Times where you Can't Argue with Elves in Video Games.
- Ara Fell plays with this one. While Elven magic and equipment are legitimately better than anything humans have come up with, their past decisions are also why the Floating Continent of Ara Fell is doomed. It's also pointed out that the ancient war between Elves and Vampires which was itself actually started by an evil elf! went poorly for Elves, but Humans have done much better despite being weaker since humanity is naturally more aggressive.
- Both played straight and subverted in Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura where the all-nature and magic elven society is falling to the rampant industrialism of humans, gnomes and dwarves. This brought to a separation of the elves in two branches: light and dark. Light elves are comparably decent – but still quite jerkass – folks who are content to let the other people live their own lives. The Dark ones are convinced of the innate superiority of elvenkind and despise all the other races as lesser. The fact that both branches are mostly going deeper and deeper into wilderness, leaving place for industrialism of other races makes them an almost literal local version of Magical Native American.
- Battle for Wesnoth. Both humans and elves have an archer unit and each type levels up through different promotional classes. The description for the highest-level elven archer is a three-paragraph long love letter about how they can shoot birds in the eye while blindfolded (or something similar); the description for the highest-level human archer just says that they're pretty good for a human, and then goes on for another paragraph about how much better elves are. Of course, as the game is open-source and fan-made, many of the campaigns are a little less elf-friendly... about half of them include a "sticking it to the elves" mission, just for the sake of doing so.
- Dragon Age:
- Inverted in that elves are considered lesser and barbaric by the humans, who take up the arrogant mantle and enslave the elves; even after the elves are freed from slavery they're still third-class citizens. Overall, the series likes to play this trope straight, then deconstruct it, then play it straight again, then dissect it, then defy it, then deconstruct it again, then invert it....you get the idea.
- Some Dalish elves (who lead nomadic lives outside human settlements) attempt to invoke this over and over, but it never works. While the Dalish revere their ancestral elves as The Beautiful Elite and seek to restore their lost culture, they're still seen as barbaric dirt-dwellers by most humans, and dismissed as either heathen savages or haughty bigots by many fellow city elves. Though this varies from clan to clan.
- Seems to be played straight with Solas at the end of Inquisition, who seeks to restore the ancient elven empire (that could effortlessly use magic and was technologically superior to anyone else in Thedas during its heyday) and tear down the Veil, regardless of the harm to Thedas. He (like other surviving ancients) doesn't consider either of the existing Elf cultures to really be Elves either; he compares it to the difference between normal humans and the Tranquil (those magically stripped of emotion and personality). However, you are allowed to argue with him if you choose, indeed you can condemn his plan to tear down the Veil as monstrous, considering it will kill basically everyone in Thedas. If you have a good relationship with him, he'll actually agree, and all but begs you to prove him wrong when next time you inevitably come into contact.
- Played with by Sera in Inquisition, a city elf with internalized racism who sees all "elfy" elves as automatically haughty bigots while only "non-elfy" elves like her can be accepting and open-minded. The Inquisitor can never meaningfully counter-argue, and she never changes her stance on it (though becomes less mean-spirited about it in Trespasser). While Solas is also rather bigoted toward most modern elves (particularly the Dalish) due to prefering ancient Elvhen history and culture, a Dalish Inquisitor who gains high Relationship Values can show him there's some value in Dalish culture, while a Low Approval Inquisitor can call him out on his bigoted attitude and get a grudging agreement. Sera gives no such leeway, and in fact will break up with a romanced Dalish Inquisitor who refuses to agree the elven gods are fake. Also, most of Sera's bigoted and outright mean-spirited statement about elves ends up being proven correct. (Like the elven gods being fake, elves being responsible for their own downfall rather than humans, the elven servants in Trespasser being suspicious, and so on).
- While not elves, the Qunari are a straighter example of the trope. The general argument presented is that Qunari are perfect because they are ordered and the only people we see oppose what they want are either massive strawmen or religious fanatics who see them only as heretics. Even Hawke only gets to call them butchers. It is ignored how they take children away from their parents, force others to accept only one role in life, and are blind to the fact that they might be wrong. It also doesn't help that most Qunari will categorically refuse to argue about their culture simply because that's somebody else's job, so human misconceptions about the Qunari often go uncorrected until something bad happens because of it.
- Inquisition finally gets a better perspective on the Qun via Iron Bull (whose job does include talking to outsiders about the Qun). Bull very much seems to think that the Qun is better in many ways, they are ordered, well trained, and seem pretty good at determining a profession a person is well suited for. However, it is emphasized that a big reason it works so well is because the Qunari don't see brainwashing as a bad thing; to them, a person is a tool for fulfilling a particular role, so if they don't, then they're broken and it's okay to 'fix' them. There's also a fair amount of doublethink involved; for instance, they enforce strict gender roles by declaring that anyone not following them is mistaken about their gender identity.
- Of course, Inquisition also has Solas (who incidentally is an elf who loves to argue, especially about his culture; questioning him gets approval points), who has strongly negative feelings about the Qun and never misses a chance to argue with Iron Bull about it, believing the Qun's fatalism and insistence on following strict life roles makes it essentially slavery with a different paint job. And as a leader of a slave rebellion, he'd definitely know what he was talking about.
- Inquisition's DLC Trespasser then completely subverts this trope by making the Qunari the Big Bad of the entire DLC (as well as giving a highly negative portrayal of the Qun). It's worth noting that the negative implications had been there since Origins, but this is the first time that they're really in the player's face instead of being a faraway threat that only interacts with the players via small sub-factions whose greatest desire is to get away from the plot or are joining the player because they don't want the world to end either. Trespasser also reframes a Sadistic Choice of letting Iron Bull save his comrades or a Qunari dreadnought by revealing that if Iron Bull does stay with the Qun (he gets kicked out if he saves his merc company), his superior will order him to pull a Senseless Sacrifice by fighting the Inquisitor, betraying the party (and potentially his lover) but not even slowing them down all that much.
- While this was only in supplementary material rather than in the main games themselves, the Qunari had already been presented as one of the Big Bads in the Dragon Age comic series, Those Who Speak, subverting this trope good and proper. Alistair, Varric and Isabela are captured by the Qunari and, after a few weeks in prison, Alistair and Varric are taken to the new Arishok, who is actually Sten, Alistair's old friend from his adventures in Origins, someone who has a lot of respect for Alistair... and all this earns him is a backhand to the face and imprisonment for him and Varric in the nicer-looking cells, while Isabela is taken to be tortured and re-educated by a Tamassran (her crew have also been captured and kept in these pit-like cells). It takes Alistair defeating Arishok in single combat for them to actually lay off and entertain the idea of an alliance. While they do become allies, in the end, it still proves that Qunari philosophy isn't actually that compassionate to anyone who isn't Qunari, even if that person is "Basalit-an" (a respected outsider) or even their "kadan" (a close friend or loved one).
- In Inquisition, Madame Vivienne de Fer, the Orlesian noble and Pro-Circle mage frequently goes on Character Filibusters extolling the virtues of her Orlesian image-obsessed politics, Deadly Decadent Court, and Chantry Circles while harshly condemning the dangers and "selfishness" of mage freedom, despite being a mage who lives outside Circle prison towers herself, and neither the Inquisitor nor companions can ever meaningfully counter-argue. The few weak rebuttals they can give, Vivienne easily twists their words around to support her own view, and she almost always gets the last word. Vivienne is also openly vain and haughty, but this is framed as a character strength rather than a flaw, and no matter what the player's choices Vivienne always succeeds in her goal of restoring the Circles with herself at the helm, possibly as this world's equivalent of Fantasy Pope.
- On this note, the upper echelons of Orlesian society in general pretty much intentionally make this trope part of their culture, mixing it in with deadly court intrigues in a practice known as "the Game" or "the Great Game." Basically, you have to be openly sure of yourself and impregnable against criticism, because even the slightest, tiniest weakness that your enemy can exploit will be exploited, and leave you vulnerable to the wolves of the Court to tear you apart, sometimes figuratively, and sometimes literally. Anything from having your assassination plot against a rival exposed, to picking the wrong utensil at a dinner can be used as ammunition against you, and Maker help you if you try to slander an enemy without something to back it up. Unfortunately, among the more humble members of the Inquisition, this does Vivienne or the rest of the Orlesian elite few favors in winning their friendship. Though again, the player and companions are never allowed to meaningfully counter-argue any of her points to her face, only when she's out of earshot, so she's shielded by the writers from ever having to admit she might be wrong or address a meaningful counter-arguement to any of her views.
- A major part of the setting is that every faction acts like this, and other than a few defectors from the underclasses absolutely nobody is buying it. As a result, things tend to only go From Bad to Worse because whenever two sides get into conflict, no one is willing to listen to any opinion but their own.
- The Elf Queen of Dragon Quest III is so upset that her daughter Anne eloped with a 'horrible human boy' that she curses his hometown, sending everyone there into eternal, unaging slumber. The only one who escaped that fate is the boy's father... who instead spends years pleading with the Queen to change her mind, to no avail. By the time your heroes arrive, the father's a withered old man, and the Queen still doesn't care. Despite all this, the father is surprisingly civil about having his whole life ripped away from him and all.
- The Elder Scrolls contains many examples of this, with its many races of Mer (Elves). Each race of Mer certainly seems to believe it about themselves, but as shown time and time again, they are just as flawed as the races of Men they despise so much. To note specific examples:
- The Altmer (High Elves) take the cake as the haughtiest culture in Tamriel. They are indeed responsible for much of Tamriel's art, science, philosophy, language, and religion, and (while there are exceptions) they have no issue letting the other races know just how superior they believe they are. They are the direct descendants of the Aldmer (First Elves) and consider the other races of Mer as a result of "degeneration" over the ages. (And don't even bother trying to bring up the races of Men...) Their religious beliefs state that they are the true descendants of the Aedra, and the 4th Era ascension of the Thalmor into positions of leadership within the Aldmeri Dominion has only exacerbated their beliefs of superiority. The other races react to this belief in a predictable fashion, and often do argue with them, ranging between general disagreement and contempt (the majority of people, including quite a few of their fellow Altmer) to outright open conflict (the Cyrodiilic Empire and the Stormcloaks of Skyrim). The Thalmor play up the ancient Aldmeri belief that Mundus (the mortal world) is a horrible, forsaken prison and that the creators of it did so out of malice. Thus, they act to destroy the world, believing it will return their divine spirits to a state of pre-creation divinity.
- The Dunmer (Dark Elves) split off from the Aldmer over religious differences thousands of years ago, and have spent much of the time since as an extremely xenophobic race who hated outlanders within their homeland of Morrowind but had no issue with raiding other provinces (particularly Black Marsh and Elsweyr) for slaves. The corrupt Tribunal Temple did nothing but reinforce the cultural superiority of the Dunmer while hypocrisy was rampant. Following the events of Morrowind, the Oblivion Crisis, the Red Year, and the Argonian invasion, they've at least learned a little humility.
- The Bosmer (Wood Elves) actually tend to be very curious and are more an inversion of this trope, as they tend to cause more trouble than the human races do by sticking their noses into other people's business. Notably, it is believed that they have some human ancestry, leading to them being a little less alien than some of the other races of Mer from a human perspective.
- The extinct Dwemer (Deep Elves or "Dwarves") were an industrious, highly intelligent, and extremely technologically advanced people, but were also known to be cruel, arrogant, and dogmatic. Contemporary accounts describe them as "unfathomable" and "unknowable," with truly alien belief systems unlike anyone else in Tamriel. It's said that even the dullest of their kind was still a genius compared to a clever man. They went so far as to try and make themselves Gods, and managed to vanish completely, the whole race. Now all that is left are their machines and ruins, picked clean by centuries of looters.
- Caesar's Legion from Fallout: New Vegas has some issues with this; despite the absolutely horrifying things the Legion does (such as the slavery, sexism, executing detractors, assimilating and erasing entire cultures at a time, and enough raping and pillaging that would make Conan the Barbarian blush to name a few) you never get a chance to actually counter-argue these points with the faction, with the best excuse from Caesar himself being that it's all "for the greater good." Despite all of this, they're the ones who consider the other factions of the wastelands as inferior, seeing organized militaries like the New California Republic or isolationist tech-hoarders like the Brotherhood of Steel as the "savages" and "profligates", despite the fact that neither of those factions commit atrocities at nearly the same level as the Legion do on a regular basis.
- The Viera in Final Fantasy XII consider themselves to be above the Hume race since they don't cause wars or seek absolute power like Humes do. Only the main characters hear this and they never tried to show how Humes are not savages. Only a handful of Viera have a positive view of the Humes.
- Elaborating on that, there was only one Viera in the game who seemed to outright like Humes and the world outside her village, but she was a bit... weird (her "liking" could be argued to be a fetish). There is a young Viera who was unsure what to think of the outside world, but at least she liked to be around Hume children. There are two traveling Viera who were very disappointed by what the world had to offer and only were impressed after watching the sea, of all things. One Viera looked down on humans initially, but after learning that a human sacrificed his life in an attempt to defeat dangerous dragon, changes her mind and begins sharing her knowledge with Humes. Fran, one of the main characters and a Viera who has led a pretty interesting life and is best friends (and possibly more) with a Hume, seemed quite regretful of leaving the village and cutting her connection with the supernatural woods, calling it a life of solitude.
- The Fae in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning more accurately play this role than the actual elves of the setting though for the most part this is subverted as you can argue with and even choose to subvert the culture and/or lives of those fae or elves who put on airs. The leaders of the Fae such as High King Titarion and Prince Cydan avert this by acknowledging that the Fae are in their twilight and show respect towards mortals.
- The Gnomes take this even further than the Fae. Most Gnomes in the game preach on and on about Gnomes being the paragons of reason and logic in the world. Templar Octienne in particular is pretty arrogant which makes the end of the boss battle with him — using Fate to bash him through a window — extremely satisfying.
- The Mandalorians in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords will not hesitate to outline how they are, in every way conceivable, superior to those puny little Jedi. Considering you are a Jedi in the game, it is surprising how little opportunity you get to disagree with them. Particularly interesting is that you can badmouth the Mandalorians but only as long as none of them are actually within earshot...note You can defeat them in honorable combat in their sparring matches, which gets most of them to respect your skills. Not to mention how many of these "perfect" warriors you mow down in the game. There's also Atris and Kreia scolding you at every opportunity they can.
- Mass Effect does this quite often with the Turian councilor. If you free the Rachni Queen, he chastises you for loosing a potentially fatal threat upon the galaxy. If you opt to kill the Queen instead, he asks if you routinely commit genocide. The guy just can't be pleased, most likely due to Fantastic Racism.
- The Asari also frequently exhibit this attitude, acting like they are the most enlightened species in the galaxy, and controlling galaxy politics as such. However, this attitude falls flat on its face when it's revealed in the 3rd game that everything they know that gave them such knowledge over other races, they gained from Prothean relics on their home planet. And the top levels of the Asari government hid this information from the rest of the galaxy while hypocritically enacting laws making it illegal for anyone else to use such Prothean relics. And the leadership's desire to hide these truths from the rest of the galaxy caused them to delay anyone from coming to their homeworld Thessia even as the Reapers were bearing down on them. By the time they allow Shepard to go, the planet is already a lost cause. By the end of the war, the Asari's homeworld has probably suffered the most aside from maybe Earth. And from conversations with Javik, it's implied the Protheans were like this, too, though Javik himself argues that he is not representative of his entire species, being a carefully selected soldier who lived during the fall of the Prothean empire.
- Parodied in Overlord, where the elves are just too full of themselves (and stupid) to notice (or care).
- In Prophesy of Pendor, the Noldor Elves are an extremely arrogant people to say the least, and most of them by the start of the game think the only way to deal with the human problem is to kill all of them. Befriending the Noldor is a challenging victory condition, as you start with -30 to reputation with them by default. Fluff text talks about how most human soldiers dread fighting the Noldor and would consider five-to-one bad odds, as they have magically enchanted bows and can shoot further and more accurately than any human archer. The Noldor really are every stereotype of elves being stuck-up, superior jerkwads.
- In StarCraft, given the nature of the Protoss as Scary Dogmatic Aliens with very advanced technology, Terrans try to not get in trouble with them. This makes Raynor being the exception much more significant -– it does not matter if it's an Executor that has just arrived with her fleet to burn a planet downnote or a member of the Judicator Caste that ruled Aiurnote –- he will call them out of it. Raynor's case is justified, however, in that he was forced to help two Protoss forces in Char due to Kerrigan leaving them stranded there – by the time Aldaris arrives, Raynor was already used to Zeratul and Tassadar and saw Protoss more like equals.
- In Star Wars: The Old Republic: Everyone, particularly light-aligned Sith end up on the receiving end of scolding lectures by Jedi who are quite full of themselves. If you are a Jedi character, you are the "elf" that everyone wants to argue with.
- However, when you are light-aligned Sith, you get the chance to shove their arguments right back in their face more often than not. Some of them will even listen to reason and back down, especially in the Warrior path (Jedi starting needless fights out of sheer arrogance is a minor Running Gag in the Light Inquisor path). As a Dark-aligned Sith, you generally just don't give a damn what they think. They are about to die after all.
- At one point in Tales of Phantasia, the party comes across a Hidden Elf Village. The leader immediately begins ranting in their faces about how "Elves are superior" and Humans Are the Real Monsters, as well as chastising them for having a half-elf (Arche) in their party. The party essentially sits there and takes it, and never actually tries to rebuke him.
- At first. Later, when they rant about how Half-Elves are unfit to live in their village due to their destructive "human" ways, Cless chews them out by pointing out Half-Elves only develop human values because elves ban them from their Hidden Elf Village.
- The Lunarians of Touhou Project believe that "Impurity" is the source of mortality and death, and so they migrated to the Moon in ages past, untouched by death as it was, and formed a society there based around the concept of Purity. All of this would sound crazy if it wasn't for the fact that they were right, and they actually became immortal super-beings by separating themselves from death and mortality. Unfortunately, even though they are correct about the fact that all things from the Earth are inherently impure, they're still outrageously elitist and xenophobic jerks about it, so Earthborn characters generally talk about the Lunarians as a bunch of obnoxious lunatics.
- It's also shown (mostly in the official manga) that being right about their personal philosophy and having something to flaunt are two different things. When they come into conflict with earthborn Youkai again and their long period of fanatic isolationism lets Yukari play them for fools.
- In World of Warcraft, there are five types of elf (Night, Blood, High, as well as Nightborne and Void), all of which clearly believe themselves awesome and superior but are blatantly flawed just like all other Warcraft races: elves are prone to Fantastic Racism, Bloods get themselves into deep trouble experimenting with magic, while Night Elfs won't help the other races against global threats until it's absolutely necessary (which of course blows up in their faces after a while).
