We have Europeans equivalent races of various types. We have an African looking race.

What about people of Asia? Its easy for people of west and southern Asia as they are basically just brown of darker skinned Caucasians and there is the option to make a tanned / brown skinned Nord or Imperial (I myself have made an Indian looking Nord). I also think the culture of the Khajiit has an Indian / Persian feel to it. But what about Easians / Orientals?

Personally I have always seen the Elven people to be TES equivalent race for E.asians / orientals.

High Elves like a (tall) Chinese / Siamese advanced society type people (civilized nature, inventors of ancient technology & magics etc)

Dark Elves I see as Japanese / Korean type people (some nomadic in Asian looking tents whilst others in splendid cities).

Orcs I see as a Mongolian / Hun stocky barbarian type people

Wood Elves I see like a Cambodian / Vietnamese Khmer small jungle type people


Anyone else agree?

No, nothing about the Elves is Oriental in my opinion. They're just stereotypical Elves similar to those found in Tolkien's work.

Why do all fantasy races have to closely resemble real-world races? It's silly.

I think that is the trick to success as it is something we naturally relate to.

All games etc tend to do it. Look at the map of Warhammer or the map of fable etc.

Why the Nords and the Bretons which are both names used for people on Earth

Disagree.

When playing morrowind and you look at hlaalu architecture and dunmer names you'll see that, at least in that game, they were based of the assyrians.

Actually yes, elves do have eastern feeling on them, with some of their own quirks.

If you want races that match real world ethnicities, play WoW.

The Akaviri humans were basically TES version of Asians. However, the ones that remained in Akavir were all devoured by the vampiric snakemen, Tsaeci. Therefore, "pure-blooded" Akaviri are extinct. After the Akaviri Invasion however, alot of the Akaviri prisoners of war were allowed to gain their freedom, and they integrated into Imperial society, in culture and blood. The Blades are a remnant of the Akaviri culture (As is the Katanas they use), Cloudruler Temple was built by the freed Akaviri after they claimed allegiance to the Emperor. That Imperial you see in Bravil, well, his great-great-great-great grandfather might've been an Akaviri.

I would agree with your assessment of the altmer and dunmer, but the altmer I would expand culturally to the southeast (Myanmar, Kampuchea, etc). The woodelves, to me anyways, more represent the aboriginal people of Indonesia and Australia. Meanwhile, I wouldn't just classify as Mongolian- as that's a very specific culture. I would see the Orcs really as all northern-asiatic peoples, as well as the aboriginals in North America. Just my opinion though. It really is a little pointless to try and pinpoint's various races to specific cultures on earth, as Tamriel is a different world, however, it's also willed ignorance to say that there is no similarities between the two, and that no inspiration that resulted in how tamriels people were oriented.

WoW trolls don't match at all with the real trolls.

Atlmer are actually rather eastern in style. They have great respect for the old ways, and even http://images.wikia.com/skyrim/images/a/a7/150px-HighElf.gif shows them in an oriental light.

Dunmer are much more Mongolian in style, just a single look at their yurts and other architecture shows some of that, but they also share Indian (not Native American, but Indian) style influences as well.

Well, if you look at Almalexia (which among the Tribunal was the one who didn't want to let go of the traces from her Chimeric origin,) you can see that there's something vaguely Siamese about her design. I say the best is to gather all sorts of real-world reference and mix them all in to a new and fresh concoction of concept, like what they did successfully on the Dunmer in Morrowind and (to a much lesser degree) the Redguards.

By the way: a somewhat narrow-slitted eyes, relatively high cheekbones; I think that's the pretty much it, appearance-wise.

p.s. Speaking of asians... You know that Stonewall Shields shop owner in Imperial City? He totally reminds me of the http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=susilo+bambang+yudhoyono&cp=5&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1440&bih=764, lol!

I said ethnicities for a reason...

*sigh*

Dark Elves? Asian? I'm not sure I agree with that. How are you making that connection?




Interesting.

I think it shows a lack of imagination personally.

Fantasy should be a way of escaping from the real world - I don't want to see cultures and races I can instantly relate to.

When I see Elves or Orcs, I expect to see exactly that. Completely unique from anything in the real-world in appearance and culture.

Sure, there are always going to be loose influences... particularly when it comes to more human-like races... but they should still have their own unique culture and shouldn't be mirror-images of real or historical races from Earth.

http://amito.freehostia.com/Morrowind/Images/Urshilaku.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_eFESZhWXX-A/SSLVIYY9-bI/AAAAAAAAAXo/X8-a1oN9NNU/s400/gulver+mongolian+yurt.jpg

Gotta love 'em Ashlander yurts. It's my Argonian Spellswordspear favorite place to hang out and chillax. Good buddies with the people too.

Sorry but I dont know how you relate elves to human beings. And I feel like the majority of the people drawing conclusions arent even travelers or historians anyway.

Mannerisms and culture maybe? Seems like a good starting point to me, aside from the MINIMAL physical differences.

If any TES race were to have an epicanthic fold, it would be the Nords.

But the game is very fictional in so many respects. I understand that East Asians may have had customs that matched some of the elves, but who is to say other humans do not? A lot of people only acknowledge what they've seen in popular culture anyways when making these conclusions. With the inclusions of all this fantastical lore, I cant say any of the races should really be tailored to or looked upon as a human race (much less the elves). They all have their own, unique lore and physical appearance. Not a single one matches up to anything real world. But yeah, I suppose it does kinda stink not being able to play as anyone that looks like you without heavy modification.

There was this quote from the game's design team about the concepts behind the creation of the Dunmer/Velothi culture in Morrowind somewhere in the Lore section of the forum, i recall. They apparently opted to nicked all sorts of influence from many different real world cultures and fictional stuff (that is outside of the mainstream, as far as fantasy culture goes), if i recall correctly. For the real world, there were bits of Native North American, Jewish, Mongols, Assyrian and South Asian (paticularly India), as well as, guess what, a little bit of stuff from Star Wars!

I propose that a new race and province should appear out of nowhere with no explanation.

Agreed.

Racist thread is racist.