In a spoiler below I'm describing the history of events. Besides that Minsc line, I'm not sure there were a lot of official comments and interviews "supporting a specific agenda".
Do those statement and interviews support a specific agenda?[/spoiler]
I would say, yes. I'm not saying this was some huge movement, but yes to me there is evidence of an intention to advance the equalities agenda.
Whether having an agenda is good or bad is going to be down to perception. Personally I have liberal values and think it's good, but I can understand others may not agree.
One of the things I really loved when I first came across Baldur's Gate was on the character creation screen. If you click on male you're told that males can excel in every area - which made me wince because I really hated games which almost forced you into playing male characters due to the different stats assigned to them. It was therefore a really pleasant surprise to me when clicking next on female to be told that they can also excel in every area and "are easily the equal of their male counterparts" .
I would say that for the time it was released the original Baldur's Gate also had an "equalities agenda" and was ahead of society in general in expressing that. That doesn't though mean there was nothing sexist in the games (dialogues, romancing options, portrait options) and society in general has moved a long way since BG was originally released. I can therefore certainly sympathise with the developer's wish to push things a bit further in SoD. I have a bit less sympathy with the way that agenda was put across. If someone posted on the Forums "If people don’t like that, then too bad." I could imagine a moderator posting a polite warning about the need for respect. While I agree with subtledoctor that many people clearly like a 'tell it like it is' approach at the moment my own preference would be for respectful and considered responses when discussing potentially inflammatory issues ...
Edit: I got sucked into commenting on this thread earlier, despite my feeling that any comment was highly unlikely to be productive. I'll be aiming to refrain from further comment for the same reason .
The dialog with Mizhena is clumsy. There is no reason in BG world with the names that we have encountered that anybody would ask about hers. In the vacuum of the game itself, that dialog would simply not happen, there's no precident, no previous encounters where "a name" is signposted as unusual (because without language rules applying to a particular language, no names can be "unusual") So why does it occur?
There's a game called PST, which is regarded by many gamers as the game with the best dialogues and writing ever. PST happens in the D&D universe, just like BG.
So, in PST there's a minor NPC, Pox, whom you can meet in the Hive, not long after you start the game. And you know what? The dialogue with Pox goes exactly the same route as the one with Mizhena (or, considering the time of PST release, vice versa) - you say Hi and then go on with asking about the character's name, which sounds strange to the main character, and an explanation is immediately given. After that you proceed to further dialogue.
You ask about the name during the first lines of the dialogue.
"Hai?"
"Uh… who are you?"
"Pox I am, hai."
"Uh... Pox?"
"Mother and father named me, wished a pox-on-first-born, a curse given, came true, it did, hai."
Could it be that the writers of PST chose a name that would resonate in English as being a strange choice of name? And that's why it doesn't appear so clumsy and immersion breaking, meet somebody called "Plague" in game, chances are the player would want to ask about the name. We are not stupid, we are aware that the writers exist and therefore the words they choose matter. Or they should. They don't get to pick and choose when readers/players take notice and when it's convenient for the writer to say "ignore that bit, not important".
It would have worked with Mizhena had they used a similar name which suggested something in English. Mizhena suggests nothing to the player so why would they think to ask anything?
Can you really not see the difference in the writing of the two examples? Bad writing, that's the complaint, and you have just provided a good example of where SOD fails to satisfy.
The dialog with Mizhena is clumsy. There is no reason in BG world with the names that we have encountered that anybody would ask about hers.
That is 100% true. No debate there. I mean, if the player chooses a response like "that's an unusual name, tell me about it," then I guess it implies that the name is unusual, so as a matter of narration it kind of makes sense. But yeah, definitely clumsy.
Thing is, I don't understand how that leads to the trolling and false review/bombing that followed the introduction of the game. People literally say stuff like "it was really Beamdog' fault" (it's been said in this very thread) but I just don't see how that follows. Are the people saying that making a gigantic logical error? Or am I having a gigantic failure to understand the logic? Or is it just trolling? I mean, a bunch of fake reviews written by members of a group that literally gets it's name from their supposed passion about honesty in journalism??
as UnderstandMouseMagic said there were other things going on. Press comments and interviews done by Beamdog staff made it clear they felt the game supported a specific agenda - even though I don't think that accurately reflects what's in the game itself.
Ah. So basically that one single interview by Amber Scott.
You know what the irony is? That boils down to the fact that Beamdog is a tiny company and didn't have a corporate PR team keeping her on a tight leash. But, I HATE stupid corporate PR-speak. Everyone hates stupid corporate PR-speak. I mean a substantial portion of the American electorate just voted for Donald freakin' Trump because he is blunt and uncensored. People should celebrate Amber's interview! Disagree with her all you want, but wasn't that refreshing compared to what an interview with a writer in a big AAA game company would be like? It makes me sad that videogames are apparently a sphere in which that kind of blunt honesty gets suppressed...
It's only refreshing for them when they agree. If they disagree they will terrorize their target.
It's not like you must like her. Saying that she's badly written is one thing. Saying "Amber Scott is pushing her SJW agenda down our throats" is a completely different beast. The problem resides in the fact the second line of thought is the one that comes back constantly.
The writing in SoD can vary wildly from encounter to encounter and it tend to fail in situations a lot more important than some healer NPC. The unexplained reappearance of a destroyed McGuffin being the most glaring example. So when you ignore things like this to completely focus on a transwoman, well, this does raise questions.
Until page 2 in this thread when you posted this,
"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."
the thread was going along quite well discussing the review and different aspects of SOD.
So were you trolling, did you do it deliberately to pull the discussion in the direction it has gone down? You threw out insults, gratuitously, and now complain that the thread has taken a certain direction?
And just for the record, I have complained about the "destroyed McGuffin" in other threads.
@shawne I'm not making it up. You said there is no reason one should want Mizhena to be more fleshed out, in other words to dislike the current presentation of her. If I misunderstood please do clarify.
The dialog with Mizhena is clumsy. There is no reason in BG world with the names that we have encountered that anybody would ask about hers. In the vacuum of the game itself, that dialog would simply not happen, there's no precident, no previous encounters where "a name" is signposted as unusual (because without language rules applying to a particular language, no names can be "unusual") So why does it occur?
There's a game called PST, which is regarded by many gamers as the game with the best dialogues and writing ever. PST happens in the D&D universe, just like BG.
So, in PST there's a minor NPC, Pox, whom you can meet in the Hive, not long after you start the game. And you know what? The dialogue with Pox goes exactly the same route as the one with Mizhena (or, considering the time of PST release, vice versa) - you say Hi and then go on with asking about the character's name, which sounds strange to the main character, and an explanation is immediately given. After that you proceed to further dialogue.
You ask about the name during the first lines of the dialogue.
"Hai?"
"Uh… who are you?"
"Pox I am, hai."
"Uh... Pox?"
"Mother and father named me, wished a pox-on-first-born, a curse given, came true, it did, hai."
Could it be that the writers of PST chose a name that would resonate in English as being a strange choice of name? And that's why it doesn't appear so clumsy and immersion breaking, meet somebody called "Plague" in game, chances are the player would want to ask about the name. We are not stupid, we are aware that the writers exist and therefore the words they choose matter. Or they should. They don't get to pick and choose when readers/players take notice and when it's convenient for the writer to say "ignore that bit, not important".
It would have worked with Mizhena had they used a similar name which suggested something in English. Mizhena suggests nothing to the player so why would they think to ask anything?
Can you really not see the difference in the writing of the two examples? Bad writing, that's the complaint, and you have just provided a good example of where SOD fails to satisfy.
Pox resonates in English as being a strange, Mizhena resonates in slavic languagues, for example, my native language - Russian, as being a strange. Games are played by players in all countries, not only those where English is a native language. So to me, these examples don't differ at all. Also, there's no English, or Russian, or any RL language in D&D and on the Sword Coast in particular.
It's not like you must like her. Saying that she's badly written is one thing. Saying "Amber Scott is pushing her SJW agenda down our throats" is a completely different beast. The problem resides in the fact the second line of thought is the one that comes back constantly.
The writing in SoD can vary wildly from encounter to encounter and it tend to fail in situations a lot more important than some healer NPC. The unexplained reappearance of a destroyed McGuffin being the most glaring example. So when you ignore things like this to completely focus on a transwoman, well, this does raise questions.
Until page 2 in this thread when you posted this,
"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."
the thread was going along quite well discussing the review and different aspects of SOD.
So were you trolling, did you do it deliberately to pull the discussion in the direction it has gone down? You threw out insults, gratuitously, and now complain that the thread has taken a certain direction?
And just for the record, I have complained about the "destroyed McGuffin" in other threads.
This thread has indeed gone off-topic. According to the site rules if you feel someone is pulling a discussion off-topic, post insulting comments and/or otherwise does something violating, flag the appropriate post (posts) instead of going personal and trying to decide if someone is a troll.
It's not like you must like her. Saying that she's badly written is one thing. Saying "Amber Scott is pushing her SJW agenda down our throats" is a completely different beast. The problem resides in the fact the second line of thought is the one that comes back constantly.
The writing in SoD can vary wildly from encounter to encounter and it tend to fail in situations a lot more important than some healer NPC. The unexplained reappearance of a destroyed McGuffin being the most glaring example. So when you ignore things like this to completely focus on a transwoman, well, this does raise questions.
Yeah I do wonder about this. It didn't bother me that much when I had finished the game, because I was expecting some sort of follow-up. Either in BG2 or in some interview with the devs after the storm had settled, but it's been over 6 months now and still nothing.
It's almost like I'm expecting a SoD unfinished business mod pop up at some point in the future.
That's precisely what I'm trying to tell you, though: the reason you've never gotten a reply is because there isn't one. You're assuming there's some valid, justifiable, well-thought-out rationale at the bottom of all this, and that somehow it just never manifested in the nine months since SoD launched. This person is going to do what every other GamerGater troll *snip here*
....OR the reason I am not replying to anyone (yet) is because of my little chat with JuliusBorisov where I publicly announced I will take temporary leave from this thread? Seriously do you actually bother reading what I say when you talk about me?
Skatan (and many others here) will get their long overdue reply soon as I have almost finished the game. TBH I am only doing this so people won't be offended that I can dare critic part of a dialogue without "immersing" myself in it.
It's not like you must like her. Saying that she's badly written is one thing. Saying "Amber Scott is pushing her SJW agenda down our throats" is a completely different beast. The problem resides in the fact the second line of thought is the one that comes back constantly.
The writing in SoD can vary wildly from encounter to encounter and it tend to fail in situations a lot more important than some healer NPC. The unexplained reappearance of a destroyed McGuffin being the most glaring example. So when you ignore things like this to completely focus on a transwoman, well, this does raise questions.
Until page 2 in this thread when you posted this,
"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."
the thread was going along quite well discussing the review and different aspects of SOD.
So were you trolling, did you do it deliberately to pull the discussion in the direction it has gone down? You threw out insults, gratuitously, and now complain that the thread has taken a certain direction?
And just for the record, I have complained about the "destroyed McGuffin" in other threads.
This post was addressed at Beowulf. His own message was just above mine and vanished for some reason, alongside his entire post history. Why would the moderators do that, I don't know. Beowulf was ranting about how his "escapist fantasy" was spoiled by marxism, gays and probably a lot of other things.
I'm not entirely sure he was really serious though, and it kind of bothers me that his presence on the forum was completely erased. My post was also half-joking, because Beowulf likes to regularly use over-the-top American bravado and calling himself fat.
@batoor What bothered me the most was Irenicus. He acted a lot more like his fake dream version than like the actual person. That kind of omnipresent, omniscient figure stalking you around, it's so far from his usual MO it just didn't felt right.
@shawne I'm not making it up. You said there is no reason one should want Mizhena to be more fleshed out, in other words to dislike the current presentation of her. If I misunderstood please do clarify.
You know what? Fine. Let's try this one more time, just so I know I made the effort.
Mizhena is a merchant NPC. She's not the first or even the tenth such character you encounter in the BG series. In terms of her significance to the overall game, she's no different than Thalantyr, Gellana Mirrorshade, Ribald Barterman or any other person what sells you items and things.
To date, no one has ever seriously made the argument that any of these merchant NPCs need to be expanded or rewritten, or claimed that their opinion of the entire game was colored by encountering one of them.
And yet as soon as a certain type of player encounters Mizhena (or, more typically, hears about them through some third-party platform that may not be reddit, but is probably reddit), they come here to share one of the following reactions:
1) The mere existence of a trans character is a political statement that doesn't belong in the same game as that drow cleric who talks about racism.
2) The trans character needs to be singled out for extensive revision, up to and including making her a joinable NPC.
3) It's all Amber Scott's fault for shoving her SJW agenda down your throat.
None of these have anything to do with Mizhena's presentation. There's nothing to even talk about there, she has less lines than Taerom Fuiruim. If your criticism of Mizhena stems from the fact that she's transgender, and/or that she's allegedly the creation of the only woman who wrote for Beamdog? Then yes, you're just being plain old discriminatory. Nothing "reverse" or "PC" about it. You're latching onto and singling out a character because of one specific trait. That's as old-school as it gets.
Fair enough, didn't know that post was in reply to another, at the moment the thread reads as if it came from nowhere.
And your opinion of Irenicus in SOD, now that I can agree with. Far too much foreshadowing was used in game that didn't feel right for me and IMO ruined some of the revelations of BG2 as well as changing Irenicus.
I've said it elsewhere but BG2 didn't need expansion, BG did. Instead we have an expansion that's meant to fill a gap but instead pulls the future into the present rather than the past towards the future. I would have liked to see the Sword Coast/Candlekeep and the change in reactions to Charname after Sarevok that would lead to them feeling they had to move forwards and learn more about their heritage.
Hence my favourite part of SOD is the old temple of Bhaal and meeting the blinded priestess, that resonated for me.
While the reaction to me seemed very disproportionate and was making a mountain out of a molehill, I do think that Beamdog did needlessly create a molehill in the first place and were thus not blameless in the affair ...
The only blame I would place on Beamdog is caving in to the bullying and not only removing the jab at Gamergate but promising a Mizhena revision (unnecessary, as demonstrated more than once in this very thread).
The message Beamdog is sending is that bullying them pays off because if you do it for long enough they'll eventually give you what you want. It baffles me that they've shown concern about disgruntling the same people who 1) singled out and harassed one of their writers and 2) showed open contempt for a character whose only distinctive trait from every other NPC was a throwaway line about being transgender.
And your opinion of Irenicus in SOD, now that I can agree with. Far too much foreshadowing was used in game that didn't feel right for me and IMO ruined some of the revelations of BG2 as well as changing Irenicus.
I've said it elsewhere but BG2 didn't need expansion, BG did. Instead we have an expansion that's meant to fill a gap but instead pulls the future into the present rather than the past towards the future. I would have liked to see the Sword Coast/Candlekeep and the change in reactions to Charname after Sarevok that would lead to them feeling they had to move forwards and learn more about their heritage.
Hence my favourite part of SOD is the old temple of Bhaal and meeting the blinded priestess, that resonated for me.
Still haven't finished SoD (just broke the siege of bridgefort) but I think so far I agree with this statement a lot, especially this line which I find very on point and eloquent: " Instead we have an expansion that's meant to fill a gap but instead pulls the future into the present rather than the past towards the future."
The only blame I would place on Beamdog is caving in to the bullying and not only removing the jab at Gamergate but promising a Mizhena revision (unnecessary, as demonstrated more than once in this very thread).
The message Beamdog is sending is that bullying them pays off because if you do it for long enough they'll eventually give you what you want. It baffles me that they've shown concern about disgruntling the same people who 1) singled out and harassed one of their writers and 2) showed open contempt for a character whose only distinctive trait from every other NPC was a throwaway line about being transgender.
I mean, based on how certain moderators are acting on this thread and the messages I've received since, they certainly seem more interested in courting and shielding GamerGaters than in curbing that kind of behavior. Which, hey, it's their company, they can side with whoever they want. But that's not a community I want any part of.
Courted GGers? The only openly admitting GG sympathizer here is my pretty little face. All I saw was the odd person or 2 being uncivil and given a mere rules reminder. Has bullying ever occured? Sure... from both sides. The holier-than-thou ultra progressive side did their fair share of bullying in conjunction with the anti-progressive trolls over the months gone by. No side is innocent from my view
Well on a pleasant side note that is well over 30 hours of SoD thus far, here some interesting things I have found out first hand that I couldn't tell from just reading some dialogues and not actually playing...
Pros so far: - The game has a great cinematic feel to it, probably due to the multitude of event sequences. - I can really appreciate having the old voice actors back when I hear them in the game. - The criticism of Mizhena being like "HEY LOOK AT ME IM TRANS" is incorrect imo. You have to poke her a lot to make her come out of the closet - The high amount of quality NPC's will almost force me to have a second [evil] playthrough
The cons: - Playing this game is a chore... Fetch this, pass that, kill this, touch that... screw these low-end quests. - Mizhena feels like a unfunny joke. When I read the dialogue of her and heard audio of her voice I felt she was a character with potential. Having actually played I now feel a bit different, she feels like a leftover. I can actually sympathize with the people (trolls?) who just want her out of the game entirely. - I can actually FEEL the feminist agenda being pushed, to my surprise the critics were right with this one. Merely reading dialogues I thought they were just being pedantic. After actually playing the game and immersing myself in the universe ...it just feels so much more in my face. The best one was the "mama can take care of herself" I cringed hard in that awkward moment.
Well that's the breakdown from me before/after playing. I appreciate the effort beamdog made in the general art and gameplay now, but the dialogues so far seem so much worse when actually playing for some reason...
The only blame I would place on Beamdog is caving in to the bullying and not only removing the jab at Gamergate but promising a Mizhena revision (unnecessary, as demonstrated more than once in this very thread).
The message Beamdog is sending is that bullying them pays off because if you do it for long enough they'll eventually give you what you want. It baffles me that they've shown concern about disgruntling the same people who 1) singled out and harassed one of their writers and 2) showed open contempt for a character whose only distinctive trait from every other NPC was a throwaway line about being transgender.
I mean, based on how certain moderators are acting on this thread and the messages I've received since, they certainly seem more interested in courting and shielding GamerGaters than in curbing that kind of behavior. Which, hey, it's their company, they can side with whoever they want. But that's not a community I want any part of.
Why do you feel the need to post something so inflammatory?
Why do you think that you are immune from the accusations you are directing at others?
Moderators are volunteers who don't have a contract with Beamdog. The task of moderators is to make sure the Site rules are not being violated and if they are, to make sure nothing is left without consequencies.
No moderator here is courting and shielding any social group, - in fact, all the moderators are trying to stay neutral in all hot subjects and topics, protecting rights of forum users. If these rights are violated, needed measures are taken.
On Being Excelent To Each Other™ in the presence of gamergaters, self proclaimed alt-righters and etc.
Why has Twitter either banned or suspended lots of accounts associated with the alt-right movement? And why does Reddit automatically ban you from certain subreddits if you so much as engage KotakuInAction? Is it because they are freedom-of-speech haters who want to silence people who don't hold liberal/leftist/feminist views? Well, no. There are plenty of different viewpoints in all these issues.
There is one being singled out, though, and it's because it's pretty much (ding ding ding!) hate speech. And why should hate speech be stifled? Because it's never constructive. At best, it doesn't add anything worthwhile to a discussion and at worst, it creates debate-cancelling noise. (I'm not even going to talk about how it also harasses the people who are the targets of said speech because then there's a good chance of some folks claiming to be harassed by *me* saying they should go away earlier.
The biggest mistake most people make when discussing hot topics is assuming that since you're entitled to your opinion, every opinion is valid and should hold equal weight. This only applies to subjective discussions. If we're debating whether you liked SoD or not, then yeah, you're not wrong for not liking it. You're not even wrong for not liking because you don't like whatever political statement you think it's making.
But when you're making objective claims, such as "Beamdog has openly invited controversy with their political content" or "It's all about the quality of the writing" or (wait for it) "It's all about ethics in gaming journalism!", you're going to have to back these things up with facts. And guess what happens whenever one of these people try to do so? Their argument falls apart. Sometimes it's due to an over reliance on logical fallacies, and sometimes it's due to their ignorance of whatever they're talking about - go back a few pages and you'll read things like Edwina being used as an example of transgender character or a claim that people were hypocrites for not calling out misandry when Andrew Foley's writing got criticized *by another man*.
@Kilivitz your use of the words 'you' and 'your' are confusing. Are you calling out everyone in the second person? Or is there someone specific you'd like an answer from?
@Enilwyn I'm sorry, but I'm not a native English speaker and wasn't aware that using the second person to address a group of readers could be this confusing. Please feel free to PM me.
No moderator here is courting and shielding any social group, - in fact, all the moderators are trying to stay neutral in all hot subjects and topics, protecting rights of forum users. If these rights are violated, needed measures are taken.
I'll use smaller words: by staying neutral, you are shielding them. You are sending the message that it's perfectly okay to express prejudicial or transphobic opinions so long as we're Excellent To Each Other while doing so.
And here's the result of your inaction: even as this thread is continuing, another troll has started yet another discussion spewing more ignorant garbage about Mizhena and transgendered people.
That's what's happening to this community on your watch. That's what your neutrality is worth.
That chat is off-topic, @shawne. I'll say this for the last time here: there's no inaction on the part of this forum's moderators. The thread you're mentioning is currently under the review and all the people involved are under the review as well.
We're not okay with insulting groups of people, just as we're not okay with insulting certain forum individuals. If someone expresses views that insult certain social groups, we act. The Politics thread is a good example where we did so for numerous times.
But we can't use prejudice and warn or ban people without reason. That another thread appeared not because of this one, or at least, nobody knows that for sure.
Our neutrality is very worth it, as it has helped this forum to go through post-SoD storm and many other controversial events and topics.
@Kilivitz So... who here is hate speeching? Even if for arguments sake we assume @Illydth 's logic of dismissal of opinions due to mere association of a group theory is valid, I still don't think it is possible to "hate speech" via association.
I don't see how Jack Dorsey's slowly dying twitter [who bans even moderate non-alt conservatives yet ignores ISIS recruitment] is really related to this thread. Since you brought that topic up I will say one thing about it, I don't think the martyrdom of the alt-right is in YOUR best interest, it just gives them free advertising, easy moral high ground and inevitably ends up making them more popular globally (or to put it simply, it is the Streisand effect).
Also what is wrong with Edwina being used as an example of a well written trans-charactor? Just because Edwina wasn't by choice, it is still a valid character with a hefty fan base?
Ah, sorry, no. A bunch of trolls came round and acted like complete jerks. Those were the anti-progressive trolls you mention. The response was simply a response from people being trolled and attacked. This "holier-than-thou ultra progressive side" is not something that actually exists. At least, not around here.
My eyes disagree with you.
I have read almost every single page of every spicy thread here I could find over a year back as I was a non-participating person here back then. The vitriol (or whatever you want to call it) was clearly both ways. I feel sorry for this one poor guy in one of the older threads when he said something like "I just prefer not to have a trans in my RPG's" as he got trolled to hell and back by beamdog fans for being a "bigot". While I disagree with his viewpoints, I just don't see how trolling (or counter trolling?) someone for merely being honest about their sexual and/or roleplaying preferences is in any way "constructive".
I think it's fascinating that in all the threads the topic of why Mizhena is the only vendor that needs to be fleshed out has arisen, no one from the side that is pro that has ever responded why. I've seen that request more times than I can remember by now and I have still not seen why she has been singled out as the only minor vendor that needs to become something more. Many ppl have also made accurate comparisons to other vendors from old BG1&2 which has never been requested to be fleshed out more than what they already are, but still no reply. I believe this is one of the reasons why ppl lump together GG'ers with women haters etc, since the issue of single out one character in need of fleshing out that just happens to be trans ofc begs the question: why only her and no other?
@Teo_live, I would appreciate if you could take the time to educate me as I am thoroughly interested.
I thought I covered this in an earlier post (keep in mind most pro-GGer's would probably just want her outright removed, assuming they even give a crap at this point). I am a bit paranoid that any answer I give will be the "wrong" answer but nevertheless here goes...
1. Personal preference. This might sound silly but if I immerse myself so much into the game as if it is real life roleplaying (which I usually do when playing digital RPGs)... Mizhena is just someone I would want on the frontlines with me in a [good] party. Romancing a party member like Mizhena I would find preferable to the single mother tomboy Corwin, the ditsy Neera, the "empowered" Safana etc. Viconia is the only romancable option that could prove a rival, but she is evil so that is not applicable for a [good] party. You could compare this to people criticizing Hexxat due to finding Clara much more interesting/appealing I suppose it is similar logic..
2. Mizhena seems completely fake and forced. Amber Scott says she doesn't care if it feels forced but unfortunately the rest of us do care (whoops I criticized Amber Scott again, how sexist of me?). Fleshing her out is the greatest way to make her more feel more "real" and less "fake/forced"
3. I believe this will heal at least some of the divide in the community and inevitably result in greater profits and thus greater likelihood of more BG or BG-like games. This is what we are all after here I would hope...
4. [This one is minor, but I feel it is worth mentioning]. LGB characters are pretty much normalized now days in gaming culture, the T's on the other hand are kinda the odd ones out to be perfectly honest. The good news was due to bioware, capcom and others pushing the agenda with great finesse I see trans in games being "normal" very soon. Unfortunately thanks to a lazy Mizhena and Amber Scott's insane speech I think trans being normal in games has probably been set back a good 10 years now. Jinx a trans woman in steam forums explained it quite well that this tokenism stunt did nothing other than paint a target on their backs. Beamdog have somehow successfully "un-normalized" what should have been normal by now, this also give the real "bigots" a platform that they never had before. Fleshing out Mizhena might reverse this process I tiny bit. Even if the reverse is just 1%, that will make me happy.
Comments
Whether having an agenda is good or bad is going to be down to perception. Personally I have liberal values and think it's good, but I can understand others may not agree.
One of the things I really loved when I first came across Baldur's Gate was on the character creation screen. If you click on male you're told that males can excel in every area - which made me wince because I really hated games which almost forced you into playing male characters due to the different stats assigned to them. It was therefore a really pleasant surprise to me when clicking next on female to be told that they can also excel in every area and "are easily the equal of their male counterparts"
I would say that for the time it was released the original Baldur's Gate also had an "equalities agenda" and was ahead of society in general in expressing that. That doesn't though mean there was nothing sexist in the games (dialogues, romancing options, portrait options) and society in general has moved a long way since BG was originally released. I can therefore certainly sympathise with the developer's wish to push things a bit further in SoD. I have a bit less sympathy with the way that agenda was put across. If someone posted on the Forums "If people don’t like that, then too bad." I could imagine a moderator posting a polite warning about the need for respect. While I agree with subtledoctor that many people clearly like a 'tell it like it is' approach at the moment my own preference would be for respectful and considered responses when discussing potentially inflammatory issues ...
Edit: I got sucked into commenting on this thread earlier, despite my feeling that any comment was highly unlikely to be productive. I'll be aiming to refrain from further comment for the same reason
Could it be that the writers of PST chose a name that would resonate in English as being a strange choice of name?
And that's why it doesn't appear so clumsy and immersion breaking, meet somebody called "Plague" in game, chances are the player would want to ask about the name.
We are not stupid, we are aware that the writers exist and therefore the words they choose matter.
Or they should.
They don't get to pick and choose when readers/players take notice and when it's convenient for the writer to say "ignore that bit, not important".
It would have worked with Mizhena had they used a similar name which suggested something in English.
Mizhena suggests nothing to the player so why would they think to ask anything?
Can you really not see the difference in the writing of the two examples?
Bad writing, that's the complaint, and you have just provided a good example of where SOD fails to satisfy.
"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."
the thread was going along quite well discussing the review and different aspects of SOD.
So were you trolling, did you do it deliberately to pull the discussion in the direction it has gone down?
You threw out insults, gratuitously, and now complain that the thread has taken a certain direction?
And just for the record, I have complained about the "destroyed McGuffin" in other threads.
It's almost like I'm expecting a SoD unfinished business mod pop up at some point in the future.
Skatan (and many others here) will get their long overdue reply soon as I have almost finished the game. TBH I am only doing this so people won't be offended that I can dare critic part of a dialogue without "immersing" myself in it.
I'm not entirely sure he was really serious though, and it kind of bothers me that his presence on the forum was completely erased. My post was also half-joking, because Beowulf likes to regularly use over-the-top American bravado and calling himself fat.
@batoor
What bothered me the most was Irenicus. He acted a lot more like his fake dream version than like the actual person. That kind of omnipresent, omniscient figure stalking you around, it's so far from his usual MO it just didn't felt right.
Mizhena is a merchant NPC. She's not the first or even the tenth such character you encounter in the BG series. In terms of her significance to the overall game, she's no different than Thalantyr, Gellana Mirrorshade, Ribald Barterman or any other person what sells you items and things.
To date, no one has ever seriously made the argument that any of these merchant NPCs need to be expanded or rewritten, or claimed that their opinion of the entire game was colored by encountering one of them.
And yet as soon as a certain type of player encounters Mizhena (or, more typically, hears about them through some third-party platform that may not be reddit, but is probably reddit), they come here to share one of the following reactions:
1) The mere existence of a trans character is a political statement that doesn't belong in the same game as that drow cleric who talks about racism.
2) The trans character needs to be singled out for extensive revision, up to and including making her a joinable NPC.
3) It's all Amber Scott's fault for shoving her SJW agenda down your throat.
None of these have anything to do with Mizhena's presentation. There's nothing to even talk about there, she has less lines than Taerom Fuiruim. If your criticism of Mizhena stems from the fact that she's transgender, and/or that she's allegedly the creation of the only woman who wrote for Beamdog? Then yes, you're just being plain old discriminatory. Nothing "reverse" or "PC" about it. You're latching onto and singling out a character because of one specific trait. That's as old-school as it gets.
Hope that clarifies things.
Fair enough, didn't know that post was in reply to another, at the moment the thread reads as if it came from nowhere.
And your opinion of Irenicus in SOD, now that I can agree with. Far too much foreshadowing was used in game that didn't feel right for me and IMO ruined some of the revelations of BG2 as well as changing Irenicus.
I've said it elsewhere but BG2 didn't need expansion, BG did. Instead we have an expansion that's meant to fill a gap but instead pulls the future into the present rather than the past towards the future.
I would have liked to see the Sword Coast/Candlekeep and the change in reactions to Charname after Sarevok that would lead to them feeling they had to move forwards and learn more about their heritage.
Hence my favourite part of SOD is the old temple of Bhaal and meeting the blinded priestess, that resonated for me.
There's just one tiny thing I want to add, and it has to do with this: The only blame I would place on Beamdog is caving in to the bullying and not only removing the jab at Gamergate but promising a Mizhena revision (unnecessary, as demonstrated more than once in this very thread).
The message Beamdog is sending is that bullying them pays off because if you do it for long enough they'll eventually give you what you want. It baffles me that they've shown concern about disgruntling the same people who 1) singled out and harassed one of their writers and 2) showed open contempt for a character whose only distinctive trait from every other NPC was a throwaway line about being transgender.
Well on a pleasant side note that is well over 30 hours of SoD thus far, here some interesting things I have found out first hand that I couldn't tell from just reading some dialogues and not actually playing...
Pros so far:
- The game has a great cinematic feel to it, probably due to the multitude of event sequences.
- I can really appreciate having the old voice actors back when I hear them in the game.
- The criticism of Mizhena being like "HEY LOOK AT ME IM TRANS" is incorrect imo. You have to poke her a lot to make her come out of the closet
- The high amount of quality NPC's will almost force me to have a second [evil] playthrough
The cons:
- Playing this game is a chore... Fetch this, pass that, kill this, touch that... screw these low-end quests.
- Mizhena feels like a unfunny joke. When I read the dialogue of her and heard audio of her voice I felt she was a character with potential. Having actually played I now feel a bit different, she feels like a leftover. I can actually sympathize with the people (trolls?) who just want her out of the game entirely.
- I can actually FEEL the feminist agenda being pushed, to my surprise the critics were right with this one. Merely reading dialogues I thought they were just being pedantic. After actually playing the game and immersing myself in the universe ...it just feels so much more in my face. The best one was the "mama can take care of herself" I cringed hard in that awkward moment.
Well that's the breakdown from me before/after playing. I appreciate the effort beamdog made in the general art and gameplay now, but the dialogues so far seem so much worse when actually playing for some reason...
Why do you feel the need to post something so inflammatory?
Why do you think that you are immune from the accusations you are directing at others?
Totally unecessary for this thread.
Moderators are volunteers who don't have a contract with Beamdog. The task of moderators is to make sure the Site rules are not being violated and if they are, to make sure nothing is left without consequencies.
No moderator here is courting and shielding any social group, - in fact, all the moderators are trying to stay neutral in all hot subjects and topics, protecting rights of forum users. If these rights are violated, needed measures are taken.
Why has Twitter either banned or suspended lots of accounts associated with the alt-right movement? And why does Reddit automatically ban you from certain subreddits if you so much as engage KotakuInAction? Is it because they are freedom-of-speech haters who want to silence people who don't hold liberal/leftist/feminist views? Well, no. There are plenty of different viewpoints in all these issues.
There is one being singled out, though, and it's because it's pretty much (ding ding ding!) hate speech. And why should hate speech be stifled? Because it's never constructive. At best, it doesn't add anything worthwhile to a discussion and at worst, it creates debate-cancelling noise. (I'm not even going to talk about how it also harasses the people who are the targets of said speech because then there's a good chance of some folks claiming to be harassed by *me* saying they should go away earlier.
The biggest mistake most people make when discussing hot topics is assuming that since you're entitled to your opinion, every opinion is valid and should hold equal weight. This only applies to subjective discussions. If we're debating whether you liked SoD or not, then yeah, you're not wrong for not liking it. You're not even wrong for not liking because you don't like whatever political statement you think it's making.
But when you're making objective claims, such as "Beamdog has openly invited controversy with their political content" or "It's all about the quality of the writing" or (wait for it) "It's all about ethics in gaming journalism!", you're going to have to back these things up with facts. And guess what happens whenever one of these people try to do so? Their argument falls apart. Sometimes it's due to an over reliance on logical fallacies, and sometimes it's due to their ignorance of whatever they're talking about - go back a few pages and you'll read things like Edwina being used as an example of transgender character or a claim that people were hypocrites for not calling out misandry when Andrew Foley's writing got criticized *by another man*.
I'd love to chat you up sometime regarding the evolution of GG, perhaps in a PM.
And here's the result of your inaction: even as this thread is continuing, another troll has started yet another discussion spewing more ignorant garbage about Mizhena and transgendered people.
That's what's happening to this community on your watch. That's what your neutrality is worth.
We're not okay with insulting groups of people, just as we're not okay with insulting certain forum individuals. If someone expresses views that insult certain social groups, we act. The Politics thread is a good example where we did so for numerous times.
But we can't use prejudice and warn or ban people without reason. That another thread appeared not because of this one, or at least, nobody knows that for sure.
Our neutrality is very worth it, as it has helped this forum to go through post-SoD storm and many other controversial events and topics.
@Kilivitz So... who here is hate speeching? Even if for arguments sake we assume @Illydth 's logic of dismissal of opinions due to mere association of a group theory is valid, I still don't think it is possible to "hate speech" via association.
I don't see how Jack Dorsey's slowly dying twitter [who bans even moderate non-alt conservatives yet ignores ISIS recruitment] is really related to this thread. Since you brought that topic up I will say one thing about it, I don't think the martyrdom of the alt-right is in YOUR best interest, it just gives them free advertising, easy moral high ground and inevitably ends up making them more popular globally (or to put it simply, it is the Streisand effect).
Also what is wrong with Edwina being used as an example of a well written trans-charactor? Just because Edwina wasn't by choice, it is still a valid character with a hefty fan base? My eyes disagree with you.
I have read almost every single page of every spicy thread here I could find over a year back as I was a non-participating person here back then. The vitriol (or whatever you want to call it) was clearly both ways. I feel sorry for this one poor guy in one of the older threads when he said something like "I just prefer not to have a trans in my RPG's" as he got trolled to hell and back by beamdog fans for being a "bigot". While I disagree with his viewpoints, I just don't see how trolling (or counter trolling?) someone for merely being honest about their sexual and/or roleplaying preferences is in any way "constructive". I thought I covered this in an earlier post (keep in mind most pro-GGer's would probably just want her outright removed, assuming they even give a crap at this point). I am a bit paranoid that any answer I give will be the "wrong" answer but nevertheless here goes...
1. Personal preference. This might sound silly but if I immerse myself so much into the game as if it is real life roleplaying (which I usually do when playing digital RPGs)... Mizhena is just someone I would want on the frontlines with me in a [good] party. Romancing a party member like Mizhena I would find preferable to the single mother tomboy Corwin, the ditsy Neera, the "empowered" Safana etc. Viconia is the only romancable option that could prove a rival, but she is evil so that is not applicable for a [good] party. You could compare this to people criticizing Hexxat due to finding Clara much more interesting/appealing I suppose it is similar logic..
2. Mizhena seems completely fake and forced. Amber Scott says she doesn't care if it feels forced but unfortunately the rest of us do care (whoops I criticized Amber Scott again, how sexist of me?). Fleshing her out is the greatest way to make her more feel more "real" and less "fake/forced"
3. I believe this will heal at least some of the divide in the community and inevitably result in greater profits and thus greater likelihood of more BG or BG-like games. This is what we are all after here I would hope...
4. [This one is minor, but I feel it is worth mentioning]. LGB characters are pretty much normalized now days in gaming culture, the T's on the other hand are kinda the odd ones out to be perfectly honest. The good news was due to bioware, capcom and others pushing the agenda with great finesse I see trans in games being "normal" very soon. Unfortunately thanks to a lazy Mizhena and Amber Scott's insane speech I think trans being normal in games has probably been set back a good 10 years now. Jinx a trans woman in steam forums explained it quite well that this tokenism stunt did nothing other than paint a target on their backs. Beamdog have somehow successfully "un-normalized" what should have been normal by now, this also give the real "bigots" a platform that they never had before. Fleshing out Mizhena might reverse this process I tiny bit. Even if the reverse is just 1%, that will make me happy.
Hope that answers your question @Skatan