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.
I really want Stellaris to be good but it just fundamentally can't ever be good. The basic mechanics just aren't fun.
It's not a great game, but it is one of the best random space opera story generators around. And an absolutely ludicrous platform for mods. My favorite way to unwind after the kids are in bed, apparently already north of 5000 hours according to steam.
That's why I really want it to be an actual good game, it feels like it should be great and there's nothing else trying to do what Stellaris does, but it just turns into brainless spreadsheet monitoring against the most braindead, pointless AI in the history of video games.
Yup, spreadsheets, awful stuff! shoves EvE online farther under the rug
I will say that the AI has gotten markedly better in more recent patches. It doesn't fill worlds with pointless law enforcement, no longer intentionally suicides fleets into losing battles for no gain, and on the highest difficulties it is able to use its massive resource advantage to actually win. Meta on highest difficulties is now to aggressively attack and vassalize an AI empire right away in order to extract resources from it, because they also made it so subject empires only lose part of their AI difficulty bonuses. It is... extremely hard to win on the highest difficulty without that cheese.
There are four steps beyond the level playing field setting of Ensign, and I usually play on the second of those, which usually makes for a tense early game and a more even later game. On the third step I win less than half without doing cheesy stuff.
Currently playing around with the Stellaris Evolved mods and its associated side packs. It adds quite a lot of interesting civics, to make new columns in my spreadsheets.
With that kind of artificial difficulty, there really is no "cheese" in my mind. War is a dirty business, especially galactic ones!