Slacking? That's not what the 4E Aldmeri Dominion looks like to me.

I think all the races look beautiful.

Even the Sload?

Urk, no. I forgot about them.

They're not good-looking, but they know what they're doing...if you know what I mean. They know how to use that levitation and stuff!

I like the Sload. I want to see them brought back at some point.

Morrowind is more of an exception than a rule when talking about TES's setting.

LOTR pretty much invented what we call "fantasy" settings. Whatever we come up with will most likely be compared to the standards set by LOTR.
An orc is always going to be loosely defined as what Tolkien created. Any being that is a humanoid with pointy ears will most likely be classified as an elf.


I for one like the TES elves as they were in Morrowind and Skyrim. They're not just skinny humans with pointy ears. They have their own distinctions and really look like a different species when compared with the "average" elf (ie: DAO elves)

Some others I like are the DA2 elves aswell. They look different and interesting.

I like the Mer just on the basis of they aren't these prissy frolickers who go "Woe is me, the humans aren't nice to us." They actually give me good reason to hack them up into tiny bits.

My bias might be showing, but TES elves actually walk a decent line between looking stereotypically elven (read: tired, boring, and dull) and looking alien (read: interesting, diverting, and good).

No. They got a lot waifey-er from DAO to DA2. In Origins they were fantasy Jews and that was fascinating and new. They made them back into waifs and all paragons of humanity and all that. Notice that their ears grew a good 3 inches between games.

I feel the intense need to right a Bosmer/Sload slashfic right now...

Really? The Origins elves were pretty much stereotypical. Skinny humans with pointed ears, hating humanity, and embracing nature.
Pretty much the stereotypical elves.

The ones in DA2 though looked different than humans. Their facial structures are different than ours (not just having slimmer/pointy features) and their bone structure was different than humans. They're setting isn't much better, but I thought it was much more interesting than origins.

This so much. Isn't the idea of fantasy that it is...fantasy? Why does anything in a fantasy have to have even a semblance of anything else? Why cannot it just be itself?

Ballin' dude, ballin'. I agree.

How about no, because your suggestion looks incredibly boring. Dunmer are shady, xenophobic, self-severing bastards. Altmer are haughty, genocidal bastards. Bosmer are ritualistic cannibal bastards. The ears you suggested don't evoke any of those traits. The ears you suggest speak of a delicate, whimsical forest fairy who drinks from roses and eats leaves. It does not wear any clothes, and puts on a facade of Kyne, thinking itself Her most favored. It is wrong in this and will shortly be consumed by the merciless forces of nature. Kyne will burp, and go back to sleep with Her boyfriend named Hairy Giant.

Of course, none of these things are universal. That's just how the ones from their homelands tend to be.

I think in Skyrim, only the Dunmer have the strange ears. Bosmer and Altmer are fairly ordinary as far as ear morphology goes. I may be mistaken, however.

I think coming to a TES forum and making a thread complaining about why a small but creative difference isn't the same as in every dull, uninspired fantasy game was a mistake.

EDIT: And FreakLore, I am also a resident of North Carolina.

The short version of this thread is "weird is good and the opposite of boring and we get mad when people ask for them to tone down the cool for the sake of making it the same as other works."

Yep. Stifling creativity, even the smallest instances of it, in favor of taking comfort in the lame sense of security familiarity offers isn't a preferable option.

See I've modified the GRRM stance after I stole it. His stance is "a character doesn't have to be likeable to draw in readers/viewers/players, just interesting." Mine is that with the added caveat of "A world doesn't have to be familliar and friendly to draw in etc, just interesting."

Yes. Seriously, screw familiarity so long as the new stuff makes sense right? And if it doesn't make sense and passes the is it interesting test then it is still preferable to familiarity.

Example. http://www.cruzine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/214-dragons.jpg

I've never seen a dragon interpreted as a 403 Error before. Interesting.

Some familiarity is good for the player/viewer/reader, it gives them a strip of solid ground to stand on, but having your world be just another Middle Earth is unimpressive. I don't want the name to be the only difference between the Altmer and the Sindar.

Tolkien is always going to be the 800 lb gorilla of the fantasy world. The biggest reason why Skyrim looks a bit like Lord of the Rings is that they used the same source/reference materials - which if you're referencing anything medieval and before in Europe, you'll end up with the same thing. The difference is in the details - unfortunatly, noticing those details pretty much takes a trained eye and knowledge of the source material. "Whiterun is a city on a hill - it's just like Lord of the Rings!" Yeah, lots of people built on hills long before Tolkien wrote a few books and Peter Jackson made a few movies. There's only so many ways to stack up logs into a wooden palasade.

Arena, Daggerfall, Oblivion, and Skyrim all reference Medieval Europe. Morrowind is the only one who breaks from the norm, by referencing Gaudi archetecture, adobe construction, and invertebrates for Dunmer, Steampunk with a dash of Greek for Dwemer - but there's still plenty of European style buildings for Imperial structures.

Now elves...elves lack consistancy even in mythology. Might as well ask where their hollow backs and tails are as discuss the shape of their ears. Me, I've been leaning towards http://transbot9.deviantart.com/#/d4ufcna for a world I'm working on.

Personally, I do not see it but maybe I am just an odd one

But I wouldn't say "ripped off", more like "inspired". Todd did say that LotR influenced him when developing Oblivion, so the same may go with Skyrim.

And then cities like Windhelm, the Nordic tombs, and dragon temples don't really seem Tolkien at all.