Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Elves should look more otherworldly

I'm pretty sure nobody wants them to look monstruous or ugly, just less relatable while still beautiful and that touch of strangeness to them that makes them seem not caucasic, nor african, nor asian, nor anything but elves.

Of course they have human facial feature they are HUMANOID just like halfling, dwarves, tiefling even Orcs have human feature. What she mean is elf have more slanted eyes(not asian) are a bit leaner with a softer and narrow face, they shouldn't have the facial characteristic of the human races, Looking at an elf you should not see that your looking at someone of asian descent with pointed ears or someone of african or even european descent, which is exactly what we see looking at elves..they look TOO human...Frankly they should just scrap the presets head and give us sliders or if we have to have the presets give us something to modify them.

When it comes to elves not looking similar to real world races that is more of a personal choice but what about people of those races that may want to be an elf that represents them? That's also a personal choice. This would be up to Larian and WOTC and they can make the elves look like what you want but still tweak it represent those races.

Like I said to the post before you. They can still make the elves look like elves and represent those races for the players of those races that want to play as an elf.

Yeah the image above is what I've been expecting elves to be, or at least something similar. I'm wondering though if the real issue is in the animations and facial expressions. I don't know how they work, but I am wondering in how much you can "distort" a human face before your animations start being weird. Although the range of faces is wide in the game and you have smaller faces with features closer to each other and longer faces with features further away, so idk.



The problem with the image you shared is not that its an alien face, its that its one type of the face. When you start creating variations to have different-looking faces, you are bound to get into a territory of various lip shapes, eyelids, eyes, nose, cheeks forehead, etc. Otherwise you end up with 10 presets that look exactly the same. Thats when the diversity comes in, i.e. the lips could be slightly thinner or thicker, the cheeks more concave or more convex etc. There are no "elven" features, there are just variations of human features mapped on the distorted head.

There is a big difference between the face options we have now and how the elves really are according to the description and art of D&D books. Even in the drawings that they looked more human, they were still more delicate and still had some elvish characteristics.

In this image you can see that the pure elf has more human characteristics than the half elf, which should be the other way around.


And here we can see how the structure of the elven face is different.



Elves are not human, they come from another world, so they should be represented as such. With bodies and faces different from humans, but still endowed with extreme beauty. Of course, in the end there are more similarities than differences, but I think that with so much potential it is a mistake to leave the elves as they are now.

The first image I can see what you mean, it should be the other way around. My previous reponses were based on the argument of human-like. I have no problem if they make the eyes a little bigger and somewhat slanted. That's fine by me. All I was saying is that's still human-like to me. The bigger slanted eyes with larger pupils reminds me of Dragon Age two before Bioware changed it. So, I can understand.

I think there should be less of an argument of making all elves look one way or another and just give both options.

Some traditional looking heads for those of us who prefer an alienness to our elves, and the human like version for those who want to see themselves represented.

I don't agree with it. I dont think a fantasy race needs to represent anything other than themselves, and before you mention, I am mixed race myself.

Still. It doesn't have to be one way or the other. It can be both and everyone is happy.

It doesn't bother me if they have a traditional look. The elves from Dragon Age 2 had a traditional look with larger eyes and pupils and slightly slanted. I can also understand if players want to be represented. Like I said, they can always tweak it but still keep it traditional. Maybe just have the hair and skin color represent race (fair for Caucasians, different shades of tan for Hispanic and Asians and darker complexions for Africans).

I agree, but I have to admit that it breaks my immersion a bit, since they will use these models for npc's in the game.

I understand. I feel the same way. I don't play a -fantasy- game that is specially known for its rich nuance of non human races to be reminded of our world. It kind of ruins the magic the closer it feels to home.

Leaving aside all of the ____ for humans comments, I think it's right to say it doesn't have to be all or nothing. A few Lockhart type elves would be nice. I liked the Lirel Baenre drawing for instance.

Id guess the idea elves or dwarves or dragonborne need to somewhat represent the cultures of earth is not really an issue for anyone. We can have each fantasy race vary physically as if we're seeing some of their separate cultures. Maybe that's what Larian was trying to do.

But I dont think Larian would be in trouble if each fantasy race simply had their classical DnD fantasy appearance. Humans, though, should definitely represent all of earth well. And half-races should somewhat, too.

Nobody except Larian who have decided entirely themselves to do as such without any consideration to how it would actually affect any group of people.

I'm gonna answer you here because it seems like your post was locked where people can't respond. To the issue of fantasy races having non-white facial features, I don't see what the problem is as long as they act like their fantasy race. For example, if you have an Orc that may have Asian or black facial features but still behaves like an orc, what is the problem with that? I also just opened up the game and went through every race and found that for females, only the Humans and Tiefllings (who have human origins) have Asian and black facial features, which is fine. Now, when it comes to the males, they seem to have mixed it up and gave Asian and black features to full Elves and Drow with the Humans only having white and black features and no Asian. They should have done for the males what they did for the females for only Humans and Tieflings, who are of human origin. To me personally, it is not game breaking to have a humanoid being resemble real world minorities and it is NOT an immersion killer. If that is the problem for some then that might make that person seem like a racist. As I mentioned to you before in the other thread, there are now Asian and black Vulcans but they still behave as Vulcans. It doesn't ruin Star Trek. So, the same can go for Dungeons and Dragons, I don't think having minorities depicted in humanoid creatures is a big deal as long as they remain to to their fantasy race's culture and personality.

Seems much more likely to have come from Wizards of the Coast than from Larian.

I know I'm being pedantic, but the majority of the world's population are not "minorities".

I love this artwork, indeed more elvish faces would be nice!

The issue is that WOTC and Larian are forcing this without ever having consulted anyone about it. They are deciding how they think that ethnic 'minorities' should be represented without their input.

It has nothing to do with gameplay or immersion and everything to do with misrepresentation and misappropriation of real peoples features.

It wouldn't even be an issue if WOTC / Larian werent being so bolsterously proud of doing it to appeal to whatever area of far leftism they think they are trying to satisfy.

Or if they simply made a fully customisable character generation method instead, which will likely still come.

I personally never had an issue with Drow being an evil race until WOTC somehow decided this was wrong because of real world racial issues and started making drow of all alignments. I had never read anything from any actual people to indicate that these decisions were any kind of rational response to any genuine criticisms.

So what purpose other than fake pandering does any of these decisions serve? Why are real world issues being used at all to influence how a fantasy world should be?

It was good while it lasted. But now I'm out.

Sorry, I live in the United States and unfortunately non-whites are minorities here, even though we are considered very diverse.