Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General What happened to Elves?

This game is an excellent example of how this is not childish, including copyright strikes, lest everyone ends up as a cannibalistic slave giraffe, driven by sensationalism.


Maybe you can see the irony in how an incorporation of certain elements (like slavery) makes them more generic than any ear shape could ever achieve. Again, the complete opposite of creative or unique. This was also visible in Dragon Age, where the so called elves are basically the "oppressed natives".

I'm not 100% on Tolkien's side either btw, but his elves don't violate canon.

While my post was meant to being a direct reply to NickNick's, I guess I kind of indirectly replied to several opinions as well. I feel like it's safe to assume you're responding to me as you've referenced what I talked about specifically. I'm more than happy to explain my post more in-depth and talk about intent and interpretation as it will give me a chance to voice my own opinion on Larian's design choices.

It fits closer to older depictions of elves in folklore where they were viewed as harmful/disruptive to human society. As opposed to to being elusive and desirable when they became romanticized. I brought it up, as NickNick's post read as if there was no room to draw reference from anything other than Tolkien's interpretation if it had the name elf. As if it's the end all, be all. I didn't, nor was I trying to imply that Larian drew inspiration solely from germanic folore. I brought it up to illustrate that elves in design can come from the Tolkien depiction most fantasy media adopts. I think it's kind of short-sighted and inappropriate to demand every design choice of physical appearance and story/lore follow the same mold every time someone creates something fantasy related. I think it was Larian's intent to make design choices that drew inspiration from somewhere other than the many Tolkien clones that are out there. That being said, I'm also not trying to claim that the choices they've made are the most original or inventive. Making elves slaves, or viewed as savages because of their connection to nature or removal from society isn't new. They literally just flipped the typical roles of elves and lizard people in most fantasy media. However, I appreciate the lore behind *how* elven society got to where they were in DOS2.

As for the aesthetic design choices; I like the height, elongated and slender limbs/neck. They were easy/effective design choices to separate them from more typical elf designs. Not that it's ever been done before (hey Bioware). The proportion Larian achieve is more "correct". I also like the lean, lithe, sinewy muscularity to them. I think all of the choices relate and work in tandem with each other to depict their tribal-esque culture. I think they were good choices in relation to their designs in Dragon Commander to show the changes the race has undergone since. Dragon Commander being the first game in the timeline at 8800 AR while DOS2 takes place between 1233 AD and 1238 AD. Physical appearance is a great and easy way to narrate change over a period of time as long as that. Granted, that kind of physical evolution would've taken longer in real life, we're dealing with a fantasy setting. I do think the weird ridges/lines on the torso are unnecessary and distracting. There's definitely better ways they could've added more diversity from typical or their past designs. Ones that would've been more appealing and functional.

As for the actual 3d renders themselves, I like the female models. The head selections have a good mix of following the beauty triangle vs. characterization. Leaving a few that are more atypically beautiful and some that are more exaggerate to fit the new overall design. As for people complaining that Sebille doesn't look *exactly* like she does in a single piece of art, it's a CRPG, they were never going to spend the time/money on the facial renders to make them as detailed as the art. It's just not feasible or functional for a game with a top down view. The established features and proportion are rendered in her head model, however. Being a little simplified with slightly more exaggerated features (such as her eyes) reads better from a distance and is less expensive/time consuming to make.
I'm pretty disappointed in the male renders though. They focused way more on characterization to the point where most of them feel unusable for a personal character. I also don't like the choice to make the males shorter as they already did that with another unusually tall race in the game, the lizards. Not only is it more appealing on them, it also feels weird to repeat it. I feel like making the males and females the same height would have been better. The hairstyles are disappointing as well. There are too many tribal motiff options, that are frankly either poorly designed or just need better proportions. They should have made just as many civilized hair options to account for either circumstance (such as Sebille's hair being more tame/civilized because she didn't live in elven society) or realism because Elves wouldn't have *as much* access to construct them at Fort Joy. Most of them aren't functional either.

I also have a problem with the armor design. I feel like it should've been limited to several armor sets you can only get in either elven territory, from elven vendors or found in ruins (Or a combination of the three). It's un-immersive to have a majority of armor pieces somehow be fully elven so far removed from elven society. Not to mention it's somewhat disruptive to the flow in design of the rest of the game to have *so many* of them be over the top tribal motifs. I don't think they're bad, just too frequent.

I like the overall design going on(more so when including the lore). However there are definite flaws in some of the execution (looking at you male elves) and what I feel were some poor choices such as the armor and disparity/disconnect with the hairstyles.

How is this about sides? What canon is there to violate? The entire point is that all of these depictions, Tolkien's included, are in some way based off of folklore that nobody owns (in retrospect this is a much easier way to state that).

I never claimed anything what they did was new or inventive. I didn't express that it was good. Neither of those things have anything to do with my initial reply to you. All I said was; it was childish to expect every depiction of elves to be like Tolkien's, illustrated that his depiction is based off an era of literature that was loosely based off folklore that existed before them, and that you shouldn't present your opinions as facts.

Being a slave isn't exclusive or specific to elves in any way. It is however present in Sebille's backstory (I guess she's all elves now?). The Lizards take members of all races as slaves. Something evident in the first five minutes of gameplay, as no matter your race, the Red Prince attempts inspect your character as a potential slave. Have you even played this game?

If people need to dig deep from wikipedia to find out that these elves are interpretation from some germanic folklore (aaand those folklore creatures sound more like vampires than elves as majority knows them), then what's the point? Most people won't bother searching origins of the elves and thus wonder "this is interpretation from what? this is not anything like elves I know". So definition of elves is pointy ears and thats it? I could put pointy ears to a log and claim that is my interpretation of elf?

Sorry, I have bit difficulties to put my thoughts into text, someone smarter could explain this better, I mean that without pointy ears and elf name it would be almost impossible to know from what they are interpretation from, unless you don't have knowledge from german folklore. It feels like whole image that has been born from elves after Tolkien is completely overwritten. This does not feel like interpretation, more like reboot.

Besides to me they don't look all that original, they look lot like Kaminoan species from Star Wars, only difference is that they wear human skin and thus look much more disturbing. Maybe they are Kaminoan from Star Wars wearing human skin and I just accidentally spoiled major crossover plot twist, sorry about that.

Anyway interpretation origins does not matter to me, things that matter:

1. I find them ugly, epic ugly, even Nier main character is handsome compared to these. It's my opinion I know...

2. Cover art is completely different from ingame. Elf is central character in art, almost like main character, problem is character in that art is not in the game, completely different creature with same name is, I feel bit cheated.

The more woodsy folklore/ dryad type aesthetic is fine. It's been done many countless times by other games already and I personally like it. That's not what this is about.

Sylvari armor worked because it was at least semi realistic in how it covered you most often.

I can see the similarity with the original sin 2 version, but they ruin it by over exposing calves, thighs legs and mid sections. Can you spot the difference?










I sure can.

Really, there are so many ways they could have gone about capturing that woodsy/dryad aesthetic while still making the race appear both cool and different.

We could have even gotten this...




Instead we got this.



One seems familiar, but with just enough variance to appear distinct and flavorful.

The other looks as if it were made with such a focus on being different and unique, it never stopped to realize the look it achieved simply does not look good.

Elves, like most(all) creatures in pagan mythologies are magical creature of nature, neither benevolent or harmful by design but they can be. Again, they represent nature first and foremost. Tolkien's elves, while generally benevolent toward humanity, are not its protectors and did plenty of nasty things, if you actually read The Silmarillion. They are a product of mythology, and as myths and magic recede at the end of the Lord of the Rings, so do the elves, just as it happened in the real world. So you see Tolkien did not do anything to elves, neither did anyone else for that matter.

Tolkien's elves are not "good elves", and "bad elves" are not "edgy original elves", this division doesn't even make sense.


So you try to claim there is no canon while judging how close they are to a canon that you claim doesn't exist. Ok..

All this results in, is a misuse of the term "elf" and the corresponding loree as a shell for a random construct.

Would you mind answering why this random mind construct has to be named an "Elf" specifically? What do you derive from this? Since you claim there is no canonical depiction of an elf, what is the purpose of defending this name specifically and not let elves represent actual elves, let giraffes represent giraffes, and let Lizards represent Lizards.. ops, and it seem Larian already did that.