@BelgarathMTH Well, my native language is not English, and in my language "everybody"/"everyone" is also used as a simplified hyperbole.
But when we talk about this context, the very notion that even notable ammount of people could be offended by SoD content is faceplam-worhty to me. But I digress.
Me, I think anyone who thinks videogames and hollywood movies are the battlefields in which a "cultural war" is being waged should stop reading Breitbart and go outside a little.
But "a whole lot of people" is untrue too. "A small number of very loud people pretending to be offended in order to use SoD as a political football" would be more precise.
That is the whole point baldurs gate did have some silly non fantasy themes like the Two comedy chatacters from that bob newhart vemont show. But when you throw in modern cultural Marxist and politically correct female characters you get culture war mixed with my escapism fantasy.
Anyway the game is still worth my money but they would have made it more attractive and not hurt their sales if they would have kept it pure 1980 fantasy land where target is just a thing to shoot and women are cheerful elves not angry humans. since ot is a small in house operation they were free to make it as opinated and political as they liked which is fine... but I would not be surprised if a biv name market compannypases on funfing them in a partnership for an expensive product in the future which is sad for me as they cant get finding for new dungeons and dragons games
I don't know if their sales were hurt or not but I'm pretty sure that they would have been had they decided to cater to fat insecure alt-right yankees and their prehistoric ideologies. It's also really arrogant to assume *your* escapist fantasy to be so much more valuable than others.
ok ok I do not mean I wanted the Robert Howard chainmail with tge belly glaringly exposed pure theme throughout. But if you consider the older clients who bought the game and then figure in how dnd is mostly male ( google dnd convention images and try to argue against that ) it is clear they could have catered more to the ole fatty male piggy audience rather than trying to put in strong and highly irratating female role model. Beamdawg has already made thier bed and slept in it. It would be bootless now for tgem to make an honsest statement, "In retrospect we alienated a large percent of our core audience of older fatter middle aged dnd white guy women loving nerds. This hurt our sales and we hope huge conglomerate media companies believe us when we say we've learned to eat our pc writing dialogues and eill keep it straight and fantasy bladed in our next project. Please fund us we barely broke even with our devesive siege."
Me, I think anyone who thinks videogames and hollywood movies are the battlefields in which a "cultural war" is being waged should stop reading Breitbart and go outside a little.
Just wondering where a "cultural war" would be fought other than in things that are cultural productions?
We've been over this so many times, why not once more.
The game had impossible expectations to meet. For those of us who've played the saga, it was like any movie loosely based on a real event; we knew how the game was going to end. What we didn't know, was what would happen between A and Z. This sage is real history to most of us. To the rest of video game land, there was nothing about this game that would make someone new interested.
Real world philosophy should be welcomed as long as it's thinly veiled at worst. I can't help but think Beamdog shot themselves in the foot inviting controversy in the first place. I watched a lot of the build up to the release of SoD and got the impression, "they are going to attempt something." I watched the game launch on Twitch and that sinking feeling came up again.
Great, maybe a video game first happened with, "you know who" being written, poorly. Fantastic, one of the most beloved characters made reference to Gamergate. But at what cost? This game needed to be inclusive, not divisive. It doesn't matter if it's, "a loud minority" of people who didn't like the game, it has an affect on whether or not other people will buy it.
There was an ethical dilemma with some of the content in this game: Are the choices we've made right for the audience we want to reach?
It seemed to me that this dilemma was either never addressed or was completely ignored. As much as I hate to say it, the backlash did have an effect on my enjoyment of the game. It's a game worth playing. Unfortunately some will never experience it because they were handed an excuse not to.
But "a whole lot of people" is untrue too. "A small number of very loud people pretending to be offended in order to use SoD as a political football" would be more precise.
Who are you referring to?
It could be said of both viewpoints.
Safana being called names and Jaheira a "nagging wife" could easily be seen as "pretending to be offended in order to use SOD as a political football"
Just wondering where a "cultural war" would be fought other than in things that are cultural productions?
Down the pub?
Heh.
There's more to culture than the entertainment industry, you know that, right?
Anyway, you shouldn't ignore the quoting marks around "cultural war". My point is that there isn't one. Not in here, at least.
Sure, there's plenty of controversy going on these days. People's opinions are more polarized than ever, and we see that every day on social media. Feminism is a hot topic right now, and so is racism (well, maybe hotter than usual) and so is Islam and LGBT rights. Things like Tumblr SJWs and gamergaters and people downvoting movie trailers en masse reflect that. But it doesn't exactly go both ways.
Look, far from me to use the old stereotype of basement-dwelling manchildren, but the thing is that when you look at the big picture, the relevancy of controversies surrounding videogames is precisely zero. No one except for the specialized media is paying attention to it.
You see these online communities doing things like review bombing, online harassment and endless debate (which by the way is mostly hopelessly uninformed) and once you step out of that bubble for a second, it's nothing. The world keeps spinning and the real problems are still out there and no one who's getting their news from Fox News or CNN or the New York Times will ever be able to count on them to know who Anita Sarkeesian is or what the hell is a Gamergate - talk about a pretentious title, by the way.
So please - if you don't like progressive ideas in videogames, I've nothing with that. Keep throwing those logical fallacies at everyone who's reading if you must (actually, please don't). But let's keep things in perspective. We're all sitting at the kid's table.
I don't know if their sales were hurt or not but I'm pretty sure that they would have been had they decided to cater to fat insecure alt-right yankees and their prehistoric ideologies.
Which is why they should've catered to the core fan base, not to ideologies.
I don't know if their sales were hurt or not but I'm pretty sure that they would have been had they decided to cater to fat insecure alt-right yankees and their prehistoric ideologies. It's also really arrogant to assume *your* escapist fantasy to be so much more valuable than others.
I am Alt-Right... and I am not fat
In all seriousness though I have seen a lot of bullcrap assumptions in these forums about gaters, conservatives or anyone criticizing SoD in general
The real problem behind all this is Beamdog's management. They hired wrong people, and made wrong choices, and now reap what they sowed.
+1 to this. Amber Scott was imho a bad choice both in PR and in game development. Even the minorities she tried to "represent" were not happy with her.
I am sure beamdog learned their lesson though... They did say they should have put MUCH more effort into Mizhena and they did remove the gater insult from minsc.
Well, it's your opinion, folks. But I hope you share this opinion on actual experience of playing SoD.
@Teo_live Did you play SoD? Did you use Rasaad (written by Amber)? Did you experience Corwin romance and/or just dialogues? What is your opinion on these characters?
@qwerty123456 Did you play SoD? Did you use Glint and M'khin (written by another writer, Andrew)? What do you think about the dwarven dungeon?
What do both of you think about Dynaheir and Minsc in SoD? Where they wrong and/or strange in vanilla BG terms? In what way?
@qwerty123456 Did you play SoD? Did you use Glint and M'khin (written by another writer, Andrew)? What do you think about the dwarven dungeon?
What do both of you think about Dynaheir and Minsc in SoD? Where they wrong and/or strange in vanilla BG terms? In what way?
Yes, I used both.
Glint was shallow, "hello, let's go" type of NPC. But least he shuts up when you tell him to stop his wink wink advancements.
Mkhiin, on the other hand, quickly got annoying. I kept thinking to myself: "whose idea of fun is being called racist repeatedly for no reason at all?". But then I went to these forums, and other sites, did some reading, and it became clearer. It was other way around - it's the writer's idea of fun to call other people racist for no reason at all.
Dynaheir was all right. I rarely use her in BG1, but within my experience, nothing stuck out like a sore thumb.
Minsc (omitting the obvious quote that was taken out), was a little forced - too stupid, and too Boo-ish. Reminded me of some banter mods, where the authors take one signature trait of an NPC, and use just that to write all banters. For example Jaheira starting every line with "Child, ...". There's more to her than mentoring, you know. And as I have mentioned elsewhere, some of his new lines sound Indian to my ear. Overall, I'd rate new Minsc as 7/10 of the old Minsc.
SoD was hardly memorable IMO. Controversy, you say, foaming at the mouth? Oh please. There wasn't enough controversy in the controversy to make it controversial. The TG NPC had like 2 friggin' lines or so pointing out that she was a he. Or was it the other way around? I honestly forgot which one it was. My lunch was more controversial, and I didn't have any today. Basically, the only thing I got from SoD was a 500.000 XP character instead of a 161.000 XP character.
Which, quite frankly, I can pass on without a hitch. There were so many different ways Beamdog could have added extra content TOTSC-style and make it successful at the same time. And with a fraction of sense, story-wise. Beamdog chose to make it so dull that it stopped being cute after leaving the Palace.
I could probably hate it or love it with a passion for God knows how many logical or illogical reasons. But truth be told, SoD doesn't even evoke enough of an emotional response from me that I can either seethe enough with hate to give it a 1/10, or vice versa, give it 10/10 because I absolutely love it. I said trivial before. If only it were even that. I'm bored senseless playing Pazaak in my KOTOR runs, and that still made my amygdala jitter vaguely more that SoD did. That's right. Pazaak. It's even more poorly executed than that.
I'll give it a 5/10. Not for any artistical value. But the the sheer and utter mindnumbing averageness... yeah, I know. That's not really a word.
"There were so many different ways Beamdog could have added extra content TOTSC-style and make it successful at the same time. And with a fraction of sense, story-wise."
This, a hundred times this.
And marketed it using the strengths of BG/BG2 rather than disparage the source material. I mean seriously, who launches any advertising campaign telling people what was wrong before and what they have "corrected"?
The ridiculous idea that if something isn't new and shiny and so so up to date in this day and age means it won't sell is absurd. I have never known a time when nostalgia was stronger than the present.
From hipster cafes with their distressed brickwork and old lightbulbs to Hollywood churning out remake after remake (or shall we say "reboot"), the future seems to have been put on hold.
I quite like the new fights and the siege battles. And there are a lot of fun fight scenarios in SoD. That's mostly what I focus on while playing through. As I go through again, I focus more on the new environments; in particular, the underground, which is very nice. I love the backgrounds of the BG1 wilderness areas. SoD is a great extension of that to me. The music is also a surprising and welcome fit to the series.
Hearing David Warner is a plus, but with BG I'm really just about the fights and wandering the quiet wilderness. Puts me in good spirits.
I struggled with the siege and large battles personally. There's a lot to keep track of and that get's just a little too chaotic for me, even with pause^^
The darkness spell some enemies use is just brutal.
And marketed it using the strengths of BG/BG2 rather than disparage the source material. I mean seriously, who launches any advertising campaign telling people what was wrong before and what they have "corrected"?
The ridiculous idea that if something isn't new and shiny and so so up to date in this day and age means it won't sell is absurd. I have never known a time when nostalgia was stronger than the present.
During EE development, it was mentioned many times that Beamdog isn't allowed to make any changes to the original story, characters, areas, etc, so they were pretty limited in some ways. I didn't understand it at the time - why would WoTC forbid that? Made no sense to me. Now I see the wisdom of that decision. If they'd get their way "correcting" the originals...
Not yet, just read most of the dialogues (waiting for it to go on special, imho it is not worth $20 for reasons I mentioned in the "steam sale makes sense" thread...)
Did you use Rasaad (written by Amber)? Did you experience Corwin romance and/or just dialogues? What is your opinion on these characters? .... What do both of you think about Dynaheir and Minsc in SoD? Where they wrong and/or strange in vanilla BG terms? In what way?
Rasaad in all 3 BG's was one of the better new NPC's. Neera I found boring, air-headed and ditsy but still not bad. In all honesty it is pretty hard to screw up a romantic character unless you go full retard and make a Hexxat...
Vanilla BG characters? They were nothing but bland in Vanilla BG since they had very little dialogue to begin with. A banter pack is a must for me to get through a vanilla BG game without rage quitting. So in that sense, yet again it is pretty hard to screw up since you have no where to go but up. I had no problems with their SoD dialogue that I have read so far.
As for Amber Scott her problem was not lack of writing talent, Rasaad is proof of that. Her problem was lack of professionalism (i.e the interview) and the lack of political objectivity in game writing. I overlooked much criticism of her on the internet e.g alleged feminism pushing on characters, as it was too subtle for me to really notice. I could not however overlook the unsubtle Mizhena that was a lazy token thrown in to make Amber feel good about herself? Or maybe it was just bait so she could call all of us evil gaters "bigots"? (even though many of us are fans of characters like the hella sexy poison from capcom?)
Beamdog already admitted Mizhena needed more work, so why hasn't any work happened to her yet? Will it take one of us non-payed fans to make a mod so she is playable/explained/romancable etc?
Me, I think anyone who thinks videogames and hollywood movies are the battlefields in which a "cultural war" is being waged should stop reading Breitbart and go outside a little.
Where did you read "most of the dialogues"? How many dialogues did you read?
I'm asking all this as I genuinely don't understand how without playing the game one can judge whether writing is objective or not, whether there was any pushing or not.
Without playing the game one cannot simulate a situation of interacting with the game world with lots of characters and creatures there, cannot see how much influence this or that character has on the game, gameplay and quests there.
The update on the Mizhena dialogue will come as a part of the 2.4 patch.
Me, I think anyone who thinks videogames and hollywood movies are the battlefields in which a "cultural war" is being waged should stop reading Breitbart and go outside a little.
So what should we read instead? Huffpo? *shudder*
Huffington Post being bad does not make Breitbart a good source of news. You see, while every media outlet does have a certain bias, most of them make a point of reporting actual things that happened. Or hiring actual journalists.
*insert picture of house here (who is a very red-pilled character ironically?) to insult alternative viewpoints*
I was pretty respectful and honest about myself? Is that bad?
- The first reason was to show people in beamdog thread how us on the other side of the fence truly feel about SoD and the entire "controversies". - The second reason was so people can stop making up things assuming Gaters, conservatives or whatever hate lgbt game characters. Nah most of us like them, Edwina is an Evil Goddess imho and she deserves a rival. Mizhena failed to be that rival it saddened me a bit.
Now I know you hate "my kind", that's fine but as I said at least I was honest from the get go. No need to troll me, or at very least don't call our entire collective group fat lol
It is just so strange to me, to the point of thinking about SoD way more than a rational person should, given SoD had to be an expansion, you had to have BG in order to play it (making it more of a $40 USD investment).
The ONLY goal should have been to retain everyone who owned a copy of BG and ensure they bought SoD. I feel so frustrated, not by the controversy, but because this was Beamdog's chance to expand the BG universe.
It was such a big deal to me to get the EE's. Now I feel like anything they do next will be some exercise in Sisypheon futility.
Games are an escape from reality for many. It makes me wonder why an indie house developer would take a risk with almost no perceivable upside and potentially future crippling downside.
Equality is a battle fought in the hearts and minds of people, not in front of a keyboard.
Full disclosure: I am a white male nurse who had the privilege of taking care of patients through their gender transition surgeries and currently work as a nurse serving a majority of inner city minorities who don't have much access to health care.
That is not meant to impress anyone, rather impress upon the idea that people will help enact change if they want to. We need to realize most people want houses for the homeless, but they aren't prepared to volunteer their time or money to build them, so what's the point? (Credit to Rick and Morty)
we should all be thankful the Infinity Engine, and specifically the Baldurs Gate series, is still getting love to this day.
That being said I found this game an enjoyable add-on to the series, those complaints which I did have were acknowledged and addressed by Beamdog, so I credit them for listening to their fanbase as well.
Comments
Well, my native language is not English, and in my language "everybody"/"everyone" is also used as a simplified hyperbole.
But when we talk about this context, the very notion that even notable ammount of people could be offended by SoD content is faceplam-worhty to me. But I digress.
Anyway the game is still worth my money but they would have made it more attractive and not hurt their sales if they would have kept it pure 1980 fantasy land where target is just a thing to shoot and women are cheerful elves not angry humans. since ot is a small in house operation they were free to make it as opinated and political as they liked which is fine... but I would not be surprised if a biv name market compannypases on funfing them in a partnership for an expensive product in the future which is sad for me as they cant get finding for new dungeons and dragons games
"In retrospect we alienated a large percent of our core audience of older fatter middle aged dnd white guy women loving nerds. This hurt our sales and we hope huge conglomerate media companies believe us when we say we've learned to eat our pc writing dialogues and eill keep it straight and fantasy bladed in our next project. Please fund us we barely broke even with our devesive siege."
Down the pub?
The game had impossible expectations to meet. For those of us who've played the saga, it was like any movie loosely based on a real event; we knew how the game was going to end. What we didn't know, was what would happen between A and Z. This sage is real history to most of us. To the rest of video game land, there was nothing about this game that would make someone new interested.
Real world philosophy should be welcomed as long as it's thinly veiled at worst. I can't help but think Beamdog shot themselves in the foot inviting controversy in the first place. I watched a lot of the build up to the release of SoD and got the impression, "they are going to attempt something." I watched the game launch on Twitch and that sinking feeling came up again.
Great, maybe a video game first happened with, "you know who" being written, poorly. Fantastic, one of the most beloved characters made reference to Gamergate. But at what cost? This game needed to be inclusive, not divisive. It doesn't matter if it's, "a loud minority" of people who didn't like the game, it has an affect on whether or not other people will buy it.
There was an ethical dilemma with some of the content in this game: Are the choices we've made right for the audience we want to reach?
It seemed to me that this dilemma was either never addressed or was completely ignored. As much as I hate to say it, the backlash did have an effect on my enjoyment of the game. It's a game worth playing. Unfortunately some will never experience it because they were handed an excuse not to.
It could be said of both viewpoints.
Safana being called names and Jaheira a "nagging wife" could easily be seen as "pretending to be offended in order to use SOD as a political football"
There's more to culture than the entertainment industry, you know that, right?
Anyway, you shouldn't ignore the quoting marks around "cultural war". My point is that there isn't one. Not in here, at least.
Sure, there's plenty of controversy going on these days. People's opinions are more polarized than ever, and we see that every day on social media. Feminism is a hot topic right now, and so is racism (well, maybe hotter than usual) and so is Islam and LGBT rights. Things like Tumblr SJWs and gamergaters and people downvoting movie trailers en masse reflect that. But it doesn't exactly go both ways.
Look, far from me to use the old stereotype of basement-dwelling manchildren, but the thing is that when you look at the big picture, the relevancy of controversies surrounding videogames is precisely zero. No one except for the specialized media is paying attention to it.
You see these online communities doing things like review bombing, online harassment and endless debate (which by the way is mostly hopelessly uninformed) and once you step out of that bubble for a second, it's nothing. The world keeps spinning and the real problems are still out there and no one who's getting their news from Fox News or CNN or the New York Times will ever be able to count on them to know who Anita Sarkeesian is or what the hell is a Gamergate - talk about a pretentious title, by the way.
So please - if you don't like progressive ideas in videogames, I've nothing with that. Keep throwing those logical fallacies at everyone who's reading if you must (actually, please don't). But let's keep things in perspective. We're all sitting at the kid's table.
The real problem behind all this is Beamdog's management. They hired wrong people, and made wrong choices, and now reap what they sowed.
In all seriousness though I have seen a lot of bullcrap assumptions in these forums about gaters, conservatives or anyone criticizing SoD in general +1 to this. Amber Scott was imho a bad choice both in PR and in game development. Even the minorities she tried to "represent" were not happy with her.
I am sure beamdog learned their lesson though... They did say they should have put MUCH more effort into Mizhena and they did remove the gater insult from minsc.
@Teo_live Did you play SoD? Did you use Rasaad (written by Amber)? Did you experience Corwin romance and/or just dialogues? What is your opinion on these characters?
@qwerty123456 Did you play SoD? Did you use Glint and M'khin (written by another writer, Andrew)? What do you think about the dwarven dungeon?
What do both of you think about Dynaheir and Minsc in SoD? Where they wrong and/or strange in vanilla BG terms? In what way?
Glint was shallow, "hello, let's go" type of NPC. But least he shuts up when you tell him to stop his wink wink advancements.
Mkhiin, on the other hand, quickly got annoying. I kept thinking to myself: "whose idea of fun is being called racist repeatedly for no reason at all?". But then I went to these forums, and other sites, did some reading, and it became clearer. It was other way around - it's the writer's idea of fun to call other people racist for no reason at all.
Dynaheir was all right. I rarely use her in BG1, but within my experience, nothing stuck out like a sore thumb.
Minsc (omitting the obvious quote that was taken out), was a little forced - too stupid, and too Boo-ish. Reminded me of some banter mods, where the authors take one signature trait of an NPC, and use just that to write all banters. For example Jaheira starting every line with "Child, ...". There's more to her than mentoring, you know.
And as I have mentioned elsewhere, some of his new lines sound Indian to my ear.
Overall, I'd rate new Minsc as 7/10 of the old Minsc.
Which, quite frankly, I can pass on without a hitch. There were so many different ways Beamdog could have added extra content TOTSC-style and make it successful at the same time. And with a fraction of sense, story-wise. Beamdog chose to make it so dull that it stopped being cute after leaving the Palace.
I could probably hate it or love it with a passion for God knows how many logical or illogical reasons. But truth be told, SoD doesn't even evoke enough of an emotional response from me that I can either seethe enough with hate to give it a 1/10, or vice versa, give it 10/10 because I absolutely love it. I said trivial before. If only it were even that. I'm bored senseless playing Pazaak in my KOTOR runs, and that still made my amygdala jitter vaguely more that SoD did. That's right. Pazaak. It's even more poorly executed than that.
I'll give it a 5/10. Not for any artistical value. But the the sheer and utter mindnumbing averageness... yeah, I know. That's not really a word.
Anyway... Feel free to disagree.
"There were so many different ways Beamdog could have added extra content TOTSC-style and make it successful at the same time. And with a fraction of sense, story-wise."
This, a hundred times this.
And marketed it using the strengths of BG/BG2 rather than disparage the source material.
I mean seriously, who launches any advertising campaign telling people what was wrong before and what they have "corrected"?
The ridiculous idea that if something isn't new and shiny and so so up to date in this day and age means it won't sell is absurd.
I have never known a time when nostalgia was stronger than the present.
From hipster cafes with their distressed brickwork and old lightbulbs to Hollywood churning out remake after remake (or shall we say "reboot"), the future seems to have been put on hold.
The darkness spell some enemies use is just brutal.
Now I see the wisdom of that decision. If they'd get their way "correcting" the originals...
Vanilla BG characters? They were nothing but bland in Vanilla BG since they had very little dialogue to begin with. A banter pack is a must for me to get through a vanilla BG game without rage quitting. So in that sense, yet again it is pretty hard to screw up since you have no where to go but up. I had no problems with their SoD dialogue that I have read so far.
As for Amber Scott her problem was not lack of writing talent, Rasaad is proof of that. Her problem was lack of professionalism (i.e the interview) and the lack of political objectivity in game writing. I overlooked much criticism of her on the internet e.g alleged feminism pushing on characters, as it was too subtle for me to really notice. I could not however overlook the unsubtle Mizhena that was a lazy token thrown in to make Amber feel good about herself? Or maybe it was just bait so she could call all of us evil gaters "bigots"? (even though many of us are fans of characters like the hella sexy poison from capcom?)
Beamdog already admitted Mizhena needed more work, so why hasn't any work happened to her yet? Will it take one of us non-payed fans to make a mod so she is playable/explained/romancable etc? So what should we read instead? Huffpo? *shudder*
Where did you read "most of the dialogues"? How many dialogues did you read?
I'm asking all this as I genuinely don't understand how without playing the game one can judge whether writing is objective or not, whether there was any pushing or not.
Without playing the game one cannot simulate a situation of interacting with the game world with lots of characters and creatures there, cannot see how much influence this or that character has on the game, gameplay and quests there.
The update on the Mizhena dialogue will come as a part of the 2.4 patch.
- The first reason was to show people in beamdog thread how us on the other side of the fence truly feel about SoD and the entire "controversies".
- The second reason was so people can stop making up things assuming Gaters, conservatives or whatever hate lgbt game characters. Nah most of us like them, Edwina is an Evil Goddess imho and she deserves a rival. Mizhena failed to be that rival it saddened me a bit.
Now I know you hate "my kind", that's fine but as I said at least I was honest from the get go. No need to troll me, or at very least don't call our entire collective group fat lol
With that said, I'm not taking part in this discussion anymore.
It is just so strange to me, to the point of thinking about SoD way more than a rational person should, given SoD had to be an expansion, you had to have BG in order to play it (making it more of a $40 USD investment).
The ONLY goal should have been to retain everyone who owned a copy of BG and ensure they bought SoD. I feel so frustrated, not by the controversy, but because this was Beamdog's chance to expand the BG universe.
It was such a big deal to me to get the EE's. Now I feel like anything they do next will be some exercise in Sisypheon futility.
Games are an escape from reality for many. It makes me wonder why an indie house developer would take a risk with almost no perceivable upside and potentially future crippling downside.
Equality is a battle fought in the hearts and minds of people, not in front of a keyboard.
Full disclosure: I am a white male nurse who had the privilege of taking care of patients through their gender transition surgeries and currently work as a nurse serving a majority of inner city minorities who don't have much access to health care.
That is not meant to impress anyone, rather impress upon the idea that people will help enact change if they want to. We need to realize most people want houses for the homeless, but they aren't prepared to volunteer their time or money to build them, so what's the point? (Credit to Rick and Morty)
That being said I found this game an enjoyable add-on to the series, those complaints which I did have were acknowledged and addressed by Beamdog, so I credit them for listening to their fanbase as well.