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

Are you trying to tell me that I am a racist?

Did you get to read what I wrote, and the opinions of other people who agree with me?

I really hope you are not an adult, as your level of understanding apparently belongs to a 12 year old child. So from now on i will deal with you taking into account your immaturity.

I will explain to you in the simplest way possible, as I am really bored with all this discussion. The elves of Forgotten Realms should not represent any ethnic group as they are not human, that is, neither European, African, Asian or any other. Elves have to resemble their own race, as they already have their physical characteristics defined by the books that this game is based on, and these characteristics make them unique, which is exactly what i and others want.
It is obvious that the game has to be representative, however, we want all these ethnic groups to be represented in the human options, which is currently lacking. Still, you and others may want nonhuman races to have more human features (which doesn't make a lot of sense to me) and as I said before, i accept that, but Larian should at least make these faces more like those of the elves, that is, sharp and angular features, since at the moment they have extremely human faces, especially males, which have very strong masculine features.

Well, that's my opinion, do what you want with it.

This is the last time I will post here, as this discussion has taken a completely wrong turn, and I hope that everyone who tried to turn this into a discussion about current policies will feel ashamed. That was never my intention. All of you lack the ability to interact with others in a non-offensive manner while trying to understand the opinion of others and give your own opinion without prejudice.

So from what I believe, Larian don't actually hire visual artists. The people making decisions for how everything looks are the same people programming and coding the game.

This is based on looking at their jobs advertised, and even if they do have anyone working that is described as being an artist, I would think all their background was also programming and coding and no art experience.

There are loads of visual artists with a long history in drawing and designing fantasy characters that could do a much better job of making the character models and appearances than Larian seem to be, this is evident in the fact that even most indie games have much nicer looking characters, as well as just about anything you can find on Deviant Art, also many games with all their community made mods and additional characters, but still a supposedly AAA game studio that charges $60 for their game still can't hire one?

A lot of people of course can't see anything wrong with the character models and think everything is fine, the thing is you can even get free games with better designed characters than this one has - a lot of people that start out as artists progress to making their own 'visual novel' based slide show with text games, many of which start out as free downloads with optional purchases.

But a $60 game made by a AAA studio has character models that look as bad as the ones we've currently gotten, and yes they are that bad relatively to other much cheaper and even free RPGs that you can already play, and even compared to other AAA games out there (Look at Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk characters, pretty much everything about them is perfect and flawless design).

I blame all of this on COSPLAY = boring character designs Im sure WOTC also had a hand in this. Very humanoid/ real people looking = boring in a fantasy setting.
Larian had some great stuff going in DOS2 with Fane/Red prince, even the elves looked great; super tall and slender.

The heads are all 3D scans of real people. They've just been modified to look more like the other D&D races. You can see the same of the same scans that were used for humans were used for other races.

And this is exactly what the problem is. Nobody asked for this and very evidently, it works very poorly. The characters look terrible.

Cool and for what reason? Evidently not to improve the quality of the 3D model.

For political reasons we are no longer allowed to discuss. Some stuff about diversity.

Speaking with some experience, I think it could work really well as a starting point, but they just need to put in more work on the fantasy races, go further with the hybrid approach.

In what other cases has it worked well?

It's fast and the results are realistic. Realistic is actually the complaint here though, because they look too much like the people who were scanned. So it takes more work to make them look convincingly like fantasy races.

See above, unless you don't think the human models look good. It's common to use parts of specially photographed people to create textures. The scan just creates the models and the textures perfectly mapped all at once.

The Human models are the worst looking ones in the game.

We shouldn't be expecting 'fast' as a defensible reason from a AAA game.

Well, if you think so, I don't think you're going to like anything they come up with.

The point of Early Access is to give feedback on the game, and my main criticism is that the character models are universally terrible and need much improvement. Threads such as this one echo that sentiment and many players feel the same way. The actually reasons for why the character models have been done this way are so indefensible to the point that I have now been silenced from talking about them.

Holding the opinion that the models are universally terrible is different than saying the elves don't look enough like elves. I very much agree with the latter. As far as the former, obviously feel free to express your opinion, but I think they are pretty set on using 3D scans as a starting point.

Making Drizz't more feminine doesn't make him any less human , though.

Anyways, he does has very masculine trait as well , such as big jaw, receding forehead and proeminent forehead, chiseled feature. But the slender chin and hollowed cheeks give him this slender look.[/quote]




- This is exactly what makes them more androgynous. They have feminine and masculine characteristics.

- You are right. Making elfs more androgynous doesn't make them more human, but this is just a detail that is missing.
[/quote]


Yeah, I see where you're going (I understood since the first post). Look, I don't mind either way, If Larian has some time to do a couple of beautiful, slightly androgynous head for both gender, why not, great addition to the game.

Also, some elves have very masculine head (the weaponmaster of the second house of Menzoberranzan is considered to be very masculine looking, like a colossus). But agreed, that's not the majority.

I was not talking to you and I never called you a racist. The post was directed to DumbleDorf who keeps bringing up identity politics. SHAME on you for insulting me when I wasn't even talking to you. Shows how immature you are. At the end of the day this is just a video game.

Elves don't come from the Feywild; certain elves come from the Feywild.

I think elves look pretty faithful to how they are meant to look in D&D. The only real issue I have currently is that the difference between elves, half-elves, and humans is somewhat nonsensical. Elves are not pre-defined as being diminutive emo boys. There's plenty of lore and artwork for the last 40 years that features elves as being no more or no less masculine or hardy looking than humans. Historically, elves (but not drow) have been taller than humans in the Forgotten Realms, but this appears to have changed somewhat around 4th edition, and they're now considered about the same height.

I do not think they should swap the half-elf models with the elf models, but I do think they need to round out the half-elves a little more. Their ears are too sharp, and their features are a bit too elfy in general. They shouldn't be able to pass at a glance as either human or elf. That's their whole deal. They're outcasts in both societies.

I'm gonna write here something I noticed in the forums which is players are getting them mixed up because this thread opened up a whole can of worms. The General forum is not for feedback, according to the description, is to talk about our theories, ideas and even fan fiction in relation to the game. If players are trying to get Larian's attention, that should be directed to the Feedback & Suggestion forum or use Twitter to talk to Larian. I think a lot of us are extremely passionate about D&D and want our voices heard but we shouldn't be at each others throat about it either.

+1

I think the OP has flounced so probably won't respond.

However, for the record, I agree with you. I'm uncomfortable in assigning Terran human ethnic characteristics to non-human Faerun races just to meet a diversity target and reflect the world in which we live, but by all means have dwarfs that have negroid facial features or elves that are Asian in appearance. However, make that the effect of the world in which THEY live and not the world in which WE live. If we use Tolkien as the base reference, and most fantasy RPG elves follow his model, then they are all fair skinned and tall. Despite being a South African by birth, Tolkien had no reason to use another ethnic group as his base appearance and culture because he knew what he wanted his elves to look like. That does not mean that another fantasy world creator cannot make elves who are Asian, brown, black or even small and green.

Fantasy races look like they do because that's how we, as consumers and creators of fantasy worlds, visualise them. My 'perfect' model for an elf will look very different to yours and will probably reflect my own culture and upbringing. However, we should both have the option to create a character based on our own vision.