Yes it is. To digress from the topic, I’m not surprised they went this way with the casting but it does seem to deviate from the source material. I guess you could say the same thing about Larian’s interpretation.
Tolkien's elves are, ah, different, but...can you imagine the head honchos of most film/television studios going out of their way to...
Sadly, I think accurately representing "true" elves will remain the purview of fully-animated works.
Tolkien source material stated humans sometimes were mistaken for elves and vice versa. And actually he never described pointy ears on elves and flat out rejected it. People misquote a letter about hobbit ears to say he did. He didn't. And no not all elves are fair skinned either. That is another made up myth by certain people. SOME were. There is no doubt on that. But not all.
Tolkien even implied in writing that his fictional history implies that over time the darker skin colors became inherited traits within tribes or ethnic groups because that is what naturally happens.
People use this as proof of fair skin,
Quote
…They were a race high and beautiful the older Children of the world, and among them the Eldar were as kings, who now are gone: the People of the Great Journey, the People of the Stars. They were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finrod; and their voices had more melodies than any mortal voice that now is heard…
Yet Christopher Tolkien flat out states that text is wrong.
Quote
In the last paragraph of Appendix F as published the reference to ‘Gnomes’ was removed, and replaced by a passage explaining the use of the word Elves to translate Quendi and Eldar despite the diminishing of the English ‘word. This passage — referring to the Quendi as a whole.
Thus these words describing characters of face and hair were actually written of the Noldor only, and not of all the Eldar: indeed the Vanyar had golden hair, and it was from Finarfin’s Vanyarin mother Indis that he, and Finrod Felagund and Galadriel his children, had their golden hair that marked them out among the princes of the Noldor. But I am unable to determine how this extraordinary perversion of meaning arose.
So the text in question was referring to the Noldo only, which at the time Tolkien referred to as Gnomes. Editors of the publishers changed it incorrectly to the more broad term making it a description for all elves when it was not.
