Well, Trent - maybe spitting in the face of long time Baldur's Gate fans wasn't such a great idea? I read the Kotaku interview with Amber Scott where she slandered the original game and said that you decided to drastically change the personalities of Safana and Jaheira because you felt that the existing personalities from BG 1 & 2 were "problematic" and where she insulted any fans who dislike you re-writing existing characters. Then there's the fact that 2016 extremist politics do NOT belong in a fantasy game with existing lore where these issues did not exist. If you want to make a game about your political views, that's fine - I fully support that, but make it an original game instead of crudely forcing it into an existing franchise. No one has a problem with there being gay or trans characters in a video game - they have a problem with you painfully forcing gay and trans characters into Baldur's Gate where these types of characters do not exist in the D&D lore that Baldur's Gate is built upon. I like the various romantic options in Dragon Age and Mass Effect - because they were their own universes and they didn't try to force an existing universe to change to fit the views of the writing team. So yes, this is very much a "gameplay issue" because it completely breaks the immersion of the game as well as utterly annihilating the consistency between Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 by having Safana and Jaheira drastically change their personalities for 30 hours of gameplay before going back to their normal personalities.
The smart thing to do would be to FIX THE GAME and remove the content that does not fit with the world / story that already existed and resulted in countless awards for the Baldur's Gate series. But the last two years have shown that when it comes to pushing the SJW agenda, when things go badly people like you always double down and push your agenda even further. I've been a fan of Baldur's Gate since it originally came out, it was the game that got me into roleplaying games and I was eagerly awaiting this expansion after learning it was in the works around a year ago. However, I will not buy it as long as it is written to ruin two characters and destroy the immersion by putting modern politics into Faerun. It has nothing to do with hating anyone and everything to do with wanting a CONSISTENT story that fits the in-game universe.
Oh, another thing about that interview Amber gave - it was really dumb of her to admit that Beamdog won't make original content because it would be "too much effort" to do something unique.
So it's "extremist politics" now simply having for having a minor transgender NPC? LMAO. FYI, even Ed Greenwood, who created the Forgotten Realms in the first place, acknowledged that LGBT characters exist in the world, considering that in early versions of DnD, it's an alternate earth.
You are also lying by proclaiming that consistency is broken, when in fact in BG2 Safana is nothing more than a cameo, while Jaheira is affected by Khalid's death since the start of the game. In the original game, they are pretty much disposable NPCs, and if anything, SOD fleshed out their characteristics.
And demanding Beamdog to remove the content because you dislike it personally? Sounds like promoting CENSORSHIP to me, or is suddenly okay when Gamergate does it?
why are two blocks of dialogue, less than 1% of dialogue in the game, such a problem?
First off, as I clearly explained, they break the immersion of the game because it DOES NOT FIT with Baldur's Gate. Secondly, Amber admitted that they completely rewrote the personalities for two major NPCs over less than 1% of the dialogue in the original games. Be consistent with your arguments, kid.
I feel like this is going to be a new page in Anita Sarkeesian's book
Oh, how dare Amber follow Anita Sarkeesian. So do I and many others.
It says a lot about your obvious agenda and desperation when you need to dig up people's Twitter profile to prove a point.
Anita Sarkesian is famous for making videos attacking video games for being sexist, despite being on record as stating that she does not play video games. So if someone on the dev team is a fan of her, gamers are right to be worried.
Trust me, it's not the "social justice warriors" that are the problem. Your main point is that liberals take offense to everything, when your entire argument and thesis is that you are taking offense to games not featuring only heterosexual males and buxom and attractive females from now until doomsday. Explain to me again how you are victimized by this??
No, I dont think I will trust you because you try really hard to misrepresent the argument.
Its funny how you are on the side of "everything is political" but if that stance is criticized and people outright tell you on steam or here why they dont want any gender-politics in their hobby you claim they are offended and not you.
Like, through how many mental hoops did you have to jump to arrive to that conclusion. There are well-thought out explanations as to why people are bothered by it and why they criticize the writer and all you could come up with was HURR DURR U MUST BE ALL OFFENDED.
I legitimately cant tell if you are trolling or just projecting that hard.
How are you not offended by a transgender NPC in a Baldur's Gate expansion if you are posting in a forum thread about it?? If you don't want gender politics in your hobby, go play another game for the love of Christ. It's the same rule of life I apply to most modern popular music....I don't listen to it. I don't immediately take to the internet and complain about how my "hobby" is being destroyed and I'm not being represented fairly and that I'm having shitty music "shoved down my throat".
@Dimitriid I think @Purudaya is trying to say (keep in mind I have no clue who these GGers are) that the people from GamersGate are purposely tanking positive reviews down even if they're valid.
Is it that time again were Progressives collectively shit themselves because of the GG-Boogeyman? I am always amused when SJWs cant decide whether GG is the Evil Overlord of the Internet who is lurking behind every keyboard or if its just a "bunch of pathetic man-children who dont have to be your audience anymore".
Also do we actually have ANY proof that GG is behind it? Do we have any proof that GG is related to it?
I don't know, but there sure are a lot of enraged gamerbros cropping up in the steam forums about it. And I can't remember a game with a majority of positive reviews seeing them all downvoted, but whatever.
Oh, and any group with a history of attacking female gamers, writers, and reporters with rape and death threats whenever they even suggest that sexism exists in the medium deserves any negative characterization it receives.
I don't suppose you have evidence of such attacks, and some manner of linking them to GG? Considering that even Women Action Media could not establish that link, I find it unlikely. Usually when I ask this, I either get blocked or banned by the person I'm asking.
So you admit that you don't even own the game, much less played it, then proclaim that the trans NPC is being "shoehorned in"? The mental gymnastics is strong with this one.
Are you serious? There is a thing called youtube, you can watch much of it there.
And yes, I think that scene is done very poorly.
Even if I'm wrong, how hard is it to, instead of ridiculing, explaining why and how. I fully expect to be ridiculed and called any name under the sun by random people on the internet, I however don't expect it from a developer that wants to sell it's games.
"If you truly think that everyone who has concerns about a political agenda being shoved down their throat is some kind of childish evil racist and sexist, all the power to you. Just don't expect me to buy your game anymore."
I certainly think that, mostly because the fact that you always complain about having the agenda "shoved down your throat" reveals just about everything I could ever need to know. Have your been to a movie the last 20 years, watched a television show, been anywhere in public??
Does that dispells the idea there's an agenda though? There cannot be a political agenda because it's been pursued by politically minded people in the entertaining industry for decades now? Few things: just because it's widely pursued doesn't means it does not exist. Being an agenda doesn't implies that it's a negative one (If you agree with the politics then a political agenda is not only necessary but encouraged as part of the democratic process in society) or that it's a conspiracy in some sort of large scale event that seeks to introduce certain elements like race inclusion, gender identity awareness, intersectionality, etc.
The point here is that he found it personally distasteful to be included in this game. There's nothing you can do about that, it's just the way he feels. He has every right to feel that way enjoying just as much freedom of speech to denounce his distaste for it as Beamdog has by including certain aspects and jokes in their game.
Now that we established that both have a legitimate right to hold either position, can we go back to talk about how most negative reviews are actually not about any of this and are about a distaste for the technical issues and the inconsistency with the source material? That'd be great.
why are two blocks of dialogue, less than 1% of dialogue in the game, such a problem?
First off, as I clearly explained, they break the immersion of the game because it DOES NOT FIT with Baldur's Gate. Secondly, Amber admitted that they completely rewrote the personalities for two major NPCs over less than 1% of the dialogue in the original games. Be consistent with your arguments, kid.
Ignore what Amber has to say and stay on topic, 'kid'. If you want to cause a stink about her rewriting personalities for two characters, one of which was a chump with barely a personality in the first place, you can take that up with someone who cares. That person is not me, as it is not relevant.
What IS relevant is that you seem to think a transgender character doesn't fit Faerun, or perhaps just the Sword Coast? canonically. Which makes it blaringly obvious you know precious little about what DOES or DOES NOT fit in the setting, and are only making conjectures based on the apparent 'age' (medieval) of the world. So, pray tell, what IS your evidence that it doesn't fit?
Can someone please spell out exactly what this "agenda" is?
Normalizing LGBTWTFBBQ by including token examples wherever possible and demonizing media for not being representative enough.
So you view normalizing LGBTQ rights as a bad thing in general, or in this specific case because it's "token"? Because I'm all for having an even more in-depth trans character with tons of original traits and dialogue.
Don't turn this around on me. I'm all for equality. Someone asked what "the agenda" was and I explained it. I'd love to get a well written gay romance or a transgender character, but that type of thing isn't just an attribute you tack on to a character and act like it immediately elevates them above criticism or the oddity of their place in the story.
The feedback on bugs are valid and will be addressed. On the review request, I merely wanted to encourage people who actually played the game to share their story.
why are two blocks of dialogue, less than 1% of dialogue in the game, such a problem?
First off, as I clearly explained, they break the immersion of the game because it DOES NOT FIT with Baldur's Gate. Secondly, Amber admitted that they completely rewrote the personalities for two major NPCs over less than 1% of the dialogue in the original games. Be consistent with your arguments, kid.
Ignore what Amber has to say and stay on topic, 'kid'. If you want to cause a stink about her rewriting personalities for two characters, one of which was a chump with barely a personality in the first place, you can take that up with someone who cares. That person is not me, as it is not relevant.
What IS relevant is that you seem to think a transgender character doesn't fit Faerun, or perhaps just the Sword Coast? canonically. Which makes it blaringly obvious you know precious little about what DOES or DOES NOT fit in the setting, and are only making conjectures based on the apparent 'age' (medieval) of the world. So, pray tell, what IS your evidence that it doesn't fit?
Actually not to interject here but I think that he dislikes the way those aspects are written and how they fit with the original Baldur's Gate (which is just a fraction of Forgotten Realms lore) not the fact they exist at all.
I've come to the conclusion that the "pro forced diversity" people on here really have a mental disability. Literally NO ONE has complained about not liking LGBTXYZHDKGPT+ people. NO ONE HAS ANYTHING AGAINST THEM. What people have a problem with is awkwardly shoehorning them into a game where those political issues DO NOT EXIST. If they made an original game where there were problems about gays not having equal rights, it would make sense to bring up characters being gay. But they didn't make an original game (per Amber Scott's interview with Kotaku, that would be "too much effort" for Beamdog) and instead put these inconsistent parts into Baldur's Gate.
Again, NO ONE CARES about a character in a game being gay / bi / trans / dragon-kin. What they care about is it being awkwardly forced into a game if that type of character does not fit the existing game's lore / universe. It's literally all about being consistent within the in-game universe and maintaining consistency with characters between various chapters in the game. This is NOT hard to understand.
This pisses me off to no end. Where are the negative reviews for Dragon Age or Mass Effect because they have homosexual romances and transgender characters? They don't exist, because the games are good.
This is the deathblow to the Baldur's Gate series. The overflow of negative reviews is going to kill any chance at a Baldur's Gate III, a Ps:T EE or IWD2 EE, because people won't buy it. If you don't like the game because of the minor progressive details added to expose people to the idea of transgender people, but that's your only problem, don't leave a negative review. It's that simple.
So let's stop arguing about it, because you won't change anybody else's mind, and ignore it. That's the only chance we have as a community and as a fanbase.
If you want to cause a stink about her rewriting personalities for two characters, one of which was a chump with barely a personality in the first place, you can take that up with someone who cares. That person is not me, as it is not relevant.
What. "That thing that you criticize is not relevant because I do not want to address nor acknowledge that despite it being an essential part of the criticism as a whole"
"Manipulative of the system" they say? Trent only asked that if you enjoyed the game, leave a positive review. First, they worked so hard and dedicated so much time for this product, is it not but natural that they would want to reap the benefits of their labor? The "producer" asking to spread a good word or to leave a good remark somewhere e.g Facebook or a certain site from the "consumer" IF the latter liked it is now treated as manipulative? No, it is not, it's common sense. Wake up, it happens everywhere. And at the very least, it is understandable under the aforementioned premise. Or is there a dichotomy between software devs and all other businesses? Second, one will only have to write a positive review IF indeed one felt positive about the game. Whatever moved one to write a review, positive or otherwise, is simply immaterial. It's that simple.
why are two blocks of dialogue, less than 1% of dialogue in the game, such a problem?
First off, as I clearly explained, they break the immersion of the game because it DOES NOT FIT with Baldur's Gate. Secondly, Amber admitted that they completely rewrote the personalities for two major NPCs over less than 1% of the dialogue in the original games. Be consistent with your arguments, kid.
Ignore what Amber has to say and stay on topic, 'kid'. If you want to cause a stink about her rewriting personalities for two characters, one of which was a chump with barely a personality in the first place, you can take that up with someone who cares. That person is not me, as it is not relevant.
What IS relevant is that you seem to think a transgender character doesn't fit Faerun, or perhaps just the Sword Coast? canonically. Which makes it blaringly obvious you know precious little about what DOES or DOES NOT fit in the setting, and are only making conjectures based on the apparent 'age' (medieval) of the world. So, pray tell, what IS your evidence that it doesn't fit?
I think he's incorrect, Mizrena fits in Faerun just as much as anyone else. What doesn't fit is the writer's kid gloves treatment of Mizrena. Amber wouldn't let any character, even the most evil of evils be negative toward Mizrena. *That* doesn't fit in Faerun, and with how evil you can be in nearly any other part of Baldur's Gate (pretty fuckin' evil), it's clear that Amber's treatment of the Mizrena dialogues is what isn't fitting.
I feel like this is going to be a new page in Anita Sarkeesian's book
Oh, how dare Amber follow Anita Sarkeesian. So do I and many others.
It says a lot about your obvious agenda and desperation when you need to dig up people's Twitter profile to prove a point.
Anita Sarkesian is famous for making videos attacking video games for being sexist, despite being on record as stating that she does not play video games. So if someone on the dev team is a fan of her, gamers are right to be worried.
Last time I checked, Anita Sarkeesian has nothing to do with BG, and I don't have to be a fan to follow somebody on Twitter - even I have disagreements with Anita. Are you going on witchhunts for simply having opinions now?
This pisses me off to no end. Where are the negative reviews for Dragon Age or Mass Effect because they have homosexual romances and transgender characters? They don't exist, because the games are good.
This is the deathblow to the Baldur's Gate series. The overflow of negative reviews is going to kill any chance at a Baldur's Gate III, a Ps:T EE or IWD2 EE, because people won't buy it. If you don't like the game because of the minor progressive details added to expose people to the idea of transgender people, but that's your only problem, don't leave a negative review. It's that simple.
So let's stop arguing about it, because you won't change anybody else's mind, and ignore it. That's the only chance we have as a community and as a fanbase.
My guess is that this is now going to become a minor Gamergate crusade that they can latch onto until they claim can claim a scalp....
... If you like the game, write a review and tell people what you liked. If you don't like the game, write a review and tell people what you didn't like. If you like the game but think it could be better, write that review. If you don't like the game but think it could be worse, write that review. ...
In short, please write an honest review, this would help Beamdog.
Currently some people are trying to sink the game. If a lot of people post honest reviews of the game the haters will be less effective at sinking the game. That's what Trent tried to say but went about it in less than ideal way in his plea/reminder for everyone to post reviews.
I agree that people who like a game need a reminder to post a review, then tend not to do that.
It's already been mentioned that the evening out would happen eventually, which is correct, but the slower this happens the more it hurts the developers.
I think he's incorrect, Mizrena fits in Faerun just as much as anyone else. What doesn't fit is the writer's kid gloves treatment of Mizrena. Amber wouldn't let any character, even the most evil of evils be negative toward Mizrena. *That* doesn't fit in Faerun, and with how evil you can be in nearly any other part of Baldur's Gate (pretty fuckin' evil), it's clear that Amber's treatment of the Mizrena dialogues is what isn't fitting.
I AGREE with this. However... I do not believe it to be true that, in many cases, we are allowed to be profusely evil in the vanilla game too terribly much. There are some instances in which I felt forced to take an action unbefitting of my evil party, even just by the standards of Edwin, Viconia, etc. However I still agree, that should be an option. At the very least, I should be able to tell Mizrena to pike off. Then again, my evil characters typically don't care enough to ask someone about their name, which is the prerequisite for getting that controversial dialogue.
@Dimitriid if that is the case, then my response should be altered a bit, however I am not sure I believe you to be correct.
What IS relevant is that you seem to think a transgender character doesn't fit Faerun, or perhaps just the Sword Coast? canonically. Which makes it blaringly obvious you know precious little about what DOES or DOES NOT fit in the setting, and are only making conjectures based on the apparent 'age' (medieval) of the world. So, pray tell, what IS your evidence that it doesn't fit?
Maybe this little thing called "playing the original Baldur's Gate games" (as well as plenty of other D&D games) in addition to reading more D&D books than I can count when I was younger. There's no gender politics in Faerun. But you're not a D&D fan or you'd know that. What you are is an angry "edgey" youth with an agenda to push. Hell, like I said MULTIPLE TIMES, I promote people making a game with gay / trans / whatever characters - but do it in an ORIGINAL game, don't force it into an existing universe where it doesn't belong. I said similar things about Quicksilver's death in Age of Ultron, they broke their own in-universe rules just to have a "dramatic death of a hero" and it completely ruined the scene as a result. It's not hard to stay consistent within the established universe / lore.
I feel like this is going to be a new page in Anita Sarkeesian's book
Oh, how dare Amber follow Anita Sarkeesian. So do I and many others.
It says a lot about your obvious agenda and desperation when you need to dig up people's Twitter profile to prove a point.
Anita Sarkesian is famous for making videos attacking video games for being sexist, despite being on record as stating that she does not play video games. So if someone on the dev team is a fan of her, gamers are right to be worried.
Last time I checked, Anita Sarkeesian has nothing to do with BG, and I don't have to be a fan to follow somebody on Twitter - even I have disagreements with Anita. Are you going on witchhunts for simply having opinions now?
Amber is a writer for the game, she follows Anita Sarkeesian. It's not damning in itself, but it is worrying that someone intimately involved in the creative process of a game is a supporter of a notorious - probably *the* most notorious - anti-gamer, and the toxic ideology that she esposes.
... If you like the game, write a review and tell people what you liked. If you don't like the game, write a review and tell people what you didn't like. If you like the game but think it could be better, write that review. If you don't like the game but think it could be worse, write that review. ...
In short, please write an honest review, this would help Beamdog.
Currently some people are trying to sink the game. If a lot of people post honest reviews of the game the haters will be less effective at sinking the game. That's what Trent tried to say but went about it in less than ideal way in his plea/reminder for everyone to post reviews.
I agree that people who like a game need a reminder to post a review, then tend not to do that.
It's already been mentioned that the evening out would happen eventually, which is correct, but the slower this happens the more it hurts the developers.
I've shown here earlier that most popular reviews are at the very least honest and not concerned at all with these political issues.
Thats a riot coming from someone who cherry-picks arguments and replies as hard as you do.
If you can show me where I've done so and haven't addressed it, please do.
All you need to do is go back to the 2 page of this thread, look to what you replied, look to what people replied to you and what you DID NOT reply to.
Its not that hard, please try to be intellectually honest of you demand it from others.
Sorry man, I checked and I've replied to every person who quoted me on page 2. But if you want to go through everything I've written and try to find something I've missed, feel free I guess.
That said, do you know what intellectual dishonesty means? It's not about replying to every argument a person makes, but about representing your argument truthfully and consistently. I have written that reviews criticizing technical issues are valid, for example. My general argument has been that there are several negative reviews based solely on LGBTQ issues, and those that criticize "bad writing" are universally in opposition to the LGBTQ character as well. I have further argued that the negative reviews on steam - a minority - have been aggressively topvoted, which is plain to see.
I've written about all of this in the context of Trent Oster asking that people who liked the game express themselves in the form of a review and the hypocrites accusing him of trying to "manipulate" the process. That's it. Denying the gamergate component in this and pretending that it's all just "technical issues" and "bad writing" is fundamentally dishonest.
Again, look at the OP on this thread: that's more manipulative of the system, at the very least as manipulative. Second, do you care to address my previous post in which I've shown the first 10 reviews and how, the most popular ones are actually mostly not trolling at all or at least mixed or with valid criticism regardless of your views on the political motivations?
Either your description is not accurate or the agenda of the evil GG people is highly ineffective as the most reasonable, yet critical of reviews are at the very top in popularity.
A person with your username left a negative review on Steam talking purely about this thread, quoting it and nothing about the game content at all. Thats being political and manipulating the score system. Asking for genuine reviews to drown out your manipulation of the review system by posting a negative review with no mention of game content is not political.
I already said I posted that review myself. And yes you can count it as a "troll" review because it focuses on the events proceeding here, I basically conceded that a few posts back feel free to read the long post with the 10 most popular reviews (at that time).
As for it being politically manipulative, only in the sense that it denounces political manipulation and non-compliance with Steam's Terms of Service as previously mentioned. Feel free to report my review, I have no problem with it being taken down as long as Beamdog is also reprimanded for their behavior, it would be fair for all involved.
Their game is being review bombed (pretty obviously) and you are ranting about them asking for players with genuine positive experience to leave reviews whilst then posting a fake review yourself with no actual commentary on the game itself. Manipulation would be for Trent to say post positive feedback or no BG3 or for a chance to win x or what you did.
I AGREE with this. However... I do not believe it to be true that, in many cases, we are allowed to be profusely evil in the vanilla game too terribly much. There are some instances in which I felt forced to take an action unbefitting of my evil party, even just by the standards of Edwin, Viconia, etc. However I still agree, that should be an option. At the very least, I should be able to tell Mizrena to pike off. Then again, my evil characters typically don't care enough to ask someone about their name, which is the prerequisite for getting that controversial dialogue.
@Dimitriid if that is the case, then my response should be altered a bit, however I am not sure I believe you to be correct.
Good point. Sometimes I think evil options tend to get overlooked, and if I had to guess, it's because most people tend to play goodie two-shoes, or at least play that way on first playthrough. Whether it was something Amber spaced off just like those scenarios, or whether it was a deliberate omission would have to be for the player/critic to decide.
Based on her past posts/tweets/interviews, I would suggest it's a deliberate omission, but others may view it differently.
I feel like this is going to be a new page in Anita Sarkeesian's book
Oh, how dare Amber follow Anita Sarkeesian. So do I and many others.
It says a lot about your obvious agenda and desperation when you need to dig up people's Twitter profile to prove a point.
Anita Sarkesian is famous for making videos attacking video games for being sexist, despite being on record as stating that she does not play video games. So if someone on the dev team is a fan of her, gamers are right to be worried.
Last time I checked, Anita Sarkeesian has nothing to do with BG, and I don't have to be a fan to follow somebody on Twitter - even I have disagreements with Anita. Are you going on witchhunts for simply having opinions now?
Amber is a writer for the game, she follows Anita Sarkeesian. It's not damning in itself, but it is worrying that someone intimately involved in the creative process of a game is a supporter of a notorious - probably *the* most notorious - anti-gamer, and the toxic ideology that she esposes.
Are we having McCarthy hearings for game developers based on who they follow on Twitter?? How can you seriously think this is "worrying" in any real sense of the term??
This pisses me off to no end. Where are the negative reviews for Dragon Age or Mass Effect because they have homosexual romances and transgender characters? They don't exist, because the games are good.
Well for starters, it's Bioware, so its basically assumed that you can romance anything with 2 legs. The other issue is that there were FAR larger concerns at hand, such as reviews bought by EA and shoddy endings that only change the color of an explosion, or that Red Jenny elf looking like she was making a permanent lemon face.
Maybe this little thing called "playing the original Baldur's Gate games" (as well as plenty of other D&D games) in addition to reading more D&D books than I can count when I was younger. There's no gender politics in Faerun. But you're not a D&D fan or you'd know that. What you are is an angry "edgey" youth with an agenda to push. Hell, like I said MULTIPLE TIMES, I promote people making a game with gay / trans / whatever characters - but do it in an ORIGINAL game, don't force it into an existing universe where it doesn't belong. I said similar things about Quicksilver's death in Age of Ultron, they broke their own in-universe rules just to have a "dramatic death of a hero" and it completely ruined the scene as a result. It's not hard to stay consistent within the established universe / lore.
Is that so? And in none of those books did you come across characters with odd quirks, including but not limited to homosexuality? Because I've read more than one that do, and one of which was specifically in the Forgotten Realms setting. http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Dahlia_Sin'felle
Funny. We must read about and play very different versions of the realms.
EDIT: For reference on where it is implied she is not 'straight,' refer to Gauntlgrym. As a fan, I'm sure you have the book, no?
The feedback on bugs are valid and will be addressed. On the review request, I merely wanted to encourage people who actually played the game to share their story.
You specifically said you wanted to balance out political criticism, are you retracting or qualifying that statement (Because it would only be fair that people like me would retract or qualify their reviews)?
Also, you can see Steam users games collection and see if they own your game and your DLC or not. I've seen the most popular critical reviews and overall most popular reviews, most of them come from confirmed owners of the game and do not complain only about these matters or more often than not, at all.
Comments
So it's "extremist politics" now simply having for having a minor transgender NPC? LMAO. FYI, even Ed Greenwood, who created the Forgotten Realms in the first place, acknowledged that LGBT characters exist in the world, considering that in early versions of DnD, it's an alternate earth.
https://zandilar.wordpress.com/2008/11/10/homosexuality-in-the-forgotten-realms/
You are also lying by proclaiming that consistency is broken, when in fact in BG2 Safana is nothing more than a cameo, while Jaheira is affected by Khalid's death since the start of the game. In the original game, they are pretty much disposable NPCs, and if anything, SOD fleshed out their characteristics.
And demanding Beamdog to remove the content because you dislike it personally? Sounds like promoting CENSORSHIP to me, or is suddenly okay when Gamergate does it?
And yes, I think that scene is done very poorly.
Even if I'm wrong, how hard is it to, instead of ridiculing, explaining why and how. I fully expect to be ridiculed and called any name under the sun by random people on the internet, I however don't expect it from a developer that wants to sell it's games.
The point here is that he found it personally distasteful to be included in this game. There's nothing you can do about that, it's just the way he feels. He has every right to feel that way enjoying just as much freedom of speech to denounce his distaste for it as Beamdog has by including certain aspects and jokes in their game.
Now that we established that both have a legitimate right to hold either position, can we go back to talk about how most negative reviews are actually not about any of this and are about a distaste for the technical issues and the inconsistency with the source material? That'd be great.
What IS relevant is that you seem to think a transgender character doesn't fit Faerun, or perhaps just the Sword Coast? canonically. Which makes it blaringly obvious you know precious little about what DOES or DOES NOT fit in the setting, and are only making conjectures based on the apparent 'age' (medieval) of the world. So, pray tell, what IS your evidence that it doesn't fit?
Again, NO ONE CARES about a character in a game being gay / bi / trans / dragon-kin. What they care about is it being awkwardly forced into a game if that type of character does not fit the existing game's lore / universe. It's literally all about being consistent within the in-game universe and maintaining consistency with characters between various chapters in the game. This is NOT hard to understand.
This is the deathblow to the Baldur's Gate series. The overflow of negative reviews is going to kill any chance at a Baldur's Gate III, a Ps:T EE or IWD2 EE, because people won't buy it. If you don't like the game because of the minor progressive details added to expose people to the idea of transgender people, but that's your only problem, don't leave a negative review. It's that simple.
So let's stop arguing about it, because you won't change anybody else's mind, and ignore it. That's the only chance we have as a community and as a fanbase.
"That thing that you criticize is not relevant because I do not want to address nor acknowledge that despite it being an essential part of the criticism as a whole"
Last time I checked, Anita Sarkeesian has nothing to do with BG, and I don't have to be a fan to follow somebody on Twitter - even I have disagreements with Anita. Are you going on witchhunts for simply having opinions now?
Currently some people are trying to sink the game. If a lot of people post honest reviews of the game the haters will be less effective at sinking the game. That's what Trent tried to say but went about it in less than ideal way in his plea/reminder for everyone to post reviews.
I agree that people who like a game need a reminder to post a review, then tend not to do that.
It's already been mentioned that the evening out would happen eventually, which is correct, but the slower this happens the more it hurts the developers.
@Dimitriid if that is the case, then my response should be altered a bit, however I am not sure I believe you to be correct.
Based on her past posts/tweets/interviews, I would suggest it's a deliberate omission, but others may view it differently.
Funny. We must read about and play very different versions of the realms.
EDIT: For reference on where it is implied she is not 'straight,' refer to Gauntlgrym. As a fan, I'm sure you have the book, no?
Also, you can see Steam users games collection and see if they own your game and your DLC or not. I've seen the most popular critical reviews and overall most popular reviews, most of them come from confirmed owners of the game and do not complain only about these matters or more often than not, at all.