Skyrim elves look AWFUL :(

[Bonino90]

What the hell was Bethesda thinking? The elves in Skyrim look absolutely HIDEOUS. I mean, they look like something you'd see out of Aliens. I feel like the Khajit and the Argonians feel more human than the elves do! It's become very off-putting.

I can't figure out what's worse. That someone designed them in the first place thinking that they would be aesthetically pleasing, or that someone didn't tell the person who created them that they're an absolute failure and put them in the final release.

They were supposed to be ugly. Since when were elves supposed to be pretty?

It's FINE if they're UGLY, but they don't look like ELVES.

They look like the elves of the Elder Scrolls universe.

Here's a different elf.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4b/Elf-Elf.jpg/220px-Elf-Elf.jpg

Have another.

<img width=400>http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/7600000/Forrest-Elf-fantasy-7636450-1024-768.jpg

One more.

<img width=200>http://www.bookpalace.com/acatalog/OrtizElves.jpg

Notice how not-elvish they look, according to you.

Yeah, Elves don't need to be some sparkly, busty, half nude women with elf ears. There is no correct way to design a elf, it's up to the designers.

Personally I love the look of the 'not-so mainstream' elves in Skyrim.
There are many types of elves throughout all types of folk lore

 

[Wintermoot]

elves look BADASS! in TES5 if you don,t like it you can wait till a mod fixes it or fix it yourself.

 

[Makon]

Hpnestly, I am playing a High Elf Female in Skyrim, and I think she's absolutely kick-ass looking (Seriously, will post a SS later).

There is no definitive way to design an Elf. Why? Because Elves are a fictitious race developed by people creating stories to entertain and exist in ancient folklore. Last time I checked, there wasn't a Wood Elf lass driving next to me on the freeway on my way to work.

The design choice of Elves is entirely at the whim of whatever designer or creator who is working on them. They could just as easily be a two and a half foot tall fat guy with pointy ears as they could be extremely tall and lithe figures with no ears at all. The designers of TES series obviously made their choice of what Elves would look like and be distinguished by back in (iirc) Morrowinds. Now, I know Oblivion didn't help their own design choice with the Elves, but like one of their designers (I think it was Todd Howard) said, "This is Skyrim. The men are big and burly and have beards, the women are big and burly and have beards, and everyone is good with an axe".

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

What is with all of this negativity directed at the OP? Personally I'd have to agree, a lot of the elves look pretty damn ugly. For all of those who say maybe elves don't need to be aesthetically pleasing, I call bullshit. When people make a character in a game they typically want them to look good, it is in no way in the developer's best interest to make a race look bad. I'd like Skyrim fanboys to stop seeing this as an attack on their game because it's not. It's just criticism. The game can still be good with less than attractive elves.

Personally I think that every race aside from the elves looks a lot better in Skyrim, especially the ones that I felt looked so bad to make a character with in Oblivion. Those being the Khajit, Argonians and Orcs. However I feel the elves fell short, and for the reasons the OP mentioned. They have a very buglike appearance, and their eyebrows and eyes just look ugly. The wood elves most of all are what get to me.

...that being said my first character was a dunmer, and while I'm not completely satisfied with how he looks, he is still passable by my standards.

 

[DireFrog]

Jesus, guy. They are SUPPOSED to look weird and creepy and disturbing. This is Skyrim, not lovey dovey Oblivion-land (I have no idea what it's called).

Here's some good reading to change what seems to be a set-in-type cast of elves you have. It's called Lords and Ladies by Terry Prachett. He is a great author, and that whole book is about elves. You think Elves are beautiful? Yeah, that's because they want you to think that. They want the obedience that only beauty can bring. And cruelty too.

Don't be off put by the cover art, by the way. I don't know how shit it is over with you yanks.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I would like to point out that I think the two biggest problems with the elf models are 1: The ridiculous anime bug eyes and 2: The incredibly pronounced brows that they have, I mean, they jut out so far from their heads you could land a Cessna on them.

High elves and wood elves in particular can look stunningly gorgeous if you invest the time in the face generator and you're really into that sort of thing.. I don't know what you're talking about with the bug eyes, the big problem I've had is that most of the altmer eyes in particular are too narrow.

Things people really need to accept.

* Elder scrolls elves never looked terribly attractive to human standards. Altmer always looked ridiculous regardless because they're just so tall, while we should all be thankful that the Bosmer males being little midget people thing has been retconned.

The facial generation system in Oblivion was extremely generalized, but even there the default Altmer characters were revolting.

* Dark Elves are only expected to be 'attractive' because they have become a repository for so much fan wank over the years. D&D drow were twisted, five foot tall, sharp-faced little horrors until R.A. Salvadore got his grubby mitts on them.

* Dark Elves in Tamriel are 'dark' because of their worship of the Daedric Lord Boethiah. Orcs are ugly because their god became corrupted into the Daedric Lord Malacath. I see a fairly consistent message here that daedra worship doesn't make elves pretty.

* It is clear from in game dialogue that the Altmer, for example, don't find other Altmer unattractive and in fact seem to prefer them over humans. One of the 'ugliest' Altmer in the game also comments on her good looks at one point, which may be a joke but also suggests that Altmer have different standards of beauty.

* Tolkien did not describe elves in very much detail at all. Most of the images we associate with Tolkien come from the professional illustrators who were hired to illustrate different versions of his book. He hated most of them.. the only work he liked was fairly abstract stuff by people like Pauline Baynes, which seems to fit his deliberately vague and 'mythic' style of writing.

 

[Goody]

I think most of the preset Wood and High elves look awful, but the Dark elves suit how they look now.

However this is my personalised High elf:

Spoiler

 

[Terminal Blue]

I didn't set out to make a beautiful character because frankly I'm not good enough and I don't care, I set out to make a character who looks like I imagined my character to look - and I succeded to my own satisfaction, which I guess is what counts.

Still, I think my character looks more 'normal' than the presets, so here we go.

Spoiler: Image

What I find makes the preset males look disproportionate is mostly the eyes and chin. Try lowering the 'chin length' slider and increase the 'chin width' slider, change the eyes to your preference and try to position them proportionately (you might need to raise the brow - which actually doesn't look bad if its positioned proportionally to the eyes). If you make sure the jaw width and jaw height sliders are at least in the centre position if not higher, you'll end up with a much more 'masculine' looking character than most of the presets. Also, experiment with the complexion slider, making men look older does not necessarily make them look less attractive.

Not tried dark elves very much, but I think the wood elf face is similar enough that the same thing might work. As I said, dark elves seem to have deliberate imperfections built into the skin itself (like the bags under their eyes) so they're not going to be attractive, but a similar rule might work on them too if you want them to have a stronger face.

The female presets generally look a lot more human anyway, it shouldn't be hard to make them look super hot. If you're feeling lazy, just follow the simple rules of neoteny.

 

[Syzygy23]

What the hell was Bethesda thinking? The elves in Skyrim look absolutely HIDEOUS. I mean, they look like something you'd see out of Aliens. I feel like the Khajit and the Argonians feel more human than the elves do! It's become very off-putting.

I can't figure out what's worse. That someone designed them in the first place thinking that they would be aesthetically pleasing, or that someone didn't tell the person who created them that they're an absolute failure and put them in the final release.

EDIT:

I would like to point out that I think the two biggest problems with the elf models are 1: The ridiculous anime bug eyes and 2: The incredibly pronounced brows that they have, I mean, they jut out so far from their heads you could land a Cessna on them. Their skull structure looks like David Boreanaz and Cro-Magnon Man had a baby.

Also, since people keep bringing this up as well: Yes, the elves looked WORSE in Oblivion. That doesn't mean that they look GOOD in Skyrim.

By the way, people keep using this image and I just want to comment:

^That guy looks like he belongs in a DYNASTY WARRIORS game, not TES.

I think they wanted elves in the TES series to be more than just "Human with pointy ears who lives really long".

I like it, it adds to the inhuman feeling of the elves.

 

[Saggingcow]

I really have more of a problem with the new look of the Argonians (which I have a love-hate relationship with). In Oblivion the elves were just slightly different looking humans, the dark elves having red eyes with gray skin and the high elves having er... blonde hair? Now you can tell instantly that that they are not human.

 

[Bato]

I know it's late in he thread doubt this'll get seen but like..

Okay they don't look like humans. But do you know why? Because they're not humans.
Also the Orcs and Dwarves are elves. The Falmer too. Any sort of -mer are a deviation of the elven bloodline somewhere along the line.

 

[Syzygy23]

I know it's late in he thread doubt this'll get seen but like..

Okay they don't look like humans. But do you know why? Because they're not humans.
Also the Orcs and Dwarves are elves. The Falmer too. Any sort of -mer are a deviation of the elven bloodline somewhere along the line.

By TES lore, all the mer people were descended from gods whereas humans were created by gods.

 

[StBishop]

I dunno, I find my own catharsis to be personally constructive and fulfilling. It's also nice to know that the internet, as usually, is collectively wrong (<NOTE: SARCASM). Also, nothing written on an internet forum, anywhere, ever, in the history of time, has been constructive, so pointing out that something ISN'T constructive is like pointing out that that a Scion XB is ugly. It's a given.

I don't think Scion XB's are ugly.

I can fix that. Start watching Top Gear. You'll learn what a beautiful car looks like.

I do watch Top Gear. Watching Top Gear doesn't come with the necessity to agree with all of the opinions expressed by Jeremy Clarkson (because let's be honest, his opinions tend to be most popular of the three) and to be honest, I don't.

I don't think they're beautiful by any means, however I don't think they're ugly. I think an ugly car would be a 90's VW Golf, or a Skoda S-Car-Go, or a 90's Ford Falcon (They were ugly), or a number of other cars.

Then again I think Range Rovers look good. I also think that the Lamborghini Miura looks amazing. So yeah.

 

[Elamdri]

I do watch Top Gear. Watching Top Gear doesn't come with the necessity to agree with all of the opinions expressed by Jeremy Clarkson (because let's be honest, his opinions tend to be most popular of the three) and to be honest, I don't.

Clarkson is a fat git. I usually find myself agreeing with May most of the time.

I don't think they're beautiful by any means, however I don't think they're ugly. I think an ugly car would be a 90's VW Golf, or a Skoda S-Car-Go, or a 90's Ford Falcon (They were ugly), or a number of other cars.

Then again I think Range Rovers look good. I also think that the Lamborghini Miura looks amazing. So yeah.

I'm partial to Aston Martin myself.

 

[Mat Turner]

You know what's more important than this? Everything. It's not Bethesda's fault their elves don't live up to how they're supposed to look in your creepy fantasies.

Stop worrying about stupid crap.

 

[StBishop]

Clarkson is a fat git. I usually find myself agreeing with May most of the time.

I can't say I think he's a git, that'd be a lie. But I will admit, I tend to agree more with May about, well, almost everything.

I'm partial to Aston Martin myself.

Can't say I blame you.

 

[New York Patrick]

http://theelderscrollsskyrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/altmer.png

...I'm gonna go ahead and call that an improvement. Maybe the elves aren't SUPPOSED to be pretty.



...In fact, I'm gonna go with that. Who says all races have to fit a traditional version of "aesthetically pleasing"?

Nailed it. In fact, rarely do I find that any of the Skyrim races look "aesthetically pleasing..." They look REAL. Like the kind of people who would have to live in this kind of setting, and put up with the danger and hardships and... weather. They look like they have character!

Everyone looking like a badass > Elves looking like Orlando Bloom

 

[Xannieros]

I'm sorry, were elves always supposed to be pretty? Just like dwarves being engineers is wrong.

I think they look okay.

 

[Flizzick]

I like the elves in skyrim. It doesn't take the "most beautiful creature on the planet" route. I like how my wood elf doesn't look trustworthy. it makes it all the more fun for me.

THIS^

I joined the Dark Brotherhood as soon as I could with my wood elf; mostly because the quests centered around thief skills, and also because I gave him red eyes. Come on, how is a guy with red eyes NOT evil?

Anyway, I really don't understand the whole "Argonians and Khajits feeling more human" thing. Elves aren't humans, so the game devs decided they shouldn't feel/look too much like humans, simple as that.

 

[Bato]

By TES lore, all the mer people were descended from gods whereas humans were created by gods.

Ahh I wasn't entirely sure on how they were made, thanks.
I was looking through the UESP before I posted but couldn't find anything on it and just did anyway.