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

Apologies for the incredibly delayed response! Basically, I try to avoid invoking certain associations (such as bringing up "Caucasian" in the context of The Forgotten Realms) because - despite our best efforts - they cut down on the imagination.

Certainly. There are few direct comparisons between RL and FR ethnicities. Grey skin is a natural complexion you can have in the realms as a human, and Thayans canonically have a yellow-jaundiced complexion. And those from Tethyr tend to have blue eyes in addition to darker complexions.

I do not believe that means Jaheria being portrayed with such a pale complexion is a particularly good look though. WoTC themsleves has made the comparison to certain ethnicities along the Southern Sword Coast (from which her and her husband hail) and RL ones. Making the woman paler than both her in-game portraits, what the sourcebooks suggest is typical for the folk of the region (which closely matches her portraits) and contrary to the real-life inspiration is unfortunate, and I don't know why they did it, considering everything else about her seems to match her BG 2 portrait pretty closely.

Agreed! They need to swap the half elf and elven presets badly. Especially for male character presets.

What kind of Elves are the Elves in Baldur's Gate 3. I don't mean culturally but rather in terms of in game designation. The Wood Elves seem like Sylvan Elves, but are the High Elves Moon Elves or Sun Elves. From what I recall from previous BG games we were treated as a Moon Elf by default.

I actually disagree with this, and think the male half elves look (mainly) a lore-friendly, attractive combination of elf and human, whereas the male elves look appropriately alien and elfy. Even the weird big-jawed one (which admittedly isn’t great) can look okay with the right hairstyle.

But I feel like I’ve probably already said that, if not in this thread then elsewhere!


We can make our high elves look like either. As of EA there’s nothing I’ve noticed that treats us specifically as either moon or sun elf (or any other sort of high elf), and given that it’s not something we can specify about our character at creation, it’s not something the game is likely to be able to respond to either. Unless, I guess, we get a dialogue choice at some point. But perhaps we’ll get to meet NPC elves at points of the game who are identifiably of one or other of the high elf types.

High Elves are both in 5E/BG3.

Per the PHB, the description for High Elves breaks down Sun and Moon Elves from Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and the Forgotten Realms.

I would have liked to have them broken apart just for the sake of being thorough with tags, but oh well. At least there's a ton of colors to use for the player's own headcanon. (I saw one Youtuber make her High Elf look like her Moon Elf from other games.)

I mean not officially having Moon Elves and Sun Elves is almost as bad as doing a Dragonlance game without the Qualinesti and the Silvanesti.

Curious what the Half Elves will get from all the reshuffling of attribute points in the character creation. So far I am trying to decide between a High Elf/Half High Elf Wizard or a Drow/Half Drow Sorcerer. I will probably play all 4 at some stage so I am just being picky as I pass the days until the game release.

Where's agree button, when one needed?

Recently I learned, Larian did the same with dwarves (changing shield/golf dwarves to mountain/hill dwarves). It's a freaking FR game for god's sake...

Coming back to the game after over two years and I'm still making half-elven male Daisys who I then headcanon into full elves. Fortunately there's a face or two I can make work on my female elves.

Yeah, that's a real bummer. After reading some of the Forgotten Realms novels, it's really hard for me to think of Sun and Moon Elves as appropriately being represented as the same.

Even if mechanically they were the same, and most non-elven npcs didn't make the distinction, among elves the sun/moon/wood/drow distinction is pretty culturally important. Calling a Sun elf a Moon elf is in-universe stated to be a good way to start a fight.

Another poster mentioned gold/shield dwarves. Another important distinction. Since Gold Dwarves hail from distant South-Eastern Faerun, and would have a very different perspective. "Where I'm from, drow ride horses and worship Loviatar". "Chosen of Mystra? I saw far more impressive wizards than you in Halruaa, Gale"

Well, to be fair, the change with the dwarves is more cosmetic than with elves, because shield dwarves are also known as mountain dwarves and gold dwarves are also known as hill dwarves, so it's just taking off a bit of flavour. Elves are a much more drastic change, because both sun and moon elves are dumped into one subrace (high elves) and as you mentioned, the distinction is culturally important.

Considering the fact that Elf PC's are from Baldur's Gate (Except Lolthsworn Drow who are from the Underdark) I am going to guess that the High Elf is a Moon Elf, who are more tolerant and cosmopolitan than Sun Elves (who most likely have all gone to the isle of Evermeet). Baldur's Gate is a rather tolerant and open city so you are most likely to find Elves who can live alongside the other races. Not that Sun Elves can't be as tolerant or open minded to other People, Moon Elves seem far more capable of intermingling in more human dominant societies like city states along the Sword Coast.

Oh no the dwarves too? I am ok with making modifications to systems as you are adapting table top to a digital experience but this is core lore we are talking about.

Really need that agree button =)

Will GB make a reappearance? She ought to know the impact of her legacy.

Was there any impact? I think for GB probably not. They didn't change anything afaik about the looks, or? Also in terms of in-game conversations and items, there isn't much going on for high elves at least (hopefully different for wood elves). I'm mid-through act 3 and had probably 2, 3 unique high elf conversation options (my drow had more before the Underdark already). And afaik none of the iconic elven items made it into the game (elven chain, boots and cloak of elvenkind). The only thing I have seen so far is a Corellon staff.

In anticipation of the upcoming September Playstation 5 release, I'm bringing this extensive discussion to the fore in hopes of generating an influx of fresh perspectives!

You can pick "moon" skin tones as an elf, but I don't find them to really fit the moon elf description. I had to tick show all colors and pick a Drow color to get the icy blue from the wiki description.

The faces should be more slender, and more angular, yes, but they apparently modeled them after people so go figure.

The path of least resistance? Sad.