That took a long time to read through... There's very little point in responding to the original post, but I'll ignore the "This is Tolkien! No, this is Tolkien!" that has dominated this thread.
I'm fairly surprised that there has been only a little reference to what was earlier labeled as "generic elves" of the modern fantasy era. D&D was huge in shaping how elves were portrayed in so many following fantasy settings, largely in gaming (No, I have no proof, and this isn't about proving anything, so discredit me now and ignore the rest if you so wish).
A friend of mine was introduced to D&D along with me and her being a Tolkien fangirl wanted to play an elf, because in Tolkien, they're so rockin' awesome, right? Turns out she nearly quit upon character creation until it was explained to her that there's no possible way that somebody would be allowed to play a Tolkien elf in a roleplaying game where you're expected to play alongside Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings, etc. She was perfectly willing to accept the D&D elf when it became clear they weren't intended to be the same thing at all, though perhaps a mere shell somewhat resembling the original product. There are Tolkien like elves in D&D, however. They're a fey-type creature found in the Epic Level Handbook and they're called the LeShay.
In that regard, Tolkien elves would fit in DA:O just fine, but it has to be realized they would be unplayable, and
completely different from DA:O elves. You wouldn't really expect to play one of those, right?
I think I heard of elves being taller than humans in one book (Terry Brooks, I think... never finished Tolkien, so I can't remember that description if I ever got to it). Being used to D&D, Everquest, and other games (Incliding NWN, which was a D&D based game, therefore: short elves), I expect elves of the 'generic' genre to be slightly shorter than humans.
Of the elves in DA:O, I really like what they did with the stereotype. They didn't throw it out the window considering that elves would naturally be found in the forests if they hadn't been enslaved, but their current conflict really shows a world with moral strife. For creating a whole new world, I think they did a damn good job.
To say whether I prefer the Tolkien elves or the DA:O elves would be silly. They're not comparable. They share a descriptor of 'elf' with some physical resemblance, but because they're in completely different worlds, anything goes. They're not attempting to be comparable. They're comparable to the elves of MMO's, other fantasy games, D&D, probably many other fantasy books, so long as there's similarity, but there's hardly, if any, similarity to Tolkien's elves. To say that "They shouldn't be called elves if they're not Tolkien elves!" is just as ridiculous as the modern image of elf seen in modern games and books matches the one seen in Dragon Age, with different history and thus, a different society.
Largely... this thread is silly.
Modifié par Jhegan, 13 décembre 2009 - 04:38 .
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