The Asian coded “race” are the Akaviri, which are on another continent – Tamriel is just one of the many continents on Mundus. They initially invaded but then found out that Reman Cyrodiil was a dragonborn and because they largely idolatrised dragons (and other assorted lizards) they came to a kind of Varangian arrangement where they’d just serve as warriors under the Dragonborn. But they’d know this if they weren’t a fake fan.
Also if anything, the Aldmeri Dominion is more muslim coded than anything else, but alas, let’s not get into that.
The way elder scrolls handles race is very bad imo. A lot of the races are based on actual cultures and have real racial stereotyping in them.
Redguards are literally the Black race, in earlier games they had bonuses to stealth and lockpick which is kind of racist to make the Black people race oriented to the thief playstyle. It’s been toned down since Skyrim and now they are the pirate race.
Dark Elves, they had a Black voice actor in morrowind, they became British in Skyrim. They went from the black elf race to more of a blueish color. They were also evil in that they owned slaves and did necromancy but they toned it down and now the high elves are the evil elf race.
Khajit are just Arab cats, they steal things, that’s their entire identity.
Orcs are just orcs, the non evil variety which is okay I guess.
Bretons are literally British people, they also are part elf for some reason. I hate Bretons.
Nords are Scandinavian, now they can be kind of olive skinned but having a Viking race is probably why Skyrim was popular with chuds. And you know, they were racist and not the villains which deserves a :jesse-wtf:
Imperials are Italians, I’m sorry romans, who gives a shit.
Argonians are interesting, they have boobs but reptiles do not lactate
High elves are your typical fantasy elves with a bit of fanatic racism thrown in with the aldmari dominion.
Wood elves are probably the most elf out of all the elves considering they live in trees and love animals and shit.
Can I say that race in the elder scrolls is stupid? Elder scrolls 6 should just abolish the concept entirely. Skin, facial, and hair differences should be purely cosmetic.
they steal things, that’s their entire identity.
Maybe in memes. In actual lore their identity is diversity. Their country is kind of like India in that it is a loose collection of lots of different cultures which have been unified by outside influence. In this case it’s exactly 16 because this setting has dumb numerology stuff going on so numbers are important. (Elsweyr was made of 16 tribes, which became 16 kingdoms, in which live 16 different subspecies of Khajiit with a ‘special’ 17th one as their religious leader)
Theft is culturally important to them no more than it is culturally important to us, in the real world. In the same way that we have stories glorifying thieves and theft (whether they’re “morally good” thieves like Robin Hood or just interesting / funny / cool thieves like, idk, Conan the Barbarian) they also have that.
It just seems like you’re completely ignorant of basically everything written about the Khajiit, the most unique and interesting race in the setting.
The way elder scrolls handles race is very bad imo. A lot of the races are based on actual cultures and have real racial stereotyping in them.
Yeah, I feel like more recent RPGs would have rolled most of the human races of Elder Scrolls into one “human” species with the same stats and let you choose backgrounds (Nord, Redguard, Imperial) with some skill buffs and maluses.
That way you can still have diversity without implying that humans of different backgrounds have different inherent physical or mental abilities (beyond what skills they’re more likely to pick up due to environment or culture). You can also still have Stat differences for the non-human races since they’re actually biologically different - like saying “gorillas are stronger than humans” is much less stupid than “black people are stronger than white people”.
Kinda reminds me of some pen and paper RPGs used to give strength maluses to women but stopped because it was horribly sexist.
maluses
I have never seen this instead of “penalties” before and I hate it. Is this entering common usage? Took me awhile to figure out what you meant.
Yeah, I feel like more recent RPGs would have rolled most of the human races of Elder Scrolls into one “human” species with the same stats and let you choose backgrounds (Nord, Redguard, Imperial) with some skill buffs and maluses.
That’s really how we’re supposed to think about it, the concept of “race” is an outdated video game concept. In-universe no one thinks of Nords as being, like, genetically able to handle the cold or Imperials as being, like, genetically silver-tongued. They’re just humans, and it might not even be possible in plenty of cases to tell someone’s race. Not to mention that obviously, being just humans, a Nord and Imperial could have a child and then that child would be mixed-race and it gets even harder. Then add in the fact that that mixed child could then bang a dark elf and produce a mixed-human with red eyes and scarlet hair. I honestly think that races will be handled very differently in TES6.
Arena and Daggerfall (and Battlespire lol) had race selection framed as choosing where you’re from instead of picking your race. I have to wonder if this could’ve been avoided if they kept stat differences associated with the province your character is from and then providing race as an additional cosmetic choice. It would’ve been a cool little bit of extra customization too
I would sound like a complete loser if i said that the “original” lore was outside of what was defined in the “scrolls” series of games, they just built on top of it, but alas, that’s what the lore IS now, so there’s no use fighting it. The original lore was not very woke, but the games people have made a huge chud version of it nonetheless.
My favourite bethesthification of the original lore is how the orcs, rieklings and goblins are the only ones that practice male preference in terms of inheriting titles; you read that right, if your firstborn is a woman, she takes the lion’s share of your titles. Anyway, in all the games, 95% of all rulers are men. This is never explained, it’s just a fluke of statistics. Firstborns are never women for some reason, I guess half of them are trans.
Bretons were never supposed to be British, but closer to the people that left for Brittany after the various Germanic invasions.
Redguards are split between various cultures, and they don’t even have the same faith between them, so it’s kinda rich to just call of them Redguards, it’s akin to calling them all “the blacks” which is indeed what the very point of that term is.
Sho on and sho on tugs shirt
Redguards are literally the Black race, in earlier games they had bonuses to stealth and lockpick
:what-the-hell: why was it so impossible for old-school game devs to not be ridiculously racist
