altmer need their pointy ears to point up, dumner need to point back, and bosmer need to point somewhere between the two.


dumner need bad skin, and their morrowind voices back. orcs also need bad skin.

orcs need to have an uneven skin tone, they also shouldent have such green skin and should have narrow, evil faces. their culture should reflect mongolia with a few japanese influences from akaviri.

altmer should be extremely racist, dumner should be slightly racist and a little more racist to argonains and imperials, everyone should hate bosmer :celebration: some people should be very racist to khajit.

khajit should have aspects of persian culture, imperials and rome, orcs mongol, high rock is a standard european french thing, argonains like various african/south american tribes.- but all of these should obviously only be influenced, not copy entirely. (dumner and altmer should be realy strange

Actually, Khajiit and Argonian males and females used the exact same voices in Oblivion.

On topic, i care more about their looks than behaviour, though more diversity in that too would be appreciated. Khajiits in Oblivion always did say "this one" instead of "i", i always wondered if that is a cultural thing, or lesser "knowledge of themselves" (or however you say that).

Have Bosmer's ears point outwards?



I think Altmers have too much pride, while Dunmers just hate everyone, but Argonians more.
Maybe people can look down on Khajiit because of their addiction?



I disagree with everything else you mentioned, TES races should not be influenced by RL cultures.

Considering the Oblivion style of making your character was based on http://www.childofthe1980s.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/play-doh.jpg , I am all for a system that is less time consuming to get the face you want. I think they are going to make the races more different in Skyrim as they have been talking about it. So its all hopeful.

Yes pretty of orcs was pretty rough like the leader of the fighter guild in Cherendial and the one in Bruma castle but many others in Oblivion was social climbers, was some talk of a orc social club and other found it funny but also naturally, you got money or a position and you want to join the rest of the upper class.

I found many of the high elf mages pretty nerdy more than snobs but it might be that I mostly was involved with mage guild members.

Few woodelves was annoying except for the voice, but well represented in the thief guild.

It's not an addiciton, it's a spiritual experience :stare: Experienced often

Okay I slightly changed my mind (but not much).

Stereotypes have a basis in reality most of the time. They are quirks common in a culture, race, or kind of person that get rubber stamped onto all of them by the simple minded racists who need to categorize the world with neat little labels to avoid realizing just how complex the world really is (this would apply to both the real world and TES).

That said, if there is a racial quirk it should not be on every single NPC of that race nor should it be a strictly limiting factor in how you play your character. Individuals are individuals. I think it would be short sighted to say there are no Orc magicians or no Altmer warriors, or no Nord stealth etc.

As to the discussion about whether they are the same species actually in the end that doesn't matter so much (at least when it comes to strict stereotyping). Even in the real world with house pets you see some dog-like cats or some cat-like dogs. Despite non-domesticated animals largely being too expensive and too unmanageable as pets you still see examples of people that have them as pets without incident. Heck sometimes in the wild it's not unheard of for predators to take in the young of a prey species. Is it common? No, but it's not unheard of. Just as humans are individuals so are the other complex creatures of the world. When you throw equal-to-human intelligence into the mix like in the Oblivion world, I think you should expect to see some stereotypes and mannerisms but never universal... not uncommon, but not common either just like real stereotypes.

The way the world works in this series isn't like the real world. It's said in the lore that any of the races can reproduce with each other, and in the case of cross race children the children are always the race of the mother. In the real world that would probably mean they are the same species, but genetics don't work that way in the real world either.

As far as the Khajiit addiction thing goes isn't it moonsugar that most Khajiit are into? It's a problem but I thought that moonsugar isn't nearly as bad as skooma, perhaps like a comparison to marijuana and much more destructive drugs in the real world? That also reminds me: the Khajiit are not all cat-like because real world cats cannot taste sweetness (which is why they don't go after sweets the way dogs do).

No... but I understand why they do. Perhaps this time around we will see some remarkable differences.
(I haven't seen any non-humans yet in the Skyrim screen-captures)

The Biggest change we need (And which is also confirmed), is that beast races get their beastly physical appearance back again. In Oblivion, Khajiits and Argonians have the same skeleton as Human races. Morrowind had a much better difference between beast races and human races, but even that can be improved upon!

Although the term "race" is still used, nowadays it hasn't got too much scientific validity. Yes, there are some differences between members of our specie, but classify the specie in races is not very accurate. There are just some characteristics more frequent in one ethnicities than in others, but not exclusive, and of course, not enought to define a group of individuals as "race".

Anyway, this is a game... so it doesn't matter what term they use. In addittion, in TES the characteristics of each race are quite strong. In the real world, if you take the Scandinavian stereotype (Nord) and the Italian one (Imperial), you would notice that there is a lot of people with intermediate features... In TES this doesn't happen, due to children are of their mother's race.

One person's improved is another person's ruined. I'd rather they choose a middle ground (the heads were fine in my opinion, but the hands and feet were basically spray painted in Oblivion) rather than even further deformed legs from Morrowind. Those legs would not be ideal for bipedal creatures (they are not "backwards" legs imagine walking on your tip toes with your heel all the way up near your knee).

I don't only mean their legs. Their legs were fine in Morrowind, while in Oblivion, it was like they were men and not beast... But like, give Khajiits more Catlike features that you read about in all the TES Literature!
And also Khajiits are a very diverted race: some Khajiits are more beast-like than others, and some even resemble human races in their faces (Khajiit Body, Human face).

But of course, this is just an opinion, and like you said, one persons improved is another persons ruined. :/

well although the dunmer had raspy voices before in morrowind that could have been in part to the blight storms I mean its kind of like being a smoker 24/7 on vvardenfell your gonna have a *rasp voice*, argonians at least would be cool to have option for the morrowind style legs and footwear could be like for metal armor plates fastened onto feet with straps plus bring back how they used whole body in swiming and their eyelids close from sides? raher than top like other races.

those were idea's as for races in oblivion either they were just dumbed down or.....They were more Imperial native and as such either didn't have to put up with blight storms so they dunmer didn't have raspy voices and altmer well be an A** all the time to people you live with and lets just say you probably won't live long enough to realise your not the best race out their lol.

I dont know all I know is I loved the argonians in Morrowind and would love to see comeback, but I also love nords and dunmer so Ima probably pick between those 2 at begining depending on appearance of chars and the coolness of the beards (if their just falllout style I may never play a nord) also I would like to adjust the elves ears and stuff that and in customization not move one bar only for some other slider to move too.

Anyway I just cant wait and if I had a choice I'd say I may like the Saints row 2 character creation slider in that it had numbers so you could right those down and share character models with others.

Kangaroos and Ostrich are bipedal, as well as most birds in general... and that's how their legs look.

**Also (technically) 'Faith' is bipedal. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FjKqboY9Yo

Sorry I was a bit tired. Outrage from whom exactly? The 15,000 people that visit this forum regularly tops? And then out of those people the 5,000 that actually care? The game would still be GOTY if they decided Bretons were redundant as they have with skills and other game aspects. Now let me clarify my post: There was some mention in this thread of the wood elves being annoying in every instance in oblivion, I was stating that this is an issue of game design that can actually be fixed with the construction set in oblivion if desired. There is also the issue of character models which are nearly identical across all races in oblivion. This is a technical limitation that stems from having to put the same armor models on top of all the character models (hence why the abandoned "beast feet" from morrowind), in the new engine perhaps we'll gain a bit more flexibility in this regard and visually (I hope anyway) get more distinction across the different races.

:facepalm: Try playing TES games before Oblivion. What he meant is, that all characters look the same. No, elves shouldn't look like green blobs and dinosaurs, but all elves in Oblivion have identical facial features, and aside from slightly different skin color and height you couldn't distinguish which one is who. Having the same voices adds to that. Furthermore Khajiits and Argonians, Nords and Orcs- all had too much obvious same voices, and the fact that Argonians and Khajiits are beast races but walk and act and fight and swim absolutely the same way as any other non beast race does was simply disappointing.

In Morrowind for example, beast races were walking, jumping, swimming, fighting hand to hand etc different than humanoids did. All elves had different facial bone structure, eyes, all races their own characteristical voice covers, Nords had blue tattooes on their faces etc etc.

I like it how you're suggesting that the different races are not only different from appearance and abilities than other races, but also how they act differently.

I'd also like to see more hate between some races. Racism isn't a pretty thing but it's reality.

Hopefully! Just curious, but what changes do you guys want to see?

Actualy gabbo there are supposed to be rather HUGE differences between the so called human races of this game.

For one thing while both nords and redguards deal more in the combat side of things.. nords happen to be perfectly fine with using magic while redguards HATE it.

Meanwhile bretons love magic and imperials .. well they love city life and law and order and such.

They are nothing alike AT ALL.

Oh and if you realy want to blow your friends mind.point out to him they are called REDguards for a reason;/ generaly they have red tinted skin. Also they had dark GREY skin coloration in early elder scrolls games... and looked more like a dark grey italian then anything else;/ But then again as I remember it back then argonians had boobs... so............

Right now we ONLY know what nords look like as thats all they have shown.. and boy do they look nordy. We have sorta seen something that might be breton but not well enough to be sure... definetly looks unnordy tho.

Personaly my view is races bring a wonderful and wild change of pace to what otherwise would be a boring and bland monolithic blah. The more exurberantly nordic or bosmerian or altmerian they are in a game the better.

You are saying there wouldn't be an outrage from the whole community? Why don't you try suggesting your idea on the community forums. Lore is a huge part of a real RPG. If you don't like it, go back to Dragon Age.