Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire + DLC Thread - now with turn-based combat!

[Verylittlefishes]

It's certainly different but PoE's elves are also aristocrats across the sea, its more cultures than races in pillows since its a very inclusive setting you can find most races anywhere living in harmony or otherwise

See, this is the thing.

Why even turn them into fantasy races when you're not going to make them like the original ones? So the elves here are savages and the dwarves are nomads. Why are they elves and dwarves then? Why not just... different human cultures? The real world has plenty of different cultures, and there's only humans on this planet! Among humans on Earth there is more cultural variety than there is among entire fucking species in most fantasy worlds.

Fantasy races often lead to monocultures practiced by everyone who's part of that race. While on Earth you can find huge cultural differences even if you just travel a handful of kilometers, all communities of a fantasy race tend to behave the same.
Travel through Europe and you'll encounter a dozen different languages, cultures with different values and practices, etc.
Travel down to Africa and you will find hundreds of small negro tribes who look exactly the same to an outsider but will still genocide each other for various reasons and have different languages etc.
Travel to Asia and you'll encounter various different languages, writing systems, religious beliefs, etc.
Etc etc.

But in a fantasy world? All dwarves like mining and smithing. There is one dwarven language spoken by all dwarves in every dwarven kingdom. All elves like trees and magic. There is one elven language spoken by all elves in every elven kingdom. Etc.

It would make fantasy cultures a lot more believable if they're just different human cultures. These people like mining and smithing because they live in a mountainous region and their economy relied on trading ores and manufactured metal products for centuries, not because they're short and have long beards lol.

Most of the time, fantasy races like elves and dwarves are utterly mundane: they're basically short and bearded/tall and pointy-eared humans who have specific cultural elements that could as well appear in a human culture. Them being short and bearded/tall and pointy-eared adds nothing whatsoever. Why not create distinct human cultures instead of making them elves and dwarves, especially if your elves and dwarves deviate from the traditional model of these races in order to "mix it up". If your elves and dwarves aren't like other elves and dwarves... why even have them?

Fantasy needs to die.

 

[Prime Junta]

Most of the time, fantasy races like elves and dwarves are utterly mundane: they're basically short and bearded/tall and pointy-eared humans who have specific cultural elements that could as well appear in a human culture. Them being short and bearded/tall and pointy-eared adds nothing whatsoever. Why not create distinct human cultures instead of making them elves and dwarves, especially if your elves and dwarves deviate from the traditional model of these races in order to "mix it up". If your elves and dwarves aren't like other elves and dwarves... why even have them?

IMO Morrowind pulled it off pretty well. There was a genuine feel of alienness with the Telvanni and the Ashlanders in particular, and of course the whole deal with the Dwemer. You couldn't have just swapped in a human culture and called it a day.

With settings like Eora or Thedas though the fantasy races really are completely pointless. A lot of the time they're even obvious stand-ins for really existing human cultures anyway.

 

[Jedi Exile]

Humans are boring. Games need more werewolves.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I think that something most of you are missing is the role played by contrasting fantasy humans to other races. It serves to reinforce the diversity (and ingenuity) of humanity by contrast with more monolithic races, while making it easier to suspend one's sense of disbelief to the latter's unity as well.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Humans are boring. Games need more werewolves.

Humans are boring if they are written/perceived by the boring mind.

 

[JarlFrank]

Most of the time, fantasy races like elves and dwarves are utterly mundane: they're basically short and bearded/tall and pointy-eared humans who have specific cultural elements that could as well appear in a human culture. Them being short and bearded/tall and pointy-eared adds nothing whatsoever. Why not create distinct human cultures instead of making them elves and dwarves, especially if your elves and dwarves deviate from the traditional model of these races in order to "mix it up". If your elves and dwarves aren't like other elves and dwarves... why even have them?

IMO Morrowind pulled it off pretty well. There was a genuine feel of alienness with the Telvanni and the Ashlanders in particular, and of course the whole deal with the Dwemer. You couldn't have just swapped in a human culture and called it a day.

With settings like Eora or Thedas though the fantasy races really are completely pointless. A lot of the time they're even obvious stand-ins for really existing human cultures anyway.

Yes, and Morrowind also avoids the main pitfall of fantasy races: monoculturalism. The Dunmer society in Morrowind is anything but monocultural. You have the different great houses, the Almsivi temple, the Ashlanders. They all have different styles of architecture and dress (every Great House has different armor styles for their guards, for example), different worldviews, etc. There is no such thing as a unified dark elf culture every dark elf follows. Yes, there are some general attitudes of the race that differentiate it from the other races in Tamriel, but those general attitudes give birth to various different cultural elements that are interpreted differently by different Dunmeri communities. If you sit an Ashlander and an Almsivi priest into the same room and have them discuss, they're probably not gonna agree about anything.

In Morrowind, the different races aren't pointless because the devs actually put in the effort to develop a real culture for them, rather than just slapping on some generic stuff like "They like forests, tend to bathe naked in lakes, and don't eat bread."

 

[Prime Junta]

In other news, my next-door neighbour is a dwarf. He's a dead ringer for Thorin in the Hobbit films, and about this tall. He also got a bit over-enthusiastic with the tunnelling once and tunnelled right into my kitchen. Also we can finally settle a long-standing mystery about the inspiration for Tolkien's dwarves, because he is, in fact, Jewish.

 

[Quillon]

It's certainly different but PoE's elves are also aristocrats across the sea, its more cultures than races in pillows since its a very inclusive setting you can find most races anywhere living in harmony or otherwise

See, this is the thing.

Why even turn them into fantasy races when you're not going to make them like the original ones? So the elves here are savages and the dwarves are nomads. Why are they elves and dwarves then? Why not just... different human cultures? The real world has plenty of different cultures, and there's only humans on this planet! Among humans on Earth there is more cultural variety than there is among entire fucking species in most fantasy worlds.

Fantasy races often lead to monocultures practiced by everyone who's part of that race. While on Earth you can find huge cultural differences even if you just travel a handful of kilometers, all communities of a fantasy race tend to behave the same.
Travel through Europe and you'll encounter a dozen different languages, cultures with different values and practices, etc.
Travel down to Africa and you will find hundreds of small negro tribes who look exactly the same to an outsider but will still genocide each other for various reasons and have different languages etc.
Travel to Asia and you'll encounter various different languages, writing systems, religious beliefs, etc.
Etc etc.

But in a fantasy world? All dwarves like mining and smithing. There is one dwarven language spoken by all dwarves in every dwarven kingdom. All elves like trees and magic. There is one elven language spoken by all elves in every elven kingdom. Etc.

It would make fantasy cultures a lot more believable if they're just different human cultures. These people like mining and smithing because they live in a mountainous region and their economy relied on trading ores and manufactured metal products for centuries, not because they're short and have long beards lol.

Most of the time, fantasy races like elves and dwarves are utterly mundane: they're basically short and bearded/tall and pointy-eared humans who have specific cultural elements that could as well appear in a human culture. Them being short and bearded/tall and pointy-eared adds nothing whatsoever. Why not create distinct human cultures instead of making them elves and dwarves, especially if your elves and dwarves deviate from the traditional model of these races in order to "mix it up". If your elves and dwarves aren't like other elves and dwarves... why even have them?

I'm all for only humanses settings, better yet real world as the setting but if they were to do that we'd drown in historical revisionism in the current years And isn't one of the reasons devs are using fantasy races so it wouldn't be problematic putting certain RW races/ethnicities in certain roles? Even their absence caused a big controversy with KCD for instance.

 

[Roguey]

Why are they elves and dwarves then? Why not just... different human cultures?

Because people like the way elves and dwarves look.

 

[S.torch]

Why are they elves and dwarves then? Why not just... different human cultures?

I'm all for only humanses settings

Oh no, no more Game of Thrones "fantasies" please.

 

[Quillon]

Why are they elves and dwarves then? Why not just... different human cultures?

I'm all for only humanses settings

Oh no, no more Game of Thrones "fantasies" please.

Because we had 100s of aSoIaF-like settings utilized in RPGs we don't need anymore?

 

[JarlFrank]

Why are they elves and dwarves then? Why not just... different human cultures?

I'm all for only humanses settings

Oh no, no more Game of Thrones "fantasies" please.

In which way does "humans only" imply Games of Thrones like low fantasy?

What about Conan and Red Sonja style sword & sorcery? That's very far from GoT and often features fantastical creatures as enemies (more fantastical than generic orcs, and sometimes even Lovecraftian) as well as wizard tyrants and other cool stuff like that.

Most of Brandon Sanderson's novels feature human-only civilizations but he usually comes up with unique magic systems that are cooler than most of the stuff seen in generic high fantasy.

Why do you believe that a fantasy world needs elves and dwarves to be fantastical? It absolutely doesn't.

 

[Lacrymas]

Or maybe a setting without humans? I know the Renaissance idea of humans being in the center of Creation is a tempting one, but we could have a setting in an RPG where there are no humans for once.

I've been playing Tower of Time for a while and I kinda like its setting. It's a post-apocalyptic fantasy one.

 

[Prime Junta]

Or maybe a setting without humans? I know the Renaissance idea of humans being in the center of Creation is a tempting one, but we could have a setting in an RPG where there are no humans for once.

I've been playing Tower of Time for a while and I kinda like its setting. It's a post-apocalyptic fantasy one.

It would take some serious writing chops to get us to empathise and identify with non-human protags (if they were genuinely non-human, not just middle-class academic Western whites with funny heads as usual).

 

[S.torch]

Why do you believe that a fantasy world needs elves and dwarves to be fantastical? It absolutely doesn't.

I don't. But when you say "human only setting" and "low fantasy" you're obviously opening the door for more things like Game of Thrones.

People tend to forget that Conan stories along with the Heroic Fantasy and Tolkien fantasy are more close to each other, than to any low fantasy.

 

[Lacrymas]

Or maybe a setting without humans? I know the Renaissance idea of humans being in the center of Creation is a tempting one, but we could have a setting in an RPG where there are no humans for once.

I've been playing Tower of Time for a while and I kinda like its setting. It's a post-apocalyptic fantasy one.

It would take some serious writing chops to get us to empathise and identify with non-human protags (if they were genuinely non-human, not just middle-class academic Western whites with funny heads as usual).

Even though I'm not a great proponent of this idea that everything has to be "relatable", I'm going to counter with the fact that when you have no human-like races, you open the door for more crazy shit that you can't get away with when you do have humans. There's a strategy tabletop game (whose name I keep forgetting) in which the races are a bunch of aliens like sentient mucus creatures, some kind of ferret things, brains in jars, etc; and that invites more creativity.

Also, we have the same post count.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

There's a strategy tabletop game (whose name I keep forgetting) in which the races are a bunch of aliens like sentient mucus creatures, some kind of ferret things, brains in jars, etc; and that invites more creativity.

That's just Warhammer laddie

 

[Lacrymas]

No, I just remembered it's Cosmic Encounter. It's so easy, yet I keep forgetting its name. Maybe that's because it is easy, I always keep thinking it's something like Cosmic Invaders or Alien Invaders or similar.

 

[Quillon]

Real feat is being creative in realism, making it weird to begin with is just cheap. Here's a sooooo creative weird setting for ya; in this universe every sentient begins as a cell, they eat but they never shit, everything they eat forms their body visually, if they eat a fish they'll have a fish in place of a dick, they never stop growing unless they are eaten by another sentient... bla bla bla there is one sentient who is a world eater whose body formed of planets and he has a sun for an eye! He's threatening to consume the known universe! Wow I'm so creative yo!

 

[S.torch]

That's not the point of fantasy.

 

[Lacrymas]

One of the points is to be able to explore human problems without directly tying them to real life events, i.e like Tolkien has said, to have applicability without being analogous.

 

[Prime Junta]

Wow I'm so creative yo!

That was a better pitch than 9 out of 10 actually existing fantasy games/movies/novels. You ought to write it up.

It’d be even cooler if that just suddenly happened though. Like, one morning you wake up with a fish for a dick and then realize you had a fish dinner the previous night.

 

[Quillon]

Wow I'm so creative yo!

That was a better pitch than 9 out of 10 actually existing fantasy games/movies/novels. You ought to write it up.

It’d be even cooler if that just suddenly happened though. Like, one morning you wake up with a fish for a dick and then realize you had a fish dinner the previous night.

But you didn't hear the plot twist yet! After all the shit happens and credits about to roll camera moves away and a human face forms gradually and we find out everything was happening in the mole on his face on quantum-something-molecular level!

 

[JarlFrank]

Wow I'm so creative yo!

That was a better pitch than 9 out of 10 actually existing fantasy games/movies/novels. You ought to write it up.

It’d be even cooler if that just suddenly happened though. Like, one morning you wake up with a fish for a dick and then realize you had a fish dinner the previous night.

You are what you eat, indeed.

 

[Sailor Woedica]

You need elves because Aloth is really cool!