Many ethnicities are clearly represented in the Elder Scroll races (for example Bretons = British/French).

However, Asians continue to be left out. Why is that?

From my understanding of the lore, there is an Asian race in the series called the Tsaesci who have vampiric/snake-like features.

Why don't the developers make this race playable?

For the same reason they were so rare an ethnic group in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. They live really, REALLY far away.

The 'Asian' cultures of Nirn, including the Tsaesci, live in Akavir, another covenant across the sea to the east of Tamriel. The one time we know of that they've come, in force, to Tamriel was an invasion that was thwarted by Reman Cyrodiil. The survivors were integrated into Cyrodiilic culture, and have for the most part disappeared through admixture over a period of more than a thousand years.

I think that, while not humans lore-wise, Elves or ancient Akaviri might represent Asians. The Elves because of their facial features (especially High Elves and Wood Elves) and culture thats "different" from Cyrodiilic culture in the same way Europe viewed Asia in real life, and the Akaviri/blades because they used Katanas.

Not sure what the original Blades looked like. They might have had some Asian features, but nobody knows They were Nords most likely, they might have found some Akaviri gear and adopted it as their own.

I'm not really sure though.

PS: it's said that there were Men on Akavir, but they were killed off by vampires.

Eaten by the Tsaesci, who may or may not be Vampiric snake people...

But yeah, there are elements of what we would identify as Oriental culture in many of Tamriel's races. The Dunmer in particular draw heavily from Japanese culture and mythology.

Actually, that's the Ra'Gada, in spirit if not aesthetically. That title belongs to the Niben.

Basically, its safe to say that in-universe, some families in the Niben and elsewhere sport Asian features. The only real question of why they end up getting the shaft is, well...thank Oblivion for whatever reason.

There was an Asian-looking character in the Redguard comic and I think it was a missed opportunity to give the Reachmen a more Mongolian look then simply Breton.

But yea, the reason it could be rare is that Tseasci is far away and there are no ships coming from there en mass.

just make a small population of asian looking people who escaped from the tsaeci and lived undiscovered in seclusion until now.. thematically, they tie in with the akaviri weapons and armors anyway since asian looking characters just seem more aesthetically better with a katana or other samurai looking weapons and armor..

different factions seem to cater to different themes anyway. so i don't think it's gonna be gamebreaking to finally add some asian looking akaviri descendants into the game to flesh out the asian theme.

with that said, i think bethesda should also flesh out more theme details about the khajit, argonians, and the other races as well.

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it would be cool if bethesda adds asian looking characters into the game, but most likely the purists are gonna have a field day trying to prevent that, so short answer : just mod it

most game franchises have purists who've been playing the game franchise for decades. trying to convince them of any significant change to their beloved game is like trying to enforce to them a midlife crisis..

any real and significant change should and would come only from the developers themselves or by a matter of "seniority" from the purists themselves (the more ancient the better), but usually the purists would oppose any suggestions that does not already coincide to their own previous suggestions. and they usually have a very long list of things that they already want to get implemented which ultimately takes a much higher priority than any other suggestions from anybody else.

so yea, short answer : if bethesda decides not to include asian looking races.. just mod it.

It's Nirn not Earth.

Pretty much this right here.

There are Asian influences in both the Redguard (some Japanese influence), Dunmer (strong Chinese influence) and Orcs (Mongols). Weren't the Asian-looking character in the Redguard comic a Dunmer? And then of course there's the Akaviri (strong Japanese influence).

Bosmer also have a kinda Asian/Native American look...

Yeah, fantasy likes to draw on Asian culture plenty for its fantasy, especially for the "exotic" or "foreign" cultures like elves and tsaesci. Not sure you can call it appropriate the members of these cultures are elves with pointy features and fantastical skin/eye colors, while races that draw on european cultures are pretty much a 1:1 match with their real-world influence, and are always considered the "familiar" culture. That's not an Elder Scrolls problem, that's a problem with the fantasy genre - it draws so much on european culture and folklore that any other real-world culture they draw from is shown as the "other" or more bizarre culture, and it typically parallels real-world relationships between European, African, Middle Eastern, and Asian cultures (from the European perspective). And you're lucky to find any fantasy fiction that draws on central/south american indigenous cultures. This is veering into the kind of political discussion that isn't allowed on these forums, so I should probably stop here. And yeah, I know that it's fantasy and doesn't have to represent everyone in the real world exactly, but that's a different argument I won't go into.

Elder Scrolls is actually somewhat better about it, since the large cast of NPCs and races in the games means they can amalgamate certain cultures into one group, and never have to worry about having a "token" character. Although I'm still hoping that if we ever see a Tsaesci it'll turn out that they're just ordinary Asian-looking humans and all that stuff about them being serpentine monsters is Imperial propaganda. Would help make sense of the fact that their weapons and armor fit so normally on everyone else, too.

Question: would it be possible for somebody from Akavir to travel to Tamriel? That seems to be what the OP's wish is. Not to see lots of Tsaesci all over the place, but to simply make playing a Tsaesci possible.

I don't see why not. There are a number of conveniently-placed islands between the two continents. It ought to be possible to island-hop on a voyage west to Tamriel. But, considering what a war-torn, strife-ridden, bloody and dangerous place Tamriel is, I don't see why any rational being would want to make the journey.

Yeah but then he would be killed as a spy.

They aren't really the weapnos need hands which is well normal.And we haven't seen real akaviri armor only armor made for humans or mer.

I am http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Ruined_Akaviri_Shield#Ruined_Akaviri_Shield to http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Ancient_Akaviri_Katana#Ancient_Akaviri_Katana about http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Mishaxhi

There are also plenty to Kamal corpses scattered around Vivec's Antlers. They're part of the reason i think the 'Snow Demons' are actually just Falmer who fled to Akavir.

it gets a bit dicey to make more human races racially different.

I disagree with this sentiment.

A work of fiction can choose who to include and exclude for the sake of the fiction itself. True.

That being said the fiction only reaches it's true potential in the eyes of us, and other potential customers when it is easily as accessable to people of all kinds in such a way that every individual can live out their personal fantasies in a way that they can most easily relate too.

As such any form of fictional video game that that seeks to provide an experience where players can customize their own unique character in a way that satisfies and fleshes out their personal fantasies should strive to encompass as many different archetypical human and personality characteristics as possible so as to create an experience that everyone, meaning the customers who buy the game and every market of potential customers that are so desired to be reached out to, can enjoy.

I believe this includes the various human races and ethnicities that exist in the real world. Especially since the game is played by who other than- humans. Whether that be European, Semitic, Oriental, all the way to Aboriginal American, Austronesian, and more isolated cultures such as Maori. Everyone should get their fair share in a world that has become more globailized and expanded the horizons of Western entertainment to what will inevitably be every corner of the world.

Nope. Wasn't a Dunmer http://www.imperial-library.info/content/page-10-0

I'm not sure. Dunmer had a rather inconsistent appearance before Morrowind. Barenziah looked pretty human in Daggerfall, for instance, along with most other important Dunmer characters.

Sure, but Dunmer are shown later in the comic with the grey skin, red eyes, and pointy ears we associate with them. In the first edition pocket guide, the Nibenese (and the Nibenay itself) are described with a lot of similarities to a few Asian cultures. That guy in the comic is ostensibly Breton, or at least a High Rock resident. Really, it wouldn't be out of place for any of TES's human races to look somewhat Asian, or completely Asian in the case of Bretons or Imperials.

That's kind of why I said the Reachmen should've been more Mongolian-themed. Bretons but are different from their western cousins.

Aren't the Reachmen, at least in Skyrim, kinda Celtic? Makes sense that too, since the real Bretons are also a people with celtic roots.

Though I understand the interest, it might be unsupportable in a game.

Lemme 'splain:

If you include a tribe or group with 'asian' features, will they look more like Japanese, Chinese, Mongolians, Vietnamese, Filipino, Korean, etc etc??? If they look 'too' chinese, will there be any korean, japanese, vietnamese or other players who will be offended?

It's impossible to represent all the 'tribes' or nationalities of humanity in TES. For instance: there are nords (germans and scandinavians), bretons (hypothetically british and french) and imperials (hypothetically italians, but they don't look anything like them.) But are there any Romanians? Hungarians? Lapps? Greeks? Spaniards? I could go on, of course.

lorewise there's nothing specific that explicitly prohibits or states that no asian-looking race currently exists or have ever existed in nirn.

in contrast, the akaviri samurai-looking weapons/armors and historical characters like "gaiden shinji", seems to be referencing to an asian-themed race and/or culture that currently hasn't been revealed to any TES game.... yet.

so due to this lack of representation, the devs are just likely to use other races as placeholders until they eventually add a new race or until they flesh out more the details surrounding the mysteries of the akaviri that could prove or disprove the existence of an asian-looking race..

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edit :

the ra gada of yokudan seems to favor scimitars, compared to the katana-like blades of the akaviri. so even though the ra gada have japanese-sounding names, the japanese theme of weapons/armors seem to be akaviri..

anyways, the lore behind yokuda, akaviri, ra gada, etc.. are still kinda shrouded in mystery.

from a gameplay perspective, i won't be surprised if bethesda suddenly decides to finally add a new race, yet at the same time, i won't be surprised if they don't add any either.

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edit 2 :

yokuda seems to be to the far west and akavir to the far east. if nirn is a sphere, then there's a possibility that yokuda and akavir could be neighbors. which means there's a high chance for crossbreeding and cultural exchange between the two.

meanwhile, some ra gada have more japanese sounding names compared to others that sounds more arabic, so it might indicate the presence of a different culture interacting and perhaps even crossbreeding with the local population of yokuda.

plus, scimitars and katanas are both curved swords. curved. swords.

so there might've been an intance in the distant past of redguards crossbreading with humans (or whatever they are) from akavir.

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edit 3 :

lastly, pelagius septim III is a man/mer hybrid.. but iirc, he was depicted as a breton in-game (coz hybrids doesn't seem to be recognized in the game)

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edit 4 :

oh wait :

-it seems that the "myth" that the tsaesci devoured all humans in akavir might only be a myth.

-secondly, having "scales" might just be an aesthetic/artificial/protective implants. like tribal tattoos and piercings. making them look more "snake like".

-it's hard to crossbreed with a half-human/half-snake creatures especially if the lower part are snakes. it's like trying to screw with a mermaid in their half-fish form.

-tthere are also theories that the humans that the nobles interbred with in cyrodiil were tsaesci human-slaves.. but why would nobles wanna marry slaves and think it was a privelage? there were also instances that said they prized the physical features of the tsaesci hybrids. which generally points that either the tsaesci are quite beautiful or at the very least, quite exotic.

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edit :

-so aside from being powerful mounted warriors (like mongols) (i doubt snake-tailed tsaesci could even ride horses)

-tsaesci fought using daikatanas and dragonscale armors (dragonscales could make them look like snakes though)

-the tsaesci also seemed to be more thematically linked to feudal japans. at least when it comes to their aesthetics.

-the tsaesci live very long lives. so there's a probability that there might be some still left hiding somewhere in tamriel, aside from their main population in akavir.

-another mystery is the amount of influence and the crossbreeding that the tsaesci might've done with the other humanoid populations of tamriel.

-as for WHY there are no signs/evidence of the presence of the tsaesci? that's the big mystery.

-but the tsaesci seems to be very smart and have great martial prowess and very long lived. perhaps this long life allows them to pursue strategies that extends throughout centuries. maybe they're just plotting another akaviri invasion and waiting for the perfect chance to do so.

-etc..

^there are so many mysteries left unanswered, so it could go either way.