Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - General what i think

No, I can see how it might possibly be a coincidence and that would excuse it in my eyes, but that does strike me as exceptionally unlikely. I'm almost certain it's intentional.

I still haven't seen any other examples of this, on my every decision no matter which way I swerved the paper would condemn my decision in a fashion I saw as somewhat absurd. If there are more of these kind of references and genuine rebukes scattered throughout I'd have to concede it's representative of a genuine bias.

That said I'm not sure I want to know if there were. I enjoy it a lot more as light-hearted satire that pokes fun every which way it can than a series of vicious barbs and inappropriate references from one mindset.

And what would you call that comment then ? if its not funny or satirical ?

These nibs and tucks are all over the game Stabby if you see them or not

Am sure the Scarlett ranting about gay marriage was suppose to be funny

Am sure the undead women gets abused was suppose to be funny

Am sure the party about Scarlett turning into a unhappy drunk wreck who fucks anyone at the end was suppose to be real funny

Am pretty sure the Vote on same-sex public kissing was supposed to be funny

I can do this all day and I dare anyone to try these things in the game , reload and take a few turns and see what happends.. and still tell me its not bias

Or you might agree with mr.troll that this is pure fiction has has no connection to the real world, and that the devs where making the stuff up as they went with no prior opinions

Rack
There is and there is allot of it
Usally in the responses after choices from the Generals
Do me a favour.. start a new game, just exploit the crazy out of chapter 1 and do everything you wouldn't do in real life tell me about the defence you get from the undead and the critics from the generals and tell what seems more "real"

What I am trying (and failing) to draw attention to is the (what I feel is ) excessive importance placed on issues plucked out of life and injected in a game in the context of the game.

The topics are real, no doubt about that. So they should be discussed in the context of real life with application to real life... in a non-game forum/subforum.

I can't treat the topics as they are used in the game as anything other than narrative tools, used to give the councilors and generals believable and somewhat familiar dialogue. I also have trouble understanding how some could treat them as important.

And I guess I'm being impulsive around a pet peeve of mine in the vein of not holding debates where they actually matter, and instead discharging them where they will have no real meaning.

But fine, argue on. In the context of the concerns expressed here, I just wish that games will continue to be made without concern of stepping on some toes of those who are probably not even their target audience.

I get what your saying Eintroll

But don't you see the double standard you setting?

Your basicly saying that you support these settings in the game because they are important in real life. And that you support he opinions expressed and that you feel that the game developers should not be held accountable for its interpretation and implementation in the game, and we should not question the cases here but in another non-game forum.

what?

What if

It was the opposite where true

I made a identical game that instead of the liberal bias had a conservative bias.

Scarlett became straight with the help of dragon magic
Ban on gay marriage reduced crime and spread happiness
Allowing it destroyed the family foundation of your empire
Ban on gay kissing reduced murders
More guns increased people opinion
And Tax cuts to the church increased gods will and eliminated poverty

Now I have a feeling that you would object a bit to that, and that your might react abit less tolerant.

And you would because you would not agree to the bias in the game
but you do in this game and that's why you defend it

I would have hated both games... ofcourse this last game moreso

Becouse I don't like being a tool when people try to influence my opinions when I try to play with my imaginary dragon\spaceship

EVEN less when they try to veil it like in this game

But you wont since you feel strongly about some cases going on here ... am I right?

Or would you defend that other game as "pure fiction" and say that we have to take those issues to a non-game forum ?

Well I'm not going to do that since I don't want to spoil myself on custom campaign, but the next playthrough I'll take on this kind of attitude and see what I come up with. That said my first playthough I made a fair few decisions against my conscience and didn't spot any kind of bias.

One thing I did spot is that it seemed very much like there was a level of judgement in the generals storylines. With Catherine it seemed quite like by supporting women's rights the game was telling me I had done good, if I opposed them it would paint me a monster. I can see Scarlett's path going down a similar route if I oppose equality for gays.

Viewed from an American-centric point of view that could seem biased and politically charged. If a game supports that ideal overtly I'd applaud it, if I game opposed that ideal I'd condemn it. You could argue that's only because it's supporting my views and I couldn't argue against it. At the same time I don't think that's inappropriate.

On other topics, other than that fairly egregious misstep on home defence I haven't detected a particular bias. The game gave me a massive reward for introducing conscription but that never felt like social commentary.

I am not of the opinion that these settings should stay in the game because they are important in real life. I am of the opinion that they should stay in because they are simply used as narrative tools.

I'm not saying devs shouldn't be held accountable for the content they provide, IF that content breaks laws. Why hold them accountable for something that is scarcely an issue?

I don't know if I'd see differently in the case you present. I know I normally only care to discuss issues surrounding game play, technical issues, bugs, in short issues surrounding the running of the game. If I hated the story and other narrative tools it uses, I wouldn't play it and move on, or ignored those to enjoy the game play. Which I do where applicable.

I don't really want to bring my personal views and choices into the discussion, as they're not part of the focus I was trying (and probably failing) to pursue. I'm trying to avoid personalizing things here, as possible. If you really want to know about my personal choices in the game, I might indulge via a PM.


In closing, I'm not defending the game here, I'm expressing my discontent with bringing up the topic brought up in the OP as an actual issue that concerns the game.

I get what you're saying, BlackSun. A big part of the problem with some of the character arcs is the arguments are fairly childish and the more liberal arguments always lead to the happier endings. In Scarlett's story arc, you're a horrible oppressor if you view marriage as an economic pact and a magnanimous leader if you agree that "love" should be defined by the state. They definitely get up on their high horse in Scarlett's story arc with all their prattle about "Nature over nurture" and go out of their way to make agreeing with her the good choice. For example, the fact that they have the elves offer a bribe to you before investigating the "witch hunting" duke.

Then there's the truly terrible character arc for Catherine. I've checked out her story tree in the Imperial Edition and the way she comes to respect you is if you do what she says all the time. Because that's how people earn respect- by immediately submitting to someone else. Now this could have been an interesting "shoe on the other foot" arc if they had focused more on Catherine's hypocrisy and getting her to stop with her sexist rants about males being the lesser sex. But instead, they went with the ham-handed, liberal belief that feminism can do no wrong. For example, during the bit about the Long Goodbye, her entire outrage is sparked by anonymous and unsubstantiated rumors. You could have had an interesting story if it turned out that those "rumors" were in fact lies designed to get more alimony in divorce hearings through some trick of Dwarven Law or something to make Catherine question her "women uber alles" approach to life. This is especially noteworthy if you oppose her on the issue of Officer Quotas. How is it better or respectable to ignore merit? More to the point, they also botched the issue of pay inequality between genders. The appropriate response isn't "Ask Nicely" but to point at that Edmund is considered one of the finest generals in Rivellon and Henry is the most experienced general you have. In labor economics, once you account for differences in pay between industries, education level, and years of experience, the gender pay gap shrinks to about 6% instead of 30%. But pointing that out would suggest that feminism isn't always the answer to everything.

How do you earn Catherine's respect by doing what she says all the time? Wouldn't obeying her every whim just prove that men are the weaker sex, like she's always said? Wouldn't you gain her respect by standing up for your beliefs?

One last thing that bugged me, the Libertarian Lizard Lady, Prospera, favored enchanted sword control on the ground that all lizards would want every type of enchanted weapon banned by the government. How in the world is that consistent with Libertarian thought? Don't they oppose strong, centralized governments? Why would she and the other lizards support a total government ban on anything?

It's the little things like this that keep Dragon Commander from being a truly great game.

A valid point EinTroll but a opinion that I think is invalid when the devs themselves claim to have made a equally balanced real life representation about politics.

If you make that statement and focus much of the game around it, lets be honest, it aint starcraft level RTS gameplay.
You have to be able to handle the feeback

Finaly: Jon Snow.... the things you point to is precisely the same issues that annoyed me to no end while I played the game and I couldn't agree more.

Rack will most likely experience the same when he tries it in the last play.

And he is correct in his deduction, most players play after their own morals the first run and therefor usally don't find the bias since their views fits the game views on the issues.

People like me that usally play a game twice however will

And for a game that flutters and brags about politics system, its a shame to see its just a poorly hidden "good"vs"evil" where evil is preordained

If by balanced you mean that both sides are equally wrong and will give an intentionally flawed argument then act like you're a monster when you disagree with it.

Healthcare
The Undead position is that they know the will of the 7 and I'm wrong to approve it because I presume to know the will of the 7.

Gay Marriage
According to Scarlett if you oppose gay marriage then you're forcing them to get married to the opposite gender. Is this a custom in Rivelon? If it's well known that someone is gay they have to get married against their will? I don't think that's how it works in the real world.

The emperor's counter argument is also quite flawed. Unless Rivelon's customs also force gay people to conceive, keeping the law or changing it isn't going to influence birth rates.

Also the undead reaction is rather bizarre.

If this was already happening they weren't going to stop because I left the law unchanged. Or does he think changing the law to allow marriage will suddenly turn them gay? He keeps reminding me that I don't speak for the 7 yet he seems have mistaken me for one of them to think I wield this much influence. Do the undead even have gender? It's rather meaningless once the flesh has rotted away.

Tax the church
The Undead proclaims this heresy and the Elf acts like I'm forcing the church to close.

Drudenae
Once again the Undead position is that they know the will of the 7 and I'm wrong to approve it because I presume to know the will of the 7. While the Dwarf position is that the drug will be handed out like candy and everyone will be an addict despite assurances of medical supervision.

Euthenasia
Undead, will of the 7 hypocrisy. The Dwarf acts like I'm giving doctors permission to murder someone to relieve them of an allergy. Though the Imp's comment suggests I just pardoned an angel of death, in the real world it's the patient's decision to be euthanized and the doctor would assist but not make that decision them self.

Imp Family Planning
The Elf apparently is unaware that Imps are intelligent with the abilty to responsibly raise large families and compares them to rats.

New Roads
The Elf seems to think that making a road through a forest is the same as leveling the entire forest.

Republicanism
At this point I had a 100% approval rating with the Lizards but they still label me a despot.

Maybe it's an accurate portrayal of politicians but as for the political issues themselves the devs apparently picked only the worst arguments to represent either side.

I think that's kind of the point though isn't it? quite clearly satirical.

The game is written in such a way that the arguments are comparable to the worst level of TV or Internet punditry.

The thread started off complaining about the liberal side, well there are just as many incredibly stupid arguments presented by the Elves for example.

I don't know, I mean I already ran into the issues Jon did with Catherine's arc in my first playthrough and almost brought it up myself but decided against it for the sake of brevity. The idea that women should be paid the same as men regardless of experience fits into the same goofy parody that everything else in the game does. Every position is portrayed as stupid and monstrous, the consequences in a ludicrous fashion. I'd prefer it if the game were sharper, subtler or wittier with its parodies but I've only seen that one situation they are actually offensive and biased.

Actually out of curiosity I checked out the design document for Catherine's arc. Unless they changed it they mechanically equivocated not instituting a mandatory 50% quota of female officers as the same as allowing soldiers to rape women in conquered cities.

That's more than a little tasteless. Still on the whole it looks like Catherine is going to be placated as long as you don't have gender politics straight from the 2nd century.

No, you see, you just can't say there are stupid arguments and use that as an example. You actually have to provide specific examples to use as an example.

The tricky thing with policy decisions is, at a certain point, everyone started getting different randomly assigned issues to discuss. So even if the issues are presented skewed, say, 60-40 or 70-30 in favor of far-left policies, it's possible through luck of the draw to experience a 50-50 split.

Rack:

I'm glad you see my point about the Catherine arc. One of the things that irks me the most about it in particular is the choices are almost always "Yes, you are so right, Catherine. You are a guardian angel of morality and are a strong independent female character I should praise in my review." or "Mwahahaha! I will never let you do that because you belong in the kitchen and your brain is 30% smaller than mine. Mwahahahaha!" The only noticeable exception to this rule is the meritocracy issue and, as you point out, the implications of the decision are fairly horrible. Plus, in the design doc, it mentions specifically that with one response she "destroys your argumentation". That's just bad writing, plain and simple. Why write an argument that doesn't hold water?

I hate to get stuck on this character in particular, but it always struck me as odd that you would never consider, you know, court-martialing her for insubordination. You are emperor, after all.

Back to the original point of this thread though, I think the main problem is that these character arcs, arguments, and policy issues become "Holier-Than-Thou" when it comes to some pet issues for Larian Studios. If you disagree with certain issues, it's because you're wicked and greedy. It's never because the evidence for an argument is based on hearsay (because, as it turns out, all hearsay is 100% true in this game). Plus, it doesn't help that characters like Scarlett and Catherine become completely one-dimensional when you complete their arc. Every time you talk to Scarlett after a battle post-acceptance-arc, she says something to the effect of "We won and I'm a lesbian!" or "I fought hard that battle and I'm still a lesbian!" or "You did a great job! Have I ever told you that I'm a lesbian?"

All that said, 75% of the time, the game is very clever with its approach to politics and hits a strong satirical note. The problem is the remaining 25% of the time the game gets very preachy and it breaks immersion.

Also, while I'm here, I'll throw out another three things that really bugged me during this game.

1. The Raven gets mentioned so much as a really awesome and essential ship ala the Normandy in Mass Effect or the Hyperion in Starcraft II. So why does it never make an appearance on the campaign map or battlefield or really any cinematic? Even though you never control the ship in those games (technically you control the Hyperion for one mission in Heart of the Swarm, but I'm getting off topic), you still feel and see the impact that ship has as it saves your character several times.

2. How come Corvus has a capital? I thought he was just a demonic influence, corrupting the minds of thousands. It doesn't seem like that system of government would warrant a capital. From a metagame perspective, it'd make the third act much more challenging because you'd have to go country by country to eliminate Corvus instead of just knocking out his capital (which is very easy to do, given the diffuse nature of the provinces on the final map). In fact, why does the Dragon Commander have a capital city too? The entire nucleus of the government is located on board the Raven. So unless this airship of unimaginable power is permanently drydocked at Orcha, it seems really odd that the fall of that one country should make a difference to the Dragon's war effort.

3. The technology level seems really inconsistent between what the characters talk about and what we see on the battlefield. For instance, Scarlett talks about leading a platoon of all female knights on horseback when she goes to behead the evil Duke. We have knights in this steampunk society? And they ride horses? That doesn't seem thematically congruent with all the steam powered walkers the regular army uses.

1. Because it was not necessary at all.

2. Yeah, that is a bit odd. It made Act 3 a lot easier to do, because the land was a corridor between your country and theirs, so you just push all your units into one territory and go to the next, one at a time. Once I realized that the enemy had basically no land units in the capital at all, I just pushed hard for it. No sweat.

3. Maybe Scarlett just wanted to ride a horse. Or maybe she/the emperor didn't consider appropriating high-tech military stuff for what was basically just a personal mission to be appropriate.