(Discussion) Elves and Skyrim

Jexsam · August 7, 2015

LET'S PLAY "JEXSAM IS A LORE NERD AND DEFENDER OF ELVES"

So there's definitely some contention among people as to the looks of elves in the Elder Scrolls series. Now, to get it out of the way first and foremost, everyone is entitled to their opinion, likes, and dislikes, and nothing said here can take that away from you. Mod as you like, and by God, more power to you, because that's why these games are great.

Now here's why you're (mostly) wrong.

Exhibit A: The Elder Scrolls 1: Arena's Dark Elves.

These are some typical Dunmer characters from Arena. They're super low-res so there's a lot of room to argue fine details, but what's inescapable even in pixel form is the strong brow ridge on the male. Red eyes are also evident. We can clearly see the femnale is softer and more human-like, but retains some elven sharpness to her looks - a point for the pro-Tolkien crowd.

Exhibit B: The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall's Dark Elves

Daggerfall is weird. We'll look at the above first, though - we see clearly that the male has a very strong forehead region, resembling but not identical to Skyrim's ridge setup. What is almost identical is the sunken cheeks and sharp, alien features. This is where TES's elves, or at least their Dark Elves, really come into their own look, moving away from the more traditionally elven Drow. The female, again, is softer, but still elven in style. Interestingly, her less pronounced brow ridges fits Skyrim's sexual dimorphism pattern as well, so it is arguable both ways that this is either a more humanoid example or a precedent for the Skyrim example. Again, low-res pixelness makes fine details debatable at best, but this is still a step up from Arena.

The weirdness I mentioned comes in the form of Morgiah, a Dark Elf born to Queen Barenziah herself, yet she looks like...

Both her parents were Dunmer, making her skin color bizarre. She's an exception to the grey-skinned rule established in Arena and otherwise upheld in Daggerfall. It's a small, single example, but still worth mentioning.

Exhibit C: The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind's Dark Elves

Here we see the modern Dunmer codified. Every detail I extrapolated from the pixels in earlier games is present here in still-kinda-low-res but much more concretely visible form. Pronounced ridges, alien features, almond-shaped eyes, males have stronger brow ridges while females are reduced

I'll try and get a larger image but this is the game where modding really took off and I'm not familiar enough with teh vanilla heads to know modded from vanilla except in very obvious cases. Boy would I look silly if I used a modded image to support my vanilla elves stance...

Exhibit D: The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion's Dark Elves

PFFTHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA

These were terrible. Objectively awful. Lazy, cheap human recolors with eyes twisted to be almond-y because elves. The middle image is the closest to previously established Dark Elves in the franchise, but it still visibly suffers from the recolor plague the elves in this game suffered. I'm almost amazed they bothered to give them red eyes since Alterm didn't even have gold and Bosmer lacked the solid color eyes they had since Morrowind.

Exhibit E: The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim's Dark Elf concept art

It's not what we got in-game, that much is obvious, but I link this because it is, as I have demonstrated, completely in line with the Dark Elves we've seen so far.

What we actually got was this.

Which is fairly close to the concept art, but we can see they definitely took the wrinkle stick to the women's faces somethin' fierce.

So, in review, Skyrim's elves are not in any way wrong. The idea that there's only one way elves can look is wrong. TES's elves have been largely consistent in style through the franchise's entire run, with only Oblivion presenting anything blatantly different.

My existence refutes this claim.

No Jexsam, it really doesen't.

This is a picture of two of your Elven char's (the two at the top) compared to what a Dunmer actually looks like when the game is not modded (at the bottom):

NotTheSame.jpg

Your Elves look nothing like that Nausicaan/Romulan halfbreed at the bottom, they look waaaaay prettier than that!

You modded your Elves prettier dude, so no, i'm not buying it, i'm not buying that you are 100% satiesfied with what Bethesda gave you, else, you woulden't have changed it.

The fact that my game is modded does not preclude my liking how they handled the elves artistically in Skyrim. You might note my smoother elves, particularly Uthallu, the example to the right, is only marginally less angular than the concept art version of Skyrim's elves, and squares up well with Arena and Daggerfall's. Selune, the lefthand example, is definitely more of a departure, but still not egregiously outside what we can see in my above post. She does break a few rules I'd usually have in my Dunmer designs, but that's because she's a close friend's character originally, made specifically for me, and I choose to keep her as she was made.

Keep in mind I also have a character that looks like this, and of course we can't forget the character that is also my avatar. Cherry-picking only the examples that support your claim isn't a good way to argue.

EDIT: Cursory glances at other races because I have to sleep eventually.

Altmer: Huh. These guys were definitely different when they started out, being dark-skinned to the point of basically just being a kind of proto-Chocolate Elves. They didn't find their look until Morrowind, which cemented them in the haughty high-society style and gold skin we see to this day. Again, Morrowind and Skyrim designs are definitely similar, with Oblivion being a stumbling block. Still, there's definitely an established look at this point, no real room for Tolkien fuckery.

Bosmer: These guys have always been fairly generic, with their skin tone not really setting them apart. They didn't inherit their signature solid-color dark eyes until Morrowind, and even that got somewhat dropped for Skyrim, which allows you lighter browns and even greens. These guys are pretty much constantly in flux, with the only real consistency coming from Skyrim and ESO, which I haven't used for examples because it's not a main-line game. Same reason you don't see anything from Battlespire, if there even is anything from Battlespire to cite. Other than being short, dark-eyed and woodsy... you really could get away with a Tolkien look.

Eh. 2/3 ain't bad.

Coopervane · August 7, 2015

No Jexsam, the wrinkles ARE Skyrim's Elves, that is what they added to them with this game, and what they intended for them to look like (and what they will always look like for the Console players). Taking those away and still saying "i like what they did" is ignoring what they did.

Seriously, take just one look at those vanilla presets and tell me that you can't understand why Elves failed to garner much support from Skyrim players. They are butt-ugly and there is no getting around that fact without modding them.

I don't even think you understand that we agree on the underlying point. My elves look like Daggerfall Elves, i haven't changed them drastically, just replaced the ugly as sin textures with prettier ones, so mine closer resemble the smoother Daggerfall/Morrowind Elves, pointy thin faces and all.

What they don't look like in my game are the dried up 500 year old mummies that Bethesda gave us with Skyrim, because where did that come from!?!? Since when are the Elves of TES born with massive wrinkles? They certainly never were before! :blink:

This design choice is what killed people's desire to play Elves in Skyrim, the makeover they gave them here just looks awful, and for no good reason, it's not even supported by the lore (though feel free to point out to me that one obscure book that says all Elves look like sundried raisins, if such a thing actually exists).

Honestly, i belive Bethesda did this just because it was conveniant. They intended for the player to be a Nord, they have a story in which the Dominion is the big-bad evil looming in the shadows and Nords don't like Elves, so they took the easy way out and made Elves look ugly. Can't have the drooling idiots in the cheap seats getting confused, afterall <_<

GimmeBACON · August 7, 2015

Edit: Dark Elves look evil. This automatically gives them +10 to sexiness.

*Fistbump*

I'mma get in on that one *3-way Fistbump*

GimmeBACON · August 7, 2015

Onto the topic that spiraled out a bit... Yes, we mod to make the races better looking, the thing is were not trying to compare

to

The differences there are evident, but not changing it so much that it's not the same race anymore. Now compare that to Tauriel, and there is no similarities besides ears. It's a world of difference, you know.

carnifex · August 7, 2015

As a fan of Tolkien and his works, I object to the bashing that goes on in this thread and would like to point out that Tolkien wrote nearly nothing on the subject of elves' physical appearance, what people here call the Tolkien elves are actually a product of Tolkien's illustrators taking artistic license with what little information he gave.

More on topic, I don't really like seeing extremely human elves in my Elder Scrolls, though I do like them a lot smoother and less grotesquely proportioned than what vanilla Skyrim offers - something like Coopervane's girls is right on point if you asked me, not quite human but not some weird monstrosity.

GimmeBACON · August 7, 2015

I don't really recall anyone "bashing" the Tolkien style elves per se, that being said the fact that he didn't draw them doesn't change the fact that humanized elves of that caliber are affiliated with him, which makes characterizing the style easier. While I don't care for the novels nor the film, I didn't create this topic to bash non-skyrim elves, but to celebrate the skyrim ones.

I think that dunmer picture is Jexsam's by the way, and I think it's a beautiful example of a good looking skyrim elf, that isn't just a human with elf ears. Mods made her look better no doubt, but she still looks like a dunmer.

GimmeBACON · August 7, 2015

Just rechecked the whole topic, the only one who "bashed" any of the elves was Coopervane, about the vanilla elves, saying "they look like a Romulan and a Nausicaan somehow managed to produce living offspring togeather, they just look awful."

stilz · August 7, 2015

just adding my input and maybe i shouldnt -

This...

...is possible with 95% vanilla sliders. Thats how I made that character actually, only utilizing racemenu later in creation to tweak the eye angle and size, lips and nose because lol the mouth and nose options in skyrim.... Seriously theres a nose thats practically the size of a characters hand on the male side.

Ive had to go through a similar exchange via PM with 7 or 8 people now that i dont have any special mods installed specifically for elves. None. Not one. All this is is mature skin, high-res tintmasks and the eyes of beauty.

Bethesdas original NPC's and presets are unbelievably lazy with whats possible in the extreme ranges on either end of this, even with vanilla assets. And people seem to have a tendency to grab one of these, play with it for 10 minutes and give up and shout "VANILLA ELVES SUCK CAUSE THEY CANT LOOK LIKE SUPERMODELS". And they do look a little different, but thats whats great about Llaros there in those pics ( to me anyways)

But thats just me

Shadowscale · August 7, 2015

I prefer elves to look different than humans and choose mods that improve their appearance without going too far from the original. I really don't like "humanized" elves or beast races. Especially beast races with human faces. They're just straight out ugly in my opinion. I still find vanilla Dunmer to be more attractive than Nords. Vanilla humans are average at best.

Edit: Dark Elves look evil. This automatically gives them +10 to sexiness.

*high five*

I agree with you especially what you said about the humanized beast races. They just look wrong with human faces compared to their original look. I updated their textures, but beyond that they stayed the same since I find them being different along with elves and orcs make them look sexier.

Coopervane · August 7, 2015

Just rechecked the whole topic, the only one who "bashed" any of the elves was Coopervane, about the vanilla elves, saying "they look like a Romulan and a Nausicaan somehow managed to produce living offspring togeather, they just look awful."

I invite you to review those vanilla face presets, and then tell me that i am wrong, or that it is "bashing" to say that they look awful, rather than it beeing an earnest statement of painfully obvious fact. I wonder that you could with a straight face.

You asked why people don't play as Elves, and why so many people change them into humans with pointy ears. The reason is right there in those face presets. Drink them in.

You know how many people still don't know that they can change this by replacing the male/femalehead_msn.dds textures with something nicer? Tons and tons of them! This is not commonly known for some reason, and i've had to explain this to a lot of people. Really, a lot of people have no clue that they can do that.

But what they do know how to do is use ECE and Racemenu sliders to give a Nord pointy ears, and then just pretend that it's an Elf. That's very easilly done, and why you see so many of them.

People do it to get rid of the prune-face, it's really that simple. You don't have to like that answer, you can call me a hater or a basher if you want, but that's the honest answer. Most people don't want to play through the game looking like an old wrinkly crone, and they don't know how to change the textures, or even that they can.

GimmeBACON · August 7, 2015

just adding my input and maybe i shouldnt -

This...

...is possible with 95% vanilla sliders. Thats how I made that character actually, only utilizing racemenu later in creation to tweak the eye angle and size, lips and nose because lol the mouth and nose options in skyrim.... Seriously theres a nose thats practically the size of a characters hand on the male side.

Ive had to go through a similar exchange via PM with 7 or 8 people now that i dont have any special mods installed specifically for elves. None. Not one. All this is is mature skin, high-res tintmasks and the eyes of beauty.

Bethesdas original NPC's and presets are unbelievably lazy with whats possible in the extreme ranges on either end of this, even with vanilla assets. And people seem to have a tendency to grab one of these, play with it for 10 minutes and give up and shout "VANILLA ELVES SUCK CAUSE THEY CANT LOOK LIKE SUPERMODELS". And they do look a little different, but thats whats great about Llaros there in those pics ( to me anyways)

But thats just me

You most certainly should add your input, she is absolutely gorgeous This is another example of how an elf could look great in this game, now we just need more bosmer and altmer, and some more decent males of those, and there'd be no way people could say the elves are ugly.

Just rechecked the whole topic, the only one who "bashed" any of the elves was Coopervane, about the vanilla elves, saying "they look like a Romulan and a Nausicaan somehow managed to produce living offspring togeather, they just look awful."

I invite you to review those vanilla face presets, and then tell me that i am wrong, or that it is "bashing" to say that they look awful, rather than it beeing an earnest statement of painfully obvious fact. I wonder that you could with a straight face.

You asked why people don't play as Elves, and why so many people change them into humans with pointy ears. The reason is right there in those face presets. Drink them in.

You know how many people still don't know that they can change this by replacing the male/femalehead_msn.dds textures with something nicer? Tons and tons of them! This is not commonly known for some reason, and i've had to explain this to a lot of people. Really, a lot of people have no clue that they can do that.

But what they do know how to do is use ECE and Racemenu sliders to give a Nord pointy ears, and then just pretend that it's an Elf. That's very easilly done, and why you see so many of them.

People do it to get rid of the prune-face, it's really that simple. You don't have to like that answer, you can call me a hater or a basher if you want, but that's the honest answer. Most people don't want to play through the game looking like an old wrinkly crone, and they don't know how to change the textures, or even that they can.

I never argued with what you said, I meant that your comment was the closest thing on the thread to bashing

Coopervane · August 7, 2015

More on topic, I don't really like seeing extremely human elves in my Elder Scrolls, though I do like them a lot smoother and less grotesquely proportioned than what vanilla Skyrim offers - something like Coopervane's girls is right on point if you asked me, not quite human but not some weird monstrosity.

It's a bit funny you should say that, because just like Stilz's Dunmer, mine is 95% vanilla sliders. Mostly the only RM specific sliders i've used is to move the ears around a little so they don't clip too badly with the hair, and making the eyelashes a bit longer, the rest is standard:

It's the femalehead_msi textures, replacing those makes all the difference in the world (it's of course also possible to go less smooth than i have here).

Though that said, the Elven face meshes used by Skyrim are also rather buggy. It's not so bad with the Dunmer, but with the Bosmer and Altmer especially, there are a lot of vertices randomly jutting out from the face. It's a mess really, but fortunately, now that both ECE and RM allows for vertex editing, it can be very easilly resolved by giving the face a gloss over with the "smoothing" tool. So if any of you found it difficult to make a nice looking Altmer, that's the trick to it, use the smooth tool in sculpt mode, because it's misplaced verts that are making it so hard.

Lovely Rose · August 7, 2015

Edit: Dark Elves look evil. This automatically gives them +10 to sexiness.
*Fistbump*

I'mma get in on that one *3-way Fistbump*

Oh my <3

Either way the elf races aren't perfect. yes. This is true. But the humans aren't all perfect either. So what if someone has them modded some? I have a modded hair style on my race, does that mean my opinion is thrown out the window? Lol. Just cause someone has their character modded some doesn't mean they don't truly don't like the vanilla.

GrimReaper · August 7, 2015

I can only make silly animu faces so my elves don't even look remotely human to begin with.

GimmeBACON · August 7, 2015

Edit: Dark Elves look evil. This automatically gives them +10 to sexiness.
*Fistbump*
I'mma get in on that one *3-way Fistbump*

Oh my <3

KumamonTheWorshiper · August 7, 2015

I always make my dragonborn bitches as ah-knee-may as possible.

Reason: to annoy loremongers.

GimmeBACON · August 7, 2015

I always make my dragonborn bitches as ah-knee-may as possible.

Reason: to annoy loremongers.

If you go out of your way to change your game, that only you play, and basically no-one else will see; to "annoy loremongers"... Wow. Priorities man, maybe you should set yours straight.

Lovely Rose · August 7, 2015

Edit: Dark Elves look evil. This automatically gives them +10 to sexiness.
*Fistbump*
I'mma get in on that one *3-way Fistbump*
Oh my <3

How you doin?

I'm good weathers nice. Yep yep. Elfes and what not so I don't look like I'm attempting to hijack the thread.

Coopervane · August 7, 2015

Either way the elf races aren't perfect. yes. This is true. But the humans aren't all perfect either. So what if someone has them modded some? I have a modded hair style on my race, does that mean my opinion is thrown out the window? Lol. Just cause someone has their character modded some doesn't mean they don't truly don't like the vanilla.

You've got the argument backwards.

All of us have modded our Elves, i'll bet you a 10'er that we have.

The argument is about how far you should mod them before they get the stamp of "No true Scotsman!". And then there's me arguing that it's a little hypocritical to argue about that in the first place, because we're all modding them to our prefrence anyway, and prefrences differ. Though mostly because i'm a contrarian jerk, of course.

And just for a fun visual aid, i disabled my textures folder, relaunched the game, and took another screenshot of the Dunmer i posted in my last post, now wearing her perfectly vanilla Skyrim textures:

Isen't she just beautifull?

Yeah.. this is why we all mod the Elves! :wacko:

If Bethesda had given us something even remotely passable instead, then you'd probably see more vanilla style Elves. But they gave us this, so is it really any wonder that people decided to just glue ears onto Nords instead? I certainly can't blame them..

GrimReaper · August 7, 2015

And just for a fun visual aid, i disabled my textures folder, relaunched the game, and took another screenshot of the Dunmer i posted in my last post, now wearing her perfectly vanilla Skyrim textures:

Isen't she just beautifull?

Yeah.. this is why we all mod the Elves!

If Bethesda had given us something even remotely passable instead, then you'd probably see more vanilla style Elves. But they gave us this, so is it really any wonder that people decided to just glue ears onto Nords instead? I certainly can't blame them..

reminds me of this hot chick:

Lovely Rose · August 7, 2015

And just for a fun visual aid, i disabled my textures folder, relaunched the game, and took another screenshot of the Dunmer i posted in my last post, now wearing her perfectly vanilla Skyrim textures:

Isen't she just beautifull?

Yeah.. this is why we all mod the Elves!

If Bethesda had given us something even remotely passable instead, then you'd probably see more vanilla style Elves. But they gave us this, so is it really any wonder that people decided to just glue ears onto Nords instead? I certainly can't blame them..

reminds me of this hot chick:

Oh baby I got a chubby

GimmeBACON · August 7, 2015

And just for a fun visual aid, i disabled my textures folder, relaunched the game, and took another screenshot of the Dunmer i posted in my last post, now wearing her perfectly vanilla Skyrim textures:

Isen't she just beautifull?

Yeah.. this is why we all mod the Elves!

If Bethesda had given us something even remotely passable instead, then you'd probably see more vanilla style Elves. But they gave us this, so is it really any wonder that people decided to just glue ears onto Nords instead? I certainly can't blame them..

reminds me of this hot chick:

... And now I gotta take a shower, thanks a lot :dodgy:

GimmeBACON · August 7, 2015

Back on topic Cooper, this was more of a topic about whether you preferred skyrim stylized elves, or other fantasy stylized elves. Your continued pointing out you need to mod them to make them better isn't really an impartial argument because you have to mod every race to make them not look like a trolls rectum. :-/ Besides, for the Tolkien style elves, you need mods as well so you can't exactly act like it's any better in that regard.

Epic Gamer Frey · August 7, 2015

Isen't she just beautifull?

Yeah.. this is why we all mod the Elves!

If Bethesda had given us something even remotely passable instead, then you'd probably see more vanilla style Elves. But they gave us this, so is it really any wonder that people decided to just glue ears onto Nords instead? I certainly can't blame them..

She actually doesn't look bad. I love the rugged look of the vanilla Dunmer.

Lovely Rose · August 7, 2015

Isen't she just beautifull?

Yeah.. this is why we all mod the Elves!

If Bethesda had given us something even remotely passable instead, then you'd probably see more vanilla style Elves. But they gave us this, so is it really any wonder that people decided to just glue ears onto Nords instead? I certainly can't blame them..

She actually doesn't look bad. I love the rugged look of the vanilla Dunmer.

I'm going to make a crossbreed orc dark elf. Be the deadliest mofo around.

All and all to close my opinion I love the vanilla dark elf in skyrim. I haven't played oblivion for like a year so no comment there. I hope in the next tes they look better thou. But I can't complain about skyrims dark elf at all (besides the hair) lol

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