Confidence in Beamdog?
Cerabelus
Member Posts: 385
Since hearing about they stopped the new renderer development I'm forced to look back at the announcement that NWN EE was being developed up to now and I have to say... I'm disappointed.
Beamdog I don't know what your working on but clearly NWN EE was never you primary focus after release, when people where asking for more IE content for BG 1&2 you said the IE was expensive to develop for but is NWN EE expensive to develop modules for?
My confidence in Beamdog has been dropping for some time now, I don't know what your working all on or if your planning to make new stories for NWN or your working on a new IP.
A remastered game comes out in a couple of days, C&C remaster and when I heard last year this was in development I had very serious concerns because it's owned by EA...the horrendous monster that plagues the games industry, however the company developing it has maintained clear positive communication with thier audience and for the first time in years I've made a pre-order, I didn't even do that for NWN EE and i was more excited for NWN, after being burned so many times these past few years by other companies I very rarely buy day 1 anymore.
Beamdog I don't know what your working on but clearly NWN EE was never you primary focus after release, when people where asking for more IE content for BG 1&2 you said the IE was expensive to develop for but is NWN EE expensive to develop modules for?
My confidence in Beamdog has been dropping for some time now, I don't know what your working all on or if your planning to make new stories for NWN or your working on a new IP.
A remastered game comes out in a couple of days, C&C remaster and when I heard last year this was in development I had very serious concerns because it's owned by EA...the horrendous monster that plagues the games industry, however the company developing it has maintained clear positive communication with thier audience and for the first time in years I've made a pre-order, I didn't even do that for NWN EE and i was more excited for NWN, after being burned so many times these past few years by other companies I very rarely buy day 1 anymore.
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If they come out with a remaster in a few years, again I probably wont buy it unless there are improvements to the basic functionality and the community adopts it.
If they come out with a remake in a few years I might buy it if it actually lives up to what NWN was uniquely capable of and known for.
Much is made of cynical theories about cash grab this cash grab that, but Trent Oster had a vision of a table top RPG simulator in a box and I personally believe in that vision. When people ask developers of new games "Will it have a toolset? Will it have PW support? Will there be a GM client?" They are talking about what NWN did uniquely, not BG, not IWD, not C&C, not anything else. People here just need to remember that.
Unfortunately, it has been torn apart by, in my opinion, overly critical naggers, for example because of this transsexuality story or the controversial Minsk quote, which have been both cut out later.
In my opinion, it's no wonder that after that they don't dare to approach any more content for BG, because anything less then perfect will be torn apart by naggers.
I personally was satisfied enough with Siege of Dragonspear, also i really liked the Black Pits and Gladiators of Thay.
Regarding NWN -->
- Darkness over Daggerford
- Tyrants of the Moonsea
- Dark Dreams of Furiae
I really enjoyed them, except "Dark Dreams of Furiae" which has too little fighting at the start of the module for my taste, and it bored me.
I really hope that a sequel to "Tyrants of the Moonsea" comes out one day, because the story is not yet finished.
So, they brought out modules for NWN, and considering how much work it takes to make such a module, not too few modules either.
I never played anything called C&C in the past and i don't even know what that is.
The gameplay is smooth and the it doesn’t crash like my old Diamond edition used to do. I like the keyholing (am I the only one?), and overall I think the new edition is an improvement. But that’s just me.
The renderer may have been scrapped, but Beamdog is going to deliver the game on iPhone as well - and properly improving the Android version as well. And that’s enough for me.
I think all the porting to smartphones and consoles are steps in the right direction. I have giving up playing my game on a crusty old lap top that have been tinkered into working - convenience is the key for me. And I think that the game - in time - will be restored to former glory and beyond.
I wasn't comparing the difference between a EE & Remaster i was talking about the difference in communication.
@MagicMaster
I don't understand what people hated about Siege of Dragonspear I enjoyed it, Minsc wasn't in my party So i don't even know what that was about and yeah there was a Trans character which had no bearing on my story whatsoever and my reaction was "oh ok your Trans" I didn't care one way or the other, they didn't force me to play as him or force me to approve or disapprove of him so whatever I don't care.
Darkness over Daggerford I had fun with but unfortunately Beamdog didn't make them it was Ossian Studios many years ago as well as Tyrants of the Moonsea, the studio didn't get to finish them or sell them way back when and only now are getting the partial recognition they deserve.
@StummvonBordwehr
Having access to these games on the Switch is great I've got no complaints about that but the $89.95 Australian dollars for the Switch version... that's a high price for a EE.
Ossian didnt have a part in Dark Dreams of Furiae, the only premium module with poor reviews. Ossian developed / remaster several other well rated premium modules.
My understanding is that Ossian was working on the new graphics overhaul.
With the new renderer cancelled, what happened to the new art overhaul that Ossian was working on?
Will Ossians graphics overhaul still be released, even when the new renderer is cancelled?
I was informed in no uncertain terms that the term "transsexual" was completely unacceptable, since apparently it has been used in hate speech as a signal of coming violence. I can relate to other marginalized groups correcting me on my terms, since I am a gay man, and I learned in junior high school what it meant when other kids muttered or even shouted "F*ggott" at me.
I *think* we're supposed to say "transgender" now, if we need to talk about it at all. Keep in mind that I believe strongly that any marginalized group has the absolute right to inform and educate others about language that will not make them feel threatened, worried, or otherwise "bad inside".
About the only term that doesn't make me cringe and feel threatened or rejected completely as a gay man is the word "gay". The word "queer" was used by those same junior high and high school kids to tell me I was hated, and subject to violence. The word "homosexual" was used to me by my grandfather at a pivotal moment in my life, where "Are you a homosexual!?" was used with great disgust, and an implication that all support and love would be immediately withdrawn if the answer were "yes". I was only 14. I started crying uncontrollably, shouted "No!", and ran into my bedroom to collapse in tears. He didn't follow me, and he left me alone after that. He absolutely did love me, so he never brought it up again after that, thankfully. Many young gay kids are not so lucky.
@semiticgod , Can you give any insights about anything I just said wrong, or about how to approach you with language that doesn't make you cringe at a visceral, primal level, afraid that all acceptance, love, and support is about to be withdrawn, or even worse, afraid that there is violence forthcoming?
regarding "New" modules from Beamdog ..............
- Darkness over Daggerford
> was long time done and only refined for NWN:EE
- Tyrants of the Moonsea
> was large parts long done and only finished final for NWN:EE
- Dark Dreams of Furiae
> the only REAL new module - and this is shown on the quality
(i say not it is bad - it is cheap and you get what you pay - but would better to list it under
"Premium Light" from the quality/Story lenght ..)
It is not i disagree with the re-relases (Darkness over Daggerford "EE" version) or finishing an nearly finished product (Tyrants of the Moonsea) - but it should not be overhyped ...
@all
i am not happy with the canceling of the "mysterius" new renderer - but it is not the important point ...
The point is the loss in trust in Beamdog "if" at the end realy come a NWN that is significant better than the NWN classic + community add-ons to play the good storys, where 99% of it, still remain on the classic version and all the new and shiny things in NWN:EE dont use....
This is the main point that holds loyal customers from the old NWN to jump at the "EE" train ...
Trent making jokes about the "Director's Cut" would involve him hacking up the campaigns length didn't help, it became clear enhancing the original campaign isn't something they wanted to do so I'm like "Ok so you want to focus on new content?", Leaving people to guess what you intended leads to unrealistic expectations.
Maybe I expected too much but I'm forced to ask myself "is this an Enhanced Edition?", My only hope at this point is Beamdog is working some new Modules or thier new project I assume is what their working on is gonna be something I can look forward to.
I want more games from Beamdog, the list of good developers out there is getting real small, Bioware dead, Blizzard dead, Naughty Dog dead, Star Wars dead, Star Trek dead, ok I'm getting a little away from games now but so much of what I enjoyed these past 30 years is in the gutter now.
I guess I'm slightly frustrated.
"Transgender" is the preferred term, since "transsexual" has been used as a slur to some extent and isn't strictly accurate to all of us. A few folks do use the term transsexual for themselves, but most of us prefer "transgender." There's a widespread misconception that we transition for sexual reasons, and that's not what the transition is about--it's about finding an identity and an appearance that we can be comfortable with day to day (most of us don't ever get bottom surgery, and some of us never even take hormones). "Transgender" doesn't feed that misconception.
It's a generational thing. "Transsexual" was the standard term when you were growing up, while "queer" was an insult. These days, "transgender" is the polite term, while a lot of people embrace the word "queer" (though only as an adjective; not a noun).
and thats what i got. a version of the games that works with my current lap top out of the box with qol changes.
Yeah even though the old version did run on my PC I've had some minor problems in the past and working on those is great.
I wonder how these LGBT/Trans issues would be in the context of a dungeons and dragons fantasy world.
I have read that Ed Greenwood (creator of) had stated that everyone in the Forgotten Realms is bisexual.
Regarding Trans issues; there wouldn't be any hormone therapy and probably not gender affirming surgery in a medieval fantasy setting such as the forgotten realms. There would however be a possibility of magic used for this purpose, such as the spells like polymorph self and reincarnation.
What i don't like is people trying to tell me who i should approve of and who to "cancel", companies pushing political agendas comes of as forced, i don't need companies like Naughty Dog telling me how to treat people with equality and respect, i do my best to do that anyway.
Nintendo did it right in Breath of the Wild as there where several characters of representation and you even had to dress Link as a Women to enter Gerudo Town, the way it was setup felt organic and i even enjoyed it and also in keeping with the Lore as the Gerudo are born almost always Women...very strong women in fact.
There are ways to do it right and leave people with a positive experience.
@Silverizer
I remember hearing about certain Metal Dragon's that spend most of thier lives Shapechanged into different Humanoids forgetting thier past and allowing themselves to forget thier old lives to Live new ones over and over again.
The topic of magic is even more problematic while you could initially see it as a solution in a naive sense. In reality the use of magic tends to be distasteful and sometimes propagates themes of erasure, false equivalencies, and false stereotypes. For example a straight person with a gender that conforms to their physical characteristics uses polymorph to appear as another gender. Then come the comparisons to real world groups, and eventually the problematic romantic advances. Like with topics of consent through magic, I think magic should be left for combat and practical purposes only.
Ok, i will use the word "transgender" from now on, i didn't know that the other word i used is offending people and i apologize for that.
IN BG2 certain party member was magically transmuted to oposite sex.
Still, transgender character in fantasy settings is something that I have no understanding for. I have no problem with peoples and their sex preferences or what they do with their body, but all this recent women (too) and LGBT lets call it support in western movies, tv shows and even gaming industry now is reason why I no longer watch anything and play anything from that production. How the fuck can I even play some western movie to kids when its full of sex scenes and LGBT?
Czech game writer Daniel Vávra (Kingdom Come: Deliverance) made a great interview about this issue recently and I fully agree with him. This crap is plaguing todays production and can't speak for tv shows and movie consumers but it is clear that gamers doesn't want any of this crap in their games.
Yes it seems this this type of content in NA is in your face, on all channels. It is really hard to avoid if you choose to. I generally would like to avoid this type of content, as I very little interest in this. But there seems to be some agenda by all NA media to push this type of content, like it or not.
Here is NA, can you avoid LGBT content? You certainly can if you only look at old media.
With my young daughter, I am not yet prepared to expose her to this type of content. I plan on a classic birds and the bees explanation for sex and gender for the start. Simple and logical.
I, for one, do appreciate seeing people like me represented in games. I can imagine how much it would have meant to me in youth, and how much less painful my life might have been, if I had seen myself represented sympathetically in games I played back then.
Creating art where only a specific type of people are represented is creating art for only a specific type of people. More importantly, it's enforcing a very specific ideal of what it means to be "normal". By excluding women, LGTBQ+ people, and racial minorities from art, you are, in fact, excluding them from society. Being opposed to these people being represented in art, especially if you view this representation as a form of "plague", is definitely not "having no problem" with them. These people exist, outnumber you, and have every right as the rest of us to see themselves represented in art, media, politics, and each and every other aspect of society. Erasure is very real and very oppressive. Just because it doesn't affect you, doesn't mean others aren't actively suffering from it.
And as a sidenote, gamers definitely want more inclusivity efforts in their games. You don't get to speak for me or anyone else.
@BelgarathMTH Yours have been some of the most insightful posts in this thread. And I think you are right in that as long as the discourse around Beamdog's ability as a studio is tied to their inclusion efforts, this is still very much on-topic.
Then the resulting effort to silence criticism also ends up gagging the LGBT people that are not OK with the depiction. So much can be said about apparent inclusion and supporting minority voices while gagging them and taking control of their narrative at the same time.
So again please look at the more critical posts and realize who has to deal with the repercussions of poorly received attempts at inclusion in the long run.
That is what every tv show since approx 2015 looks like.
I watched Sense8 and I had absolutely no problem with LGBT content the tv show is full of. Because it was well done. But basically everywhere else it was eyesore. Probably worst example of this was Star Trek: Discovery. It feelt like the gay couple was there only and only to fulfill quotas. It didn't fit there and the actors were extremely annoying too, I must ask but are those actors who play them gays or hetero? Because it felt like it was hetero playing gay. That awful was it. On the other hand, the Orville had more LGBT content and inter-species relationships as well. Even android trying to love human. No problem with that it was well done.
There is a huge difference when some art promotes/shows minorities and when every art MUST PROMOTE them. And we got into the the second type. It is not spoken, but anyone who doesn't do it is suddenly outcast.
I am really curious if the minorities themselves or rather real peoples feel it that way too. Does really a tv show, movie or game that doesn't have any (wo)man of same religion/race or sexual preference threatens their existence and beliefs? Does it make them feel abnormal? I doubt it.
Tv show that doesn't have a gay as one of the main characters is not trying to tell audience that it is not normal to be gay. I don't see any reason why would someone thought so.
The currrent LGBT forced content everywhere and the politics surrounding it reminds me the situation around racism in the South Park episode Cartman's Silly Hate Crime. I recommed to watch it.
It really does depend on how it's done. Marvel recently tried to throw in a couple of diverse characters and the trans community hated it because it was literally a cis het male artist trying to "take back" old insults by naming two characters "Snowflake" and "Safespace" (you don't need to be LGBTQ+ to write an LGBTQ+ character, but you at least should learn a little before you try to send a message). Representation can run the gamut from affirming+informative+heartwarming to insulting+misinformative+silly.
I am glad that some creators are at least trying, though. A stereotype is worse than nothing, but a mediocre portrayal is better than invisibility.
When did they decide to quit working on the renderer?
I get the lack of confidence thing. I have basically given up hopes that things will be done right (communication, synchronized updates that don't leave players unable to play multiplayer, etc.).
I am however, glad that they enhanced NWN. It's still a better experience for me than 1.69 was. And I'm really glad Ossian Studios did Darkness over Daggerford and Tyrants of the Moonsea.
They just recently announced that about the renderer won't be coming.
Yeah I was really happy too about NWN getting more love but the lack of clear communication has lead people to sit back and wait for news on what Beamdog is working on and we have to accept they received BS backlash when they made original content for BG 1 & 2 so now they seem nolinger interested in enhancing the singleplayer experience.
I'm glade Ossian's content they made back in the day finally got the attention it deserved.
Whoever disapproved of Mizhena's existence in SoD was probably prejudiced in some way. She behaved perfectly amiable and was a helpful cleric, and only when you could go searching for her necklace, she would explain its importance because it was a gift when her parents finally acknowledged her new name and therefore her gender. And she keeps it very neutral, casually mentioning that her parents raised her as a boy, until they all came to understand that she was really a woman. I didn't even realize it was controversial until I read some nasty discussions about it. No sexual innuendo, nothing visible.
Why can't I show to my kids a movie that has LGBTQ+ people in it? It's part of reality. Of course I don't want them to see "adult scenes", but I wouldn't want them seeing a married straight couple having sex, either.
Ignoring this part of our reality, our world, leads to situations like the one a woman told me when I was buying Pokemon cards for my son last week. The woman working at the store told me that her son, 9 years old like mine, had been told by classmates "Sorry, my parents don't allow me to invite you to my birthday party, because you have two moms."
Isn't that terrible?
You can think of gay or transgender people what you want. But we can't ignore that they exist, and we can't keep that truth from our kids (who might BE gay or transgender, and too afraid to come out if their parents behave like that).
I actually like that about Beamdog, including all kinds of folks in their stories without much of a fuss. Heck, I thought they were discriminating women and forced me to play a man so that I could at least romance a reasonable person (Jaheira) and not Anomen. And I've never been romantically interested in women.
I think it's great to include all varieties of people, because it forms the way you see the world. I wonder how it forms the mind of a child who only sees white, cis, male, straight characters in stories. That doesn't mean the opposite extreme is more credible, but balance is the key. Variety mirrors our society, or at least the one that I'd like to live in. At least that would give me another 37 years to figure out if maybe people telling me "you're a boy in a female body" are right
By the way, for example @BelgarathMTH , I might have used the term "homosexual", too, because it sounded like the most neutral and least loaded term. I'm sorry if I have involuntarily caused offense. You see, that's the problem with acceptable or offensive terms. It might be different for several people. But I think the important thing is to point out politely what is considered offensive, and if the other person insists on continuing to use the equivalent of the "n- word", then it IS offensive.
Edit: Forgot to include my on-topic comment!
I like NWN:EE, but I'm easily pleased. I don't care about multiplayer or the toolset, just the game experience.
I generally like the EEs, because they made it possible to have the old experience on new devices, and especially the possibility to play for example BG on a tablet is already worth it. If someone was actively playing the old games and expected an incredible change, they were possibly disappointed. The only thing I sorely miss in NWN:EE is companion control, but that's not about disappointed trust, just personal preference. If there's new content in the future, great. If not, there will be other games to play.
Even at my somewhat advanced age, I'm still learning about other marginalized groups and how they feel. That World of Warcraft guild I was in taught me something important, even though I didn't appreciate it at the time, and I didn't keep playing much longer after that, because I just wanted to play a game, not talk about serious issues.
As far as I understand now, the trouble with any language used to address a person of a marginalized orientation or gender identity is the presence of the root word "sexual" in it. That implies that the person's whole identity is based upon whom they enjoy having intercourse with. Gay or transgender love is so much more than the physical expression of it, and it's only a single facet of the diamond that is a human personality.
When someone uses a group label with the root word "sexual" in it to categorize a person's identity, he or she is tying that entire person's being to the act of intercourse. That is a grievous reduction of a person to one single element of their being to a part of their personality, that is such a small (should be joyful, not guilt-ridden, but still small on the whole) part of his or her life.
And these interactions with that guild, and here in this thread, have given me new insights into why being called "a homosexual" makes me cringe inside and starts making me want to defend myself, or even deny that it's true. The person who calls me that is dismissing everything about me, all my music, my compassion, my kindness, or whatever else is good about me to one single thing - what kind of intercourse do I enjoy. It makes me cringe inside just to type that sentence.
I have now broken, or at least made a temporary exception to, my resolution to never discuss deeply personal things online. That's a slippery slope leading to compulsion that is unhealthy for me.
But I guess maybe sometimes a person can do some good in the world by just putting an idea out into the ether, one that he or she hopes could be helpful or healing to someone, somewhere, some place, or some time.
I also think people fuss over labels too much. We're greater than labels, because being human is complex, so orientation is just a small facet, though we are also constricted by them, because a label gives so much pre-determined conceptions that are difficult to break.
As for the OP, What Beamdog has done with the EEs I will always be thankful for, even if they cancel every project they are working on with them now. I'll always be looking at their news in excitement for what they are doing next. I like Beamdog, and probably always will.
I'm much more thankful for BG 1 & 2 but yeah I'll continue looking forward to...something if it ever comes but clearly I need to drop my expectations.