Haven't bought the expansion yet as I'm waiting on payday but I can honestly say if anything the reaction from GG types makes me want to buy this even more! I wouldn't describe myself as an SJW, preferring the term cold-hearted Marxist, but envisaging socially conservative reactionaries keeling over their keyboards after choking on the putrid combination of their morning cornflakes and regurgitated spiteful bile fills me with a warm fuzzy feeling inside. Well done Beamdog, I'll continue to support you even if you did create Neera; the most irritating, obnoxious, brattish, self-indulgent character I have ever encountered in a game.
To be fair I wasn't planning on playing it in the first place (still need to go through BG:EE). Though I may change my mind at a later date ( I always get games on sale anyway) being made clearly aware that there is a writer who forces politics into the game just for the sake of it put me off it quite a bit and prompted me to research if it had been done for the EE's at all.
I began following SOD about 3 months ago and was going to buy it as soon as I beat BG1 under the 2.0 patch. Downloaded the patch and began playing, calling it a night after about an hour. The next day I jumped on the forums only to discover the left-wing bias in SOD. As a conservative, this was pretty disappointing and decided I would not be paying for the game. Recently though, the...owner(?) said they would be removing a disturbing line and changing the way the... "alternative lifestyle" shopkeep interacted with players, so there is hope. I will make my decision based on how exactly the interaction is changed. I won't give a dollar to a company I perceive as my political enemy (just being honest) so the content of the patch is key to my money.
My plan was to close my eyes and ignore SoD until it comes out on iPhone. The controversy made that impossible. Now I'm just miserable waiting for the release because these trolls had to draw so much attention to the game.
I voted "Yes and I think I'll skip it", but that is because there is no option for "Yes, for now at least".
Here is my reasoning.
Linear play, myriad of Bugs and broken mods:
This is the big one. Others below make me worried about this story and future stories beamdog develops - hopefully we have a more open minded world - but this one make me worried on the quality of the game.
A linear RPG is boring - BGI and BGII are exciting and interesting due to interesting side quests, open world. Heck, I play at least once or twice per year since they launched the originals and my favorite part is Act I & II of BGII. I add a ton of mods to my game to have the biggest amount of content possible with various alternatives.
So a very linear game story seems boring - specially so if they don't give many ways to complete quests or RP choices - and broken mods just make me sad.
So this ends up being the big reason I hold back on buying the game, I want to let the storm of the other issues pass so I can learn better on how these issues stand and, with respect to bugs and broken mods, at least have that fixed.
Now to the controversy:
The trans character:
I have absolutely 0 problems with adding diversity in the game - this, might I add, is nothing new to D&D or to ton of games. Heck D&D tabletop is, in essence, all about open roleplaying with a lot of diversity as the guy that wrote FR even came out and said (which I agree 100%) - who here never played tabletop as a different gender, belief or inclination needs to branch out their RP!
My issue with this character - and hopefully this appears that now will be addressed - is that adding a character that sticks out as a sore thumb, has a completely unrealistic dialogue and then, when the topic gets out of hand with actually interesting reviews / comments being dismissed as bigot by devs, the devs also come out and say in a ton of public media "that this is only one line of text out of thousands" - meaning - irrelevant.
Good job, now not only the devs put a target on that community by putting them on the spot (without a good NPC to stand on), when that community faces the crossfire the devs created the devs toss them to the lions and wash their hands of it saying that character/text is nothing important.... just shameful....
What the devs could have done and would be much appreciated in my view, would be to include this diversity - if the idea is to bring attention to this part of the character - with depth and in a thought provoking manner (with roleplay possibility).
E.g., add a quest that involves the player having the option to travel with an NPC to break a gender change spell for some reason another person ask. The PC then gets the chance to learn and sympathize with the NPC, gets to see more depth of the character, the player then has the chance to discover that the spell was done by choice and now the player has the dilemma of breaking the spell as requested (for some reason the quest giver would want the spell broken regardless of the NPC's choice) or helping the NPC stand by its choice. Both choices having good and bad consequences (guess what, a lot similar to how real life really is in these cases) - so as to be a bit thought provoking. (Think of Witcher 3 and how every choice has a good/bad side to it in that game and, thus, really makes you think on the difficulty of that choice).
In my view, if you want to add diversity so people will have a more open mind, then the right way is to make people think about and understand the issue/dilemma, not shove down their throat what you think they should think and feel otherwise you will only create bickering - so if at the end of the day someone goes and thinks they should break the spell (example above) let them or if think they should help the NPC stand by its choice let them.
You are not here to teach your moral views, you are here to entertain and, perhaps, provide a thought provoking experience. (Witcher 3 was brilliant in this)
Minsc "one liner":
Completely unnecessary to add fuel to an internet discussion with a lot of controversy. Just spitefulness of the writers.
Glad this is being removed.
"Baldur's Gate is sexist":
Here is a relevant problem. BGI & BGII had a lot of strong female characters, had a lot of weak female characters, strong male characters and weak male characters - your PC could even be a strong female character or a strong male character. The game had jokes on characters of both sexes (Hey, have the devs ever played BGII with Edwin and done his BGII personal quest??).
Also, with a good community mod (romance disregards race and gender) you could open all romanceable NPCs to any inclination.
The games also have, more importantly, a big array of diverse personalities.
The developers coming out and saying that they think the game is sexist because they personally dislike a personality of a few hand picked characters is blatant prejudice in my view.
The devs are essentially saying that no person in the world can act or think like that (i.e., think different than the devs) otherwise they are "sexist" / "bigots" / etc.
In my line of work I regularly meet several people of various walks of life and choices, and always get to know at least a bit of their personalities - and this may shock certain devs, but yes, some people act like Safana (less the murder - most of the time) or as Jaheira, or as Aerie, or as Viconia (again less murder - most of the time), or as Anomen, or as Edwin, etc.
Their personalities and beliefs do not necessarily make them "weak", "sexist", a "tool for men/patriarchal society" or anything of the sort. That is who they are, their personalities.
There is no right or wrong to a person personality or beliefs - there is only a wrong when we use our personality and beliefs as an excuse to be disrespectful / harmful to others.
The fact that the devs have decided that it is best to go out of their way to reduce the different personalities in the game so as to bring them in line with how the devs think people should "think and act" is really wrong in my view and I am sad that the developers support this one sided view and, dare I say, bigoted view "100%".
(At least that is what I gather from Trent's comment "we stand behind all our developers 100%")
This, sadly, is not recognized at all in Trent's post and makes me worried on how future stories will likely be more shallow because of this....
Linearity is something what bothers me as well. To be honest when I saw a trailer I got excited, but then I thought 'ok what is this story really about?'. The beauty of baldurs gate was that the charname was not pushed to do anything, it was rather all about finding his/her destiny at every step. Being good or bad however you fancy. And in SoD you just must face the shining lady and that's basically your main scope of action if I understood it well. also why should charname care about the fact city of baldurs gate has to problems?Lawful good paladin of course would care, but evil barbarian? I don't think so.
I wasn't planning on playing it since I was kind of skeptical of making an expansion pack for a game as old as Baldur's Gate, but the controversy actually made me curious and I wanted to support the game after hearing about how much backlash it had received.
Why isn't that an option for the poll by the way? "No" is winning by far and I know others bought the game because of the backlash as well.
given that the poster of the poll voted for "yes I'll skip it" I think that explains the bias in the poll options you're talking about here...I guess things didn't go as they projected when crafting the poll lmao
I do not care its just people do not wanna talk about the more important things about the game like do you know we killed a very very powerful devil not archedevil but still a very powerful one. Or what is the deal with the dreams there more confusing now. You know things that matter.
The new rendering of the characters might be a deal breaker for me. I noticed, when i updated the EE BG1 today that the characters looked way different. Blurry\cartoony almost. I suspect my colourblindness is making it worse. I am guessing SoD comes with this rendering already installed...
Will still buy it when the iPad version comes out. i really could not care less about some reference to gamergate (as I didnt even know who they were before this came up) or some random trans character Beamdog put in to fill the quota (or whatever, havent read all zillion posts about it). It is a case of looking at the finger and not at the moon. Irrelevant
But he's gonna buy the game, so I guess we win in the end
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IPhone brought to you by the free enterprise system. Praise be to The Market!
there is no ethical consumption under capitalism but the planned obsolescence and artificial scarcity to drain me of my wages as regularly as possible sure is neat-o!
The new rendering of the characters might be a deal breaker for me. I noticed, when i updated the EE BG1 today that the characters looked way different. Blurry\cartoony almost. I suspect my colourblindness is making it worse. I am guessing SoD comes with this rendering already installed...
I have the classic as well as the EE and they look sharper to me, I think it's the zoom option that makes them look blurry, if you zoom out it looks like classic but sharper, if you zoom in it looks blurrier but that's just because you're zoomed in (just my subjective take with my ever-failing eyes)
The new rendering of the characters might be a deal breaker for me. I noticed, when i updated the EE BG1 today that the characters looked way different. Blurry\cartoony almost. I suspect my colourblindness is making it worse. I am guessing SoD comes with this rendering already installed...
I have the classic as well as the EE and they look sharper to me, I think it's the zoom option that makes them look blurry, if you zoom out it looks like classic but sharper, if you zoom in it looks blurrier but that's just because you're zoomed in (just my subjective take with my ever-failing eyes)
Yeah this seems to be the case. Not too bad when you zoom out a lot.
Still. This was a shit idea by whoever responsible. It changes the look of the game quite a lot. Almost nausciating to play.
Add me to the list of those who bought it because of the controversy. I was almost certainly going to get it eventually, but not right now and not at full price. I did so specifically to spite the sorts of people who caused the controversy (none of whom are Beamdog employees), and in solidarity with the company for fighting the good fight.
Not the collector's boxed edition, though. I, uh, don't have quite that much solidarity to spare.
No, but I wasn't planning on buying it anyway due to previous concerns. Too early to say whether those concerns turned out to be valid. If they're not, I'll probably pick it up at some point.
No. I already owned it and didn't even think there was a problem.
Yep, this needs to be a poll option. "I pre-ordered/bought day one and didn't even realise that there was apparently an issue that certain people within the community had until I came to the forums to discuss the game"
On the other hand though it's not all rainbows and butterflies just because of that non-controversy. If someone asked my opinion and whether or not it's worth buying at the moment I'd still say 'Not yet' and "wait until more patches' because at the end of the day it's still pretty buggy and has other more important issues.
Well too late for me. But if I could jump into a time machine and go back in time I would probably hold my purchase and wait to see what they do with the whole situation. So far it has been handled very poorly and then I'm not talking about the trans or gay characters. The whole "haters gonna hate" response is just so unprofessional and the kotaku interview made my jaw drop, still partly in disbelief of what was said. The closing of threads and begging for positive reviews also itch me the wrong way but if they want to go there fine. All in all the expansion was "ok" and i could have done without it, there are other games. It's just sad because some stuff was really great, like the sound track.
Not at all, to the point that I was actually planning to buy the legacy editions on gog (baldurs gate is my most owned game, i've had it on both cd-rom and dvd, but not digitally apart from the EE) but now I am going to wait untill they are combined into the EE edition so I can fork some additional revenue to beamdog
But he's gonna buy the game, so I guess we win in the end
[/spoiler]
IPhone brought to you by the free enterprise system. Praise be to The Market!
there is no ethical consumption under capitalism but the planned obsolescence and artificial scarcity to drain me of my wages as regularly as possible sure is neat-o!
I *LOVE* capitalism - especially its inevitable collapse. I especially love how billions of dollars worth of military R&D can have an Apple logo slapped on it and then claimed to be a product of market innovation but hey can't complain; need to play Candy Crush Saga on something right?
Comments
You know things that matter.
Still. This was a shit idea by whoever responsible. It changes the look of the game quite a lot. Almost nausciating to play.
No, I pre-ordered it.
Not the collector's boxed edition, though. I, uh, don't have quite that much solidarity to spare.
*Evidently this post warranted a Nietzsche reference, the existential nihilist in me is rejoicing!
"I pre-ordered/bought day one and didn't even realise that there was apparently an issue that certain people within the community had until I came to the forums to discuss the game"
MRW: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mB2Cx3d05u4/UOoAHp1BU0I/AAAAAAAAFBc/SWdJcAmH7Vk/s1600/troy-barnes.gif
On the other hand though it's not all rainbows and butterflies just because of that non-controversy. If someone asked my opinion and whether or not it's worth buying at the moment I'd still say 'Not yet' and "wait until more patches' because at the end of the day it's still pretty buggy and has other more important issues.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche