Larian Studios Forums Divinity General Discussion A mistake to avoid in Fantasy setting since BG3

Homogenizing races is sadly an ongoing trend in entertainment for various reasons.

1. Some people started to virtue signal by accusing WotC that D&D race X represent ethnicity Y (they could not even agree on which one) and that them being different is racist. Sadly instead of ignoring them WotC caved and thats the reason why suddenly everything in D&D is a multicultural utopia.

2. After WotC drove away all their old role player customers they only survived because Stranger Things attracted a lot of casuals to the game. But they were far less interested in storytelling and role playing and instead only wanted combat and "numbers go up". So they build their characters to be good in combat and nothing else. I literally have been told by them that it is impossible to play an orc archer because they can't get a 16+ Dex at level 1 when races still had fixed ASI.
So with the primary target group of D&D being people who never in their life would play something not optimized WotC caved again and removed all differences between races.

For video games there are additional factors.

3. Motion capturing is expensive, but can easily be reused as long as the skeletal structure remains the same. So for cost cutting the number of races with different skeletons get reused. And its not only animation, also all the equipment and clothes would have to be remade to fit a new skeleton.
That the reason why halflings in BG3 are just scaled down humans with the same proportions or why Blizzard invented a new humanoid dragon race for playable dragons for which they used the elf skeleton instead of making the long existing dragon race playable.

4. Thirst. As mentioned Larian worked hard to attract the Romfantasy crowd and thirsters as that brings the money as the success of the Hojoverse and BG3 shows.
But while some people are ok with romacing something alien or furry, most want conventional pretty human and (tolkien/anime hybrid) elven waifus. And as BG3 made Lariant into the gooning studio as far as all the new players BG3 attracted are concerned, this is what Larian will likely deliver to not disappoint them.

That is true, but I hope that rather than letting technical challenges reduce everything to human-like, that they see it as something worthwhile to invest resources towards overcoming.

In the end I'd rather see a unique lizard race which may have some issues with clipping and animations than less variety just so everything can be perfect for cinematics.