Faugh, as if hair length was a solid gender indicator in the real world, much less a fantasy one.

Look at the stance, lad. Legs spread that wide almost certainly mean fully-descended testicles are present. If that Magnar figure is a uterus-owner, she's a very butch one, or she was raised in a culture with absolutely no traditions of treating female virginity as a significant social commodity.

Trog has a similar stance and there doesn't seem to be doubt about her being... her. Not that I know about body language so I'll let the experts judge,

I imagine we'll get to the bottom of this soon enough.

Makes me wonder if the Urxen is a hermie, then.  She's got a terribly broad stance, too ...

Please, by all the powers in the multiverse, let us not have a Larry Craig faction............

For all you blind people thinking the second from the bottom is a chick...

All but the last are name sourced from what they are.  Check the image source and you can cure your confusion.

The last pic and the calvary medallion are evidence that you cannot always believe the name of a file.

I actually looked at the file to see if it said, and thought the M stood for "Magnar", not "Male"! Neglected to get the names of any of the others......

so did we just completely rip off all of Tolkien and MoM ideas and pass them off as Fallen/Kingdoms?  

Not trying to flame here but I'm not seeing how this is going to make for a rich story world.  Sounds very similar to the ultra-old school DnD and fantasy themes.  "the DnD world generated by a nuclear blast" thus making all different and things gone to hell mated with our Tolkien arch-types.  Great source material makes for great ideas but I don't yet see how this is differentiating the game from the tome of Ye'Standard Fantasy Ideas.  Hoping that the Channeler's, PCs if you will, can bring some mix to the field or that there are backstories that make them better than the cookiecutter versions we've seen in the past. Maybe an alignment system that doesn't paste everyone into a pure Kingdom=good Empire=bad light with events that will drive the story forward?  Just spouting my ideas here. 

And really you are damned if you do, damned if you don't with these arch-types.  But I for one hope we have some new twists coming into the mix to make things more original.

I posted a while back stating that if I couldn't play as Undead I wouldn't be able to love the game. Just wanted to state that for the record all of these evil factions look compelling to me and I couldn't be happier with this info. I am REALLY excited for the game at this point.

Brad,

I have some questions...

(1) Do the Magnar and Tarthans have pointy ears?

(2) Are the Gilden short?

I kind of think those guys need those attributes.

- Vordrak

Each of these races are very bland and non interesting. Granted this is initial concept art, but they all look like the same race, a blue guy with different armor. They all appear to be different unit types for the same race.

Are these designs just placeholders or are there near the final look for each race? Are the designs limited in their creativity due to the difficulty of generating children that are a blend of features, or it makes it easier to perhaps algorithmically generate varying features?

Either way I don't feel particularly drawn to any of these races, but I had the same problem with galciv2, nothing sucked me in. I would suggest looking at star control 2 again to see good race definitions. While this perhaps is closer to 'realism' in that to live on the same planet all races must be somewhat similar, I feel that to achieve the more gripping character, there needs to be more artistic exaggeration.

I also don't feel like the names are very compelling either, they feel more like keyboard slam names then anything. But again what makes a name compelling or not? It is usually the descriptions, history, and actions that give them form. Since this is the early phase still of race design, I can see here how they look somewhat bare.

Anyway, all work here is good work, but just wanted to put my opinion on the lack of um, feeling, they generate in me at first glance.

"Tolkien and Dragonlance" What?!?!? I don't see much resemblance and I'm the worlds biggest Dragonlance Fan and the worlds biggest Raistlin Fan. There isn't very much resemblance with Dragonlance, not even with the Dragons "ruling" over people. Lots of fantasy games go that route.

I'm still waiting on my Draconians though

The new info is Awesome by the way, keep it coming.

#4 I'm pretty sure looks like a Male.

The helmet is also vaguely reminiscent of Pirate jaw structure as well....... curious......

For those of you who haven't the foggiest idea what I'm talking about:

I do agree with Reapy that the fallen all seem very samey (Magnar, Resoln and Yithril particularly.  Their armor is even extremely similar in design), but they are all sovereigns (Judging by the Kingdom pictures) and the gaunt half-quadruped creature in the Tolkien comparison thread may have got my hopes up unfairly.

I'm having a hard time keeping track of the "way to rip off Tolkin/Dragonlance/whatever" people as opposed to the "where is the pointy ear race?" people.

Seems like there's no way to win.

I think what's been presented is plenty creative.  The armor/clothing is exquisite, and I'm sure as more details on these races are fleshed out, we'll find there is plenty of unique personality and motivation to each of them.  In a way, I find the Empires a bit more compelling than the Kingdoms!

#4 is a dark elf (essentially), is there really enough of a difference between their genders to warrant an argument? lol. I mean c'mon, elven males aren't really *males* anyway right?  So it makes little difference 

I really like the look and names for all factions so far and I wouldn't listen to the haters. 

The only thing I'd be concerned about is each faction having two, sometimes three or more names.  This could make diplomacy very confusing for first time players.

Looks pretty good to me.

Any chance of getting some high resolution versions of those screens?

I especiallly dig the Kraxis guy with his awesome beard.

People give organized, well thought out, constructive criticism, and you just shoot it down with your fanboy antics. Considering Elemental is in beta, maybe Stardock would like constructive criticism to make sure the game is as successful as possible. That's not to say you shouldn't laud SD for its achievements, but dear sir, if you could stop drooling it would help.

</rant>

Yeah, there were people complaining a while ago that there weren't going to be any elves or dwarves in the game.  Now there are other people complaining that some of the races are too similar to elves and dwarves.  You really can't win.

Everyone just needs to chill, not read too much into concept art, and worry more about the game mechanics.  That's what'll make the game.  Personally, I'll probably customize my own race every time I play.

Ultimatly at the end of the day elemental is supposed to be super modable, so it is really the system behind the races that is going to be elemental. Personal taste is highly subjective...and intial concept art is not in game resources, but still, more variety is needed, based on the concept art alone there.

What I am most concerned about is not that the concept art is crap (actually far from it. I think the concept art looks pretty badass and keeping with the general theme of the game).  Rather, what really concerns me is for SD to avoid the "tin-like" story experience that plauged GalCiv.  I was incredibly excited when the devs stated that they aren't just going to be cut/pasting from the previous installments of these games/overall genre (ala MoM, Tolkien, Terry Brooks, DnD [that's Dungeons and Dragons] et. al). What I am most upset about is that the devs have stated that they want to make a compelling new story and I'm just not feeling it.  What's so different about saying that the "goblins" aren't natural versus I am playing with goblins? nothing really except some backstory.  Yes, it might work and I certainly hope it does.  At first blush, however, I am not seeing how Elemental is grabbing my interest from the get go.  Perhaps that it just feels like they are doing the same stuff but using some odd justification for getting there (well the titans made the goblins). 

This can be fixed with some game mechanics that create an actual difference between Kingdoms and Empires; and that actually make Empires "unnaturals" have some trully unatural quality other than simply starting with a Death Magic Book. Whooptido, Mr. Bluebird is sitting on my shoulder.  Give me an in game consequence for being unatural that will pervade my choices, make me truly understand that I am not truly in sync with the world.  This is of particular interest with the Easterlings...errrr Men on the eastern side of the Chasm.  If they come with Oiliphants I'll barf.