...well, yes, here we are. I worried it'd just be rage and flames when I started this thread. It certainly hasn't all been though, and I'm glad of that. Several people have quite calmly expressed opinions both for and against, which I appreciate greatly.
Some have pointed out that the alpha is about finding bugs, not changing the content, and that is a fair point. It was a little late to start this kind of discussion, at least with the hope of affecting change in the game.
Still, as I've stated before, I wanted communication about it moreso than I truly expected anything to change from it. So I apologize for putting this up in the alpha forums, it would have been better in the general forums. I'd like to say though, that the post was made due to genuine feelings, not a hunger for controversy or attention. I hope you can believe that even if you dislike the fuss I've raised.
(As an aside, I am not too familiar with the forum mechanics, but the topic could perhaps be moved to general forums?)
The thread might not have quite caught fire, but there's a touch more vitriol than is conducive to communication. Cutter, if you were not deliberately trolling in order to enrage, then I believe you've failed, and you were not alone in doing so. Please, I truly believe that most everyone here are nice people, so even if we differ in opinions, let's stay polite and civil, yeah? We'll all be better off, and as a bonus, I promise, we'll feel better about ourselves
A major point from the con side is the silliness of arguing over impractical shoes in a magical fantasy fiction. This is true, it is not inherently more disruptive to the believability of the world than, say, using a carved pumpkin as a helmet
But I wanted us to talk about the why of it: not "why should we change the shoes to not have high heels?", but "why was the assumption that she would wear high heels?" We know well that female warriors in the real world wear just as practical shoes as their male counterparts, so doing differently in our fiction is a deliberate change, and we are better for understanding why we expect it. Is it just 'cause we like our characters looking good? (I'm on board) And we'll fudge a bit of realism? (no problem for me) Because we think women look better in high heels? (that's where I disagree, but obviously, there's not gonna be time and resources to fit everyone's personal preferences) That's my working theory, but I'd like to hear from other people as well, since I didn't agree with the decision, I might well be wrong about the reasoning behind it.
But yes, the shoes in particular are a small sliver of gender culture, which is tied to more than this one aspect of gender inequality. And actually, it's because Larian's been good about so much of the gender issue that the shoes stood out to me as bothersome. It is part of a complex tangle of culture and history (as I remember, the fashion started amongst soldiers who wanted to keep their shoes out of the mud, though the design was obviously a little bit different at that time
)
TL;DR, this is probably the most important part:
Perhaps it boils down to this:
1) Culturally, there is a predilection for female fashions being more impractical and hindersome than male fashions.
2) The origins of this, is at least in part based on an historical inequality in what women and men were expected or allowed to do.
These two points I think we're all pretty much on board with?
The point of conflict as I understand it then is:
3) Some people, one of whom is me, feel that persisting the tradition of "women's clothes are impractical" also to some degree persists the prejudice "women are less suited to practical endeavors". And also that video games and fantasy fiction are important enough (certainly to me), that it's worth arguing the point here as well.
Sorry for returning and unloading a massive wall of text after leaving the thread untended: it's christmas time, you know how it is
