Nivenus

Bilbo was teh Chosen One, he couldn't fail. Eh? My impression was always that Bilbo was canonically just some hobbit that Gandalf found and thought showed an unusual amount of boldness for the race. I don't remember him ever fulfilling a specific prophecy or what not. Besides which, if he was meant to fulfill some great destiny (destroying the Ring) he did fail that, as did his cousin Frodo. If anyone was the Chosen One it's arguably Gollum, since it was explicitly his "role" to destroy the Ring (accidentally). I've never really thought of tieflings as elves myself. I mean, mechanically they occasionally share similarities (3e tieflings had a bonus to Dexterity), but they're actually pretty different if we're just looking at generic high elves or wood elves (if we bring drow into the equation, I'll admit the similarities get much larger). Not only are tieflings different thematically (demon-spawn who are distrusted and struggle with their own origins) but they're fairly different mechanically as well, what their demonically thematic racial abilities and a generally hardier constitution (along with, depending on the system, a bonus or penalty to Charisma). In any case, they've hardly confirmed tieflings (although they could, since the race was released by WotC as part of the GSL) as a race - they've merely confirmed something similar thematically (which I'm guessing means planetouched generally or something similar).

I'm liking this information overall. It's good to hear that companions will be important and consequential, while also remaining completely optional. Don't get me wrong - I love companions and will likely try to recruit as many as I can, but it's good to have that option. On that note, it's interesting that difficulty won't scale to party size. Hopefully a fully stacked party won't end up being too easy or solo play too hard as a result. I'm not altogether surprised about the races (a mix of old and new); it seems that's the best way to go with a new IP that's explicitly aiming to please fans of the old IE games - give traditionalists the races they love and know but also give more novelty-seeking players something fresh. I'll be interested to see more details as to what the new races are or how subrace plays into the game (I wasn't expecting that, actually). I'm also very happy to hear that the races won't be uniform cultures, but rather a diverse set of ethnic groups collectively unified by mutual ancestry. It'll be interesting to see how that all plays out. Altogether excited so far, looking forward to more information as it is released.

And your evidence for that is? Seems to me humans get along just fine even with non-sapient animals (i.e., cats, dogs, etc.). Sure, we compete with other species, but evolution isn't just about violent competition: there's also other means of competing (reproductive fitness, for one) as well as plenty of examples of cooperation (i.e., symbiosis). I'd rather not go too far along this topic, because it's a distraction from the main thread, but that seems like a pretty closed-minded view to take, since we've never actually had experience dealing with other races or species we could communicate with before. In any case, elves, dwarves, and the like are closer to sub-species than non-human. I agree with this as well. We should see cultural variation within any races presented, at least insofar as human show variation within the game (presumably most human settlements will share a great many cultural similarities given the likely scope of the game, but there's likely to still be variation).

On topic: I could go either way. Non-traditional races would be a welcome change, but plenty of developers have shown they can do interesting things with "Tolkien-esque" races, which it's worth noting are closer to D&D-esque races inspired by Norse culture with heavy influences from Tolkien's interpretation anyway. So, yeah, I'd like some new races, but I can live with the old ones if they're used creatively and aren't just treated as stereotypes. On a side note I'd like to see a wagonload of racism in the game, real people hate each other for all kinds of gloriously retarded reasons, and they express it, verisimilitude takes a big hit when all the races can "just get along". Yeah but I'm tired of having my human character being told he is bad for not trusting of disliking other species. Uh... why? I understand that comparing humans and dwarves (let alone human and turians) is different than comparing say Caucasians and blacks, but if you treat someone entirely on the basis of their racial or species origin without regard to their individual value as a person, it's still analogous.