It seems that the Elves have been changed quite a bit.  
  
As an example I have a picture of Merrill, an minor Dalish elf character from the first game who will be a companion in the second game.  

Her boobs look weird

What has been seen cannot be unseen XD.

Any one of her boobs is bigger than her whole head

13 minutes in and already this thread is off topic. Does anyone actually have an opinion on the redesigned elf look?

I'm not sure why but to me it looks like a step back rather than a step forward. I can see what you mean about it making them look more elfish though...which may actually be a step forward. Okay this confuses me.  And oh yeah they do look weird!

As long as they nail the hands better, I'm kinda fine with any weirdness. In the first game, all the character models had these enormous man hands, including the women. It was...off-putting at times.

Ugh. I hate elves. 
 
They're like, the worst uninspired race that's been ripped off Tolkien's pages way too often.

It looks like a child, I dread to think of the romancing options.

She looks fine I guess, compared to the other crap I saw in their latest dev diary video. I'm really not liking the low texture density almost-cartoon anime art style behind  Dragon Ball Age 2. Is this part of having it appeal to a larger audience? 
It looks like they took The Old Republic formula of artwork and texture work and did that to this. 

" I'm not sure why but to me it looks like a step back rather than a step forward. I can see what you mean about it making them look more elfish though...which may actually be a step forward. Okay this confuses me.  And oh yeah they do look weird! "

" @warxsnake: Nope, its so they can get it on consoles.  As much as they talk about making it "unique" its all about cutting the number of textures per character. "

" @endaround said:

" @warxsnake: Nope, its so they can get it on consoles.  As much as they talk about making it "unique" its all about cutting the number of textures per character. "

The first DA was on consoles, and it didn't as bad as this is looking. "

That has got to be a bad picture.  I liked the first dragon age and have 2 on pre-order but have not been keeping up with all the media around it. 
 
If I never played the first one and you showed me those two pictures and asked me to chose which is from the sequel I would chose the first.

They did redesigns for all races, not just elves. To make them more distinct, supposedly.
 

" That has got to be a bad picture.  I liked the first dragon age and have 2 on pre-order but have not been keeping up with all the media around it.  If I never played the first one and you showed me those two pictures and asked me to chose which is from the sequel I would chose the first. "

" They did redesigns for all races, not just elves. To make them more distinct, supposedly.
 

"

i hope this design change is specific to this character, not too keen on them all looking like children...

" yea that character looks retarded , proportions are fucked "

I don't like the way Dragon Age 2 looks. 

Those fools! Dwarf females are supposed to have beards goddammit!  "

Better than just being humans with pointy ears I suppose. I agree with the general thrust of Bioware's philosophy behind the change.

Looks like anime now >:-\

" As someone who has seen the game live and actually played it, it looks and more importantly runs a hell of a lot better. To the ass saying it's because of consoles, thats bullshit. There are plenty of amazing looking console games, and there are some unreleased games that will almost certainly be raising the bar. "

" They did redesigns for all races, not just elves. To make them more distinct, supposedly.
 

"

Looks like what Dragon Age should have originally looked like.

" Looks like what Dragon Age should have originally looked like. "

Looks basically the same, but with a messed up face and oddly huge tits.

At least the Qunari don't look like dudes in white dreads anymore.

I don't like it, too cartoony. One of the reasons why I enjoyed Dragon Age's art style was that it was very much a dark fantasy, where as this looks like it could have been ripped directly from the Fable games.

" @JustTheDoctor said:

" Looks like what Dragon Age should have originally looked like. "

Yeah Dragon Age had a real problem with all the races looking too similar. "

" At least the Qunari don't look like dudes in white dreads anymore. "

What, those horned dudes are Qunari? So being a Qunari ranges from having dark skin and white hair to sprouting mufucking horns?

" What, those horned dudes are Qunari? So being a Qunari ranges from having dark skin and white hair to sprouting mufucking horns? "

Awesome - good to see that hopefully in the character creation you can actually make happy looking people instead of either depressed/angry people.

" Awesome - good to see that hopefully in the character creation you can actually make happy looking people instead of either depressed/angry people. "

I like the look of the new Qunari and hey it justifies how they end up becoming Ogres when they transform into a broodmother.

I think it's better. They look less human and defines them as elves more.

There is speculation on the Dragon Age Wikia that the lighting might of had some impact on her, so someone made this image to have a guess at what she looks like in normal lighting. 

I quite like DA2's new look to be perfectly honest, it seems I'm one of the few, that's a shame. I think they've done a good job moving it away from the horridly generic and completely unremarkable look of the first game (outside of some of the creature designs). It looks very clean and bold. I'm sure all that just makes me a sycophant with the intelligence of a fly, though.
 
I always disliked the look of the elves in the first game, from what I've seen they look better in in DA2. Lest they had have done something drastically different Elves are Elves, though, it's hard to get excited about them.
 
As for the Qunari, I like the new design, but it's always weird when a drastic change like that is made to an existing design. The nice thing about Bioware though is that they go to significant lengths to justify such things in the fiction. I guess you'll either find it contrived or clever, at least they're not ones to lazily say 'Oh, by the way, Qunari have horns now. Deal.'

The original elves looked like just Humans with pointy ears, so I'm fine with this. 
 
Breasts seemed out of proportion though.

They always wanted qunari to have horns, they just couldn't get it to render helmets properly, and eventually scrapped it.
 
I really don't like the new design, because it's pushing the races closer towards the typical than the original.  The original part of Dragon Ages three races was how they didn't conform to the old stereotypes.  The elves lived in poverty, and the dwarves had American accents and usually didn't have beards.

It's interesting, the new design of the elves looks like my mental image of them does. At first I was almost sure that the picture from Origins were supposed to be the new design. I guess that's a good review then...

"As for the Qunari, I like the new design, but it's always weird when a drastic change like that is made to an existing design. The nice thing about Bioware though is that they go to significant lengths to justify such things in the fiction. I guess you'll either find it contrived or clever, at least they're not ones to lazily say 'Oh, by the way, Qunari have horns now. Deal.' "