halloween costume. Its pretty boring as far as artistic design goes. This is a fantasy world…where is the creativity?

If you want a human looking elf, play a half elf imho. But elves should be more distinct than tired trope of pointed ears.

But whatever. Mods will get us all what we want anyway. So I am not really stressed either way.

I think this all goes back to just how UN-Forgotten Realms this game is. Elves are humans with pointy ears, Drow aren't Sunlight Sensitive, Phase Spiders teleport around like they all know a super version of Misty Step, Intellect Devourers don't devour intellect or use body thief or pounce on single individuals but act like standard mins flayer thugs, imps have no resistance and are easy, level 1 noob enemies, mud mephits and their allies don't have proper stats or act like they should, the First Druid of the grove is a weak level 5 noob scrub who can't handle a bunch of goblins and needs you to rescue him, even though he's supposed to be a super awesome accomplished healer and everybody acts like he's an incredible fighter who saved a bunch of tieflings on the road against a pack of gnolls all by hisself, the hobgoblin warlord isn't a hobgoblin warlord, the drow cleric of the Absolute (Minthara) is a pretty weak piece of nothing who can easily be beaten, minotaurs don't act like minotaurs, and hook horrors don't act like hook horrors or have proper stats, and everyone jumps around like super heroes and shoves people three hundred feet off cliffs.

I'd say that sums up the issue. The whole game needs some serious Forgotten Realms infused into it. Right now, it's a great game, and I love it, but it is so UN-Forgotten Realms. The more I play it and analyze it, the more I can understand why so many feel it is a DOS 3 as opposed to a Baldur's Gate 3. Story and settings say it is Baldur's Gate 3, but mechanics and models say something else.

An individual here previously mentioned a particular internet personality in the context of real-life humans portraying elves. In my opinion, actor Claire Forlani - during her prime - could have pulled off a believable half-elf with only minimal cosmetic alteration.

El juego en sí debería reflejar naturalmente estas diferencias. Los jugadores deben disfrutar de la experiencia sin esfuerzo adicional.

I've been collecting 2e Dragonlance material as of late and I must say that Elmore's monochromatic renditions of elves (Laurana, in particular) tend to look MUCH more elfin than his color art. Why is that?

Yeah. Okay. Sure. Even so, this whole "We'll fix it with a patch/DLC/mod." attitude rubs me the wrong way.

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That's another thing.

There's what's popular (Tolkien elves...specifically Peter Jackson's take on Tolkien's elves) and there's what's right (D&D elves). What do you think adds a mark of distinction to a game set in a D&D IP? What is going to make the game more memorable five or ten years beyond its release? Aesthetics matter. "Little" details matter.

For heaven's sake, how did the developers miss something as basic as the sun/moon elf divide from the get-go? I had a bad feeling in my stomach when I read a specific interview a while back ->


Turns out time is only proving me correct. Using the Baldur's Gate legacy to pimp your company is a no-no in my book.

Oh, damn! I took a break and I am pleasantly surprised to see that this is still going on.

Hello everyone! I give you all a very late welcome aboard!

I wonder if anything will come out of this, namely a few new presets

Considering there's been no changes, I doubt it. While the elven women have a couple presets that have some semblance of looking elven (more angular faces), there's still too much square jawness to a couple of the elven women models and just about all the elven men models.

The problem is, Larian is trying to use actual actors for the various presets and not making models that fit the known looks of the races in D&D.

+1

Also +1, though I have given up on this being a real Baldur's Gate / D&D / Forgotten Realms game a long time ago. Now I just hope it will turn out to be a good RPG.

+1 ...

Even tho i believe they could potentialy find better ... :-/

I still think the models are great. I created a wood elf rogue female with red hair in BG3, Neverwinter 1 and 2, Neverwinter Online and Icewind Dale, and she looks the most incredible in BG3. She's barely tolerable in NW 1 and Icewind Dale, because none of the portraits they provided really fit and the models were, naturally, really basic back then, she was mildly better in NW2 and Neverwinter Online. And the same is true for Pathfinder. Only mildly okay. Solasta! No. She looked terrible. I couldn't even stand looking at her and trashed her entire character in that game. I had to go with all new characters for Solasta, because although she was one of my all-time favorites, I just couldn't stomach the model of her in that game.

So, although yes, I would say they could provide more character models that were elfish, I would say that if we really take a step back and compare the models in BG3 to other cRPGs, the elves look phenomenal.

There are plenty of pictures on the internet.


The humans with pointy ears looking "phenomenal" is of little consequence if you want an actual elf, yes?

By the way, male faces 1 and 2 (especially 2) look conventionally elven. I would add a couple more faces similar to those 2, and a few gold shades for high elf.

This would be good post in topic where someone would clain that models in BG-3 are ugly ...

Point here is that they are wrong, and that is entirely different matter. :-/
If i send you picture of beautifull Finish woman with pale skin, blue eyes, thin lips, tiny nose and naturaly blonde hair ... she would be looking great ... but it would still be bad idea to use her as model to present how Afroamericans looks like. :-/

Same problem is here ...
Nobody was arguing that Elves are ugly in this game (maybe except Custom-PC male elves ... bcs they really are), this topic was created to tell larian that their elves re not elven (its in the name BTW)

Here is some appropriate music/ambience to have playing while perusing this thread ->

High Elves - Capital

High Elves - Day Suite

High Elves - Night

High Elves Capital - Night

Heart of the Forest

Neverwinter Wood

Hommlet

Good Vignette

Majula

Ashenvale - Music & Ambience

Eversong Woods - Music & Ambience

The Dreamgrove - Music & Ambience

Suramar - Music & Ambience

Blood Elves - Music & Ambience

The Owl

Southern Face Shrine

Melody of Lute

Secret of the Forest remix

Elven Tree City

Forest Shrine






Hello, Goldberry.

I felt that your efforts were worth preserving. The ultimate goal was to keep this beacon burning at least until the game is fully released. Like quite a few other folks here, I'm not expecting Larian to move mountains, but it's still good to have our voices heard; criticism shouldn't be silenced. Furthermore, people should know that game developers can do better with a cherished series.

What's funny is that I wasn't initially interested in elves when I got into this hobby; Human Clerics/Priests tended to be my "thing". However, with enough exposure to the right sort of authors (e.g., Elaine Cunningham), I came around and developed an appreciation for this faithful fey fixture of the fantasy genre. They definitely deserve a proper treatment. "We'll fix the issue with mods" is such an unsatisfying method of addressing the problem.

P.S. A few months ago, I shared some pictures of what I consider to be proper elves: Post 1 and Post 2. Do let me know if any of those examples live up to your standards.

These are amazing! Michael Ghelfi is a true artist when it comes to balancing soft instrumental play with ambience. <3 I absolutely adore the fact that he often adds soft vocals, laughter and other things to make entire track feel more alive! I look forward to using his stuff in my upcoming DnD sessions! (once my adventurer group actually makes it there... x] )




I like most of them! Definitely! I do not believe that elves necessarily have to be as alien as the Pathfinder elves (although I certainly do not mind, I like them! The only thing I am sorta displeased with is their black alien eyes. . _ . ). I just don't want them to be nothing more than human with pointy ears :< Because if they were, then half-elves and true elves would be identical. I mean, I *DEFINITELY* - even on most of the more human examples - see a clear difference between these elves and some (most) of the faces that we have ingame. *ESPECIALLY* on the male elves. Their faces are much more slender than the faces we have in BG3, and most examples that have been provided thus far have at least a slight tilt when it comes to the elven eyes.

I actually never considered this. The half-elf beeing more slim the the full blood elf is kind of hilarious xD

Halsin beeing an elf did throw me off a little. Theres nothing wrong about individual elves not conforming to a certain sacetic but them all lacking it is indeed kind of an issue

This still hasnt been fixed or addressed?!

lol

+1. they did a marvelous job with Tieflings, hopefully they can make a similar effort to make elves really elvish.