So Stellaris, the "4X" game by Paradox, is releasing various updates to some of its older, previously "cosmetic" DLCs which includes the Humanoid pack. In these updates are two new portrait options that are being described as "Elves".
Behold, "elves": https://i.ibb.co/1f3ZyxJ/elves2.jpg
Don't worry, they come in many colours, the fact the default option is brown is totally a coincidence.
https://i.ibb.co/wLrcCqQ/dfa5a33825065088193e525adb199e510ad02a7e.png
https://i.ibb.co/HGD7DJZ/eec8cf19bf79a5de08f7069acceb264e38cef117.png
Do note that so far that second image is still labelled as "Females", so wait and see how soon that changes to "Body Type 2" or something else.
The second set aren't much better: https://i.ibb.co/ZSDWdJ5/085749c6cadb73a8aeb68cf0be5b83dd18d47db2.png
The response has been somewhat cathartic with many players calling out the new designs as of a quality not befitting a game such as Stellaris which has been running for 7 years now.
There are also some very expected comments about how the portraits have certain slants towards actual human appearances. As well as bats.
Some of the nicknames for the portraits even include "Nubians" more so because they look less like Elves rather than more like certain Human groups.
Keep in mind Stellaris is the game which previously banned certain mods that would skew leader/population appearances in certain ways, in this case towards Caucasian, however as is known by many here it's acceptable when The Message is "correct.
Oh and a final point, these changes to the past DLCs are coming with a price hike. Those who have them won't be charged extra but a previously cheaper tier of DLCs that added in species content instead of "Story content" as the larger DLCs are referred to is now on par with the newer DLCs which brings the total DLC cost for Stellaris to something like $270.
Would recommend buying the game and DLCs when they are on offer. As OP mentions it's almost $300 for everything atm and tbh even though I've been playing myself for about 5 years I still don't have some of the most recent big story DLCs. In part because I always wait for them to go on offer, but also because most when released are buggy messes and break the game. The most recent being Paragons that revamped the leader system and currently significantly lowers the number of leaders players can use.
While a major reason for this may be to put a soft cap on performance by imposing penalties if you recruit too many leaders, the problem is with four categories you will hit the caps very quickly and then end up in a situation where you have a potentially galaxy spanning empire that can only support a dozen named leaders across your fleets, planets, science facilities, and armies. Effectively having one Sci-fi show worth of main characters in charge of everything in the galaxy with no minor or supporting characters at all.
Edit: this does of course get modded by a lot of players to simply raise the new cap.
Recommend buying it? The DLC's alone clearly state that you should pirate it. Add in the fact that they banned mods and they don't deserve your money.
Not what I was intending with my post. If someone is buying it I would only recommend they do so when the various parts are on offer in some way. The base game is frequently free in some deals/bundles and the actual DLCs can be as much as 75% off, especially on Xmas.