Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Elven Representation - And all things elvish!

So I guess my question to you, is should elves be beautiful by western standard of beauty? eastern standard of beauty? pacific islander standard of beauty? Whose standard of beauty do you think we should use when designing elves?

You raise an interesting point - when making a game for a global audience chances are most if not all characters will look ugly to everyone. I think the most acceptable and least offensive solution would be to put paper bags over their heads.

OR! Just give them impossible, unrealistic and beautifully angular features that are still pleasing to the eye! Yes! Yes please! :'D

I'm afraid that's highly offensive to angularly challenged members of peoplekind. WotC has just deducted 10 points from your social credit score.

She's a half-elf. But that is also one of the reasons I created this topic. Both Astarion and Shadowheart lean towards evil and have 'edgy' backgrounds.
As Slippery Catfish mentioned above, elves lean heavily towards chaotic good. I found it odd that both Origin characters with elf blood share that in common, having a more traditional option in between would have been really nice.

I wouldn't really care, if Origin characters wouldn't have the advantage of a richer experience in comparison to custom created characters.

You can bet the dirty Sharran is getting a boot from my party as soon as I'm able to dispense of her! (Once she's helped me survive of course)

Can never trust that lot. Ever :P

We know about the Drow, Half Drow, Half Elf, and High Elf, but the Wild Elf is certain to be in as well, and there is a good chance Shadar Kai Elves (they retconned Shadar Kai into being Elves all sorts of rammifications for that), Eladarin Elves (the Feyish Kind, not Celestial, with four subsub races based on the seasons), Sea Elves will also be in.

And High Elf includes fluff wise Sun, Star, and Moon Elves.

But if you think that is alot of Elves, that is nothing compared to Tieflings. They are confirmed as using the MTOFs Tieflings with subraces, there are NINE Tiefling subraces in that book, one for each Archedevil/Layer of Hell. Plus they might have Feral Tieflings from the SCAG as well.

Bawhahaha, Elves in FR are primarily Choatic Good my arse, in practice they are often Lawful Evil with a long history of Genocide. Elves are the svariest race in FR if you know their history.

True. They might've done it because, for example, sun elves and moon elves both just use the high elf stats.

Though, Sven also says during the demo that you're "going to a place called Faerun" as if the nautiloid picked you up from elsewhere. Not my favorite idea, but would also explain it.

i somehow dont think well be getting nine subraes of tiefling.
at least not with visual differences.

Still wondering if subraces count for the 15 races.
Especialy since Drow seem to be treated as a different race even tho technically they are a subrace

General human standards.
There really isn't that much difference between eastern and western standards.

Kinda agree there.
From what I've seen so far of the companions, only the human mages seems OK/interesting to me.
The evil gay vampire interests me not, the elf gives me a edgy try hard vibe, which I hope I'm wrong about, since she the only female companion that looks decent.

Yep. Having companions is great, but having to main them for a better game experience sucks.

On the companions, I'm confident Larian will give us some better variety than "Funny Bearded Mage, Hungry Vamp Lad and Scowly Sharran Lady." I know next to nothing about the Gith warrior.

These are just the very first ones we've seen. I don't take particular issue with any but Shadowheart, and purely from a personal perspective - saying whether they're well made just yet is getting the cart before the horse considering we're only just coming up to Early Access.

Back on the topic on Elves specifically, someone above mentioned they're "LE in practice." I can consider that true for certain members, but -yes- they do generally start as Chaotic Good. You don't find the typical inhabitants of Elven villages chanting about scouring out an entire landscape with a High Magic Ritual just to get a few lads they're not fond of. As a race they've made some hugely mistaken decisions that lead to absolute tragedy, but they remain a primarily Good aligned people as far as I'm aware.