• I love how Elder Scrolls treats the fantasy races. Real grim danky and full of racism and dark shit all over.

    I love being in Morrowind and being called names because I’m a giant walking lizard where cat folk and lizard folks used to be slaves. Lean into that shit Bethesda. Gimme dat race war.

    • Snot Flickerman
      link
      fedilink
      English
      9310 months ago

      Except the problem is that Bethesda writes really flat, unconvincing racists. In fact, I’d go as far as to argue weakly portrayed racists in media like Bethesda’s are part of why racists are always like “I’m not racist!” because they’re comparing themselves to absurdly over the top tropes of badly written racism.

      • Thassodar
        link
        fedilink
        4810 months ago

        You want Disco Elysium level racists in all your games? Because they got that right.

        • @camr_on@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          1310 months ago

          Maybe not all games, but a 3d open-world RPG written by the Disco writers would be utterly amazing

            • @camr_on@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              810 months ago

              Hahaha only a few thousand hours. You just reminded me that it’s been too long since I’ve done a playthrough so thank you, I’m off to add a few more

              • Cowbee [he/him]
                link
                fedilink
                510 months ago

                If it’s been more than a few years, you’ll be blown away by recent mods. There’s been a bit of a modding Renaissance.

                • @camr_on@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  310 months ago

                  Music to my ears. I’m hoping to get a modded playthrough working on the steam deck. I did a TTW playthrough a couple years ago and it was great

      • Cethin
        link
        fedilink
        English
        1310 months ago

        They do now for sure. Morrowind at least was a lot harsher. It wasn’t just racists. There were groups who still practiced race-based chattel slavery. Now they are mostly too scared to even mention it as a possibility.

        (Although I would argue Starfield is pretty racist in it’s creation. A large portion of black characters have African accents. This is long after colonization, and theoretically there would have been lots of race/nationality mixing after leaving earth. Sure, some places may retain or even strengthen their accents, but it probably wouldn’t be race based anymore, or at least not the same as in modern day earth. It’s so uncreative and uninteresting, and seemingly racist in its portrayal. I’m not sure if I’m the only one who noticed this, but it aggravated me.)

        • Herbal Gamer
          link
          fedilink
          1810 months ago

          Oh great, they stopped the fun kind of racism and gave us actual racism.

        • @thecrotch@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          510 months ago

          It’s not just Africans. It doesn’t make sense that Indian/Hispanic/Russian/American accents exist either. Earth ceased to exist hundreds of years ago, and there are no homogenous cultures anymore (except the va’ruun, their accent makes sense). In Bethesdas effort to be inclusive they treated accents like they’re a racial attribute rather than cultural. In reality there would be a UC accent, a freestar accent, etc but the accents depicted in game would be long extinct.

          • Cethin
            link
            fedilink
            English
            610 months ago

            I disagree on the accents not existing at all. For example, The Expanse does it well. The belters have a distinct working class Irish accent, but there’s nothing there to do with race really. Accents can be used to show where groups come from, but for scifi to work things need to actually be thought about.

            • @wolfshadowheart@slrpnk.net
              link
              fedilink
              310 months ago

              Yeah, I had no issues with the accents so much as who had which. Except for the Engineer Pilot NPCs who always had illfitting voice lines to their NPC look

      • @FireRetardant@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        1110 months ago

        One of my favourite examples of a “weak” racist is Ulfric Stormcloak in skyrim. You telling me the Jarl of Windhelm and the leader of the pro nord movement continues to tolerate the grey quarter within his walls? Especially given it is implied most nords are racist, and especially the windhelm ones, it seems it would be an obvious political move to evict/raze/kill off the grey quarter.

        Of course this could be seen as a bit extreme but it seems weird to me that the city hosting the leadership of the nord rebellion is more racially diverse than some of the other nordic settlements.

    • @Bytemeister@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      Ελληνικά
      2
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      Used to be?

      Looks like some n’wah forgot to lock his shed and now all the farm tools have run off.

  • @Jknaraa@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    3310 months ago

    Night Elves in Warcraft 3: Murderous xenophobic amazons.

    Night Elves in World of Warcraft: Bubbly hippie chicks.

  • @Eagle0600@yiffit.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    2810 months ago

    Dwarf Fortress elves are basically Bosmer from the Elder Scrolls, basically anti-vegans. They will eat the bodies of their fallen enemies, but won’t bear any harm coming to a plant.

  • Pleb
    link
    fedilink
    1410 months ago

    Meanwile Forest Knife-Ears in Warhammer:

    Setting foot in our forest? Bad move!

      • Pleb
        link
        fedilink
        310 months ago

        Yeah, but that’s a fun recreational time!

      • Also that feel when you save the Fantasy Holy Roman Empires future Emperor because reasons.

        Seriously the biggest flex Karl Franz ever did was encounter the wood elves as a child and not get fed to the trees. Add on the fact that they showed him respect as a child and the elector counts shouldve put him on the throne instantly.

      • Pleb
        link
        fedilink
        110 months ago

        Those are 40k.
        And DElfs aren’t Forest Knife-Ears.

        But yes, those are even worse.

        • @DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
          link
          fedilink
          2
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          Eldar means elf, we know this because Tolkien invented the term and said it means elf.

          While Drukhari and Druchii have a different history, and Games Workshop mostly retconned the idea that the WHFB world existed somewhere in 40k, I have fairly little doubt you could find a WHFB Dark Elf calling themselves Eldar somewhere, at least in a “Eldar is the elven word” kind of way, and culturally they’re pretty similar in theme. At least in the “BDSM reaver and slaver Elves that don’t believe in consent” kind of way.

          Tl;Dr Dark Eldar works for WHFB just fine, because they stole half their ideas and terms from Tolkien anyways. The rest they stole from Moorcock.

          • Pleb
            link
            fedilink
            110 months ago

            Sure Dark Eldar works for Fantasy too, GW stole pretty much everything about Warhammer and cobbled it together. But still, the common nomenclature is DEldar for 40k (although I think they got some copryrightable name a few years ago) and DElfs for WHFB.

  • @milliams@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    810 months ago

    Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad.

    Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies