duckley wrote...
Interesting discussion.
In most of the fantasy stuff I have seen most elves look like humans with pointy ears. They have aooeared to be very beautiful, graceful, ethereal. The elves as they appeared in DAO were pretty consistent with my perception (and perhaps the common perception??) of what elves look like - humans that are thin with pointy ears. They werent particularly graceful or beautiful in DAO, but they were definately not cringe-worthy.
This is why I say elves are established fantasy races with rather established looks. Most standard fantasy races have basic appearance guidelines that most people follow. Elven appearances alter somewhat over many adaptations, and I can see writers/artists drastically changing them if they want to, but ultimately I don't see the point in reinventing the wheel every time someone wants to go driving.
I also thought the cultural differences for DA:O elves were enough: being poor, mortal, and downtrodden instead of the beautiful, immortal elite. Yet, people complained about them not
looking unique enough, and I thought, "Who cares? Their looks work for the world they live in and the theme of prejudice they present! They don't
need to look wildly different!"
I have heard the argument that the designers in DA2 wanted the elves not to just look like humans with pointy ears so they changed the design for DA2. But in DA2 they still looked to me like thin humans with pointy ears... very pointy ears, very very pointy ears. What was different was that they seemed even thinner (anorexic) , seemed to be hunchbacked, walked with an odd gait - kind of on their tiptoes, had ETish eyes and had odd foreheads - cro-magnonish. What was also really odd to me, was that elves were IMO very unattractive. It was an interesting design choice. I have to say that Fenris and Merrill looked better than most. Had the elves not looked so different from DAO then perhaps I would not have had such a negative reaction.
Agreed.
Still humans with pointy ears, but now just really fugly ones when the lore tells us the majority of humans still find them attractive. Um, as a human looking between them and feedback forums, I can promise you that the majority of human fans did
not find them attractive. Some did, most didn't. It was very lore-breaking.
I also still find it amazing that the same people that call for making elves unique didn't have a problem with DA:O Dwarves.
Our Dwarves Are All the Same exists for a reason, and while DA:O made some neat changes (a third of them beardless and the women attractive and rather sexualized), they were still basically standard fantasy dwarves.
The elves depicted from DAI may be more attractive than DA2 - I certainly hope so. I also found that Alistair looked very different - and not in a good way. I still dont understand why. I guess I dont manage change well.
I think they're looking better already. More exotic than DA:O but less freakish than DA2.
Not to worry, lots of other people didn't like Alistair's appearance either. I can't really pinpoint what's wrong with it either, but his face just kind of seemed... flabby, swollen, the lighting filled in all the wrong places, etc. It was really bad. It wasn't just the engine though, because some characters looked really good. Cullen and Leliana looked like a million bucks, while Alistair got smacked with the ugly stick and poor Zevran fell off the ugly tree and hit every ugly branch on the way down.
Modifié par Faerunner, 08 août 2013 - 05:59 .
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elves are an established fantasy race with rather established features in our collective conscious? I'm pretty sure most people think of slim, pointy-eared humans when they think of elves. Tolkien established them as slim, beautiful, leaf-shaped-eared people in his books, and most fantasy writers and artists since have adopted his vision.
