Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Swearing and Sexuality in Divinity: Original Sin 2

I dub Freeportaa a troll. There is no way someone could have these beliefs and actually know how to use a computer.

Congrats troll, you got people to respond to you.

Oh, I think we actually listen AND are interested ( maybe I'm only speaking for myself but yet ). It's just that we ( ok let's say I so I don't speak for everyone else ) - it's just that I don't agree at all on the topic of art as a subjectif vs objective concept. We already talked earlier in this topic so I won't just repeat myself =)

Essentially, whenever one doesn't agree with someone else, both of their claims become "opinions". In the Grand Order of things, one of those is probably closer to the Truth than the other. Yet we can't, us poor human, mortal beings, know which one.
We often default the "objective" to "the opinion that is the most widely supported", but still it's only an opinion. Science has it easier : it's theory and empirical observations vs proven facts. We don't discuss the Earth revolving around the Sun, because it's now a fact. But we could discuss Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" as art because it is not a fact but rather a gathering of same-minded opininons, born from a lot of personal experiences, knowledges, and overall feelings. ( hint : let's not discuss "Fountain". As one of the most controversial art piece of the 20th I felt if was the best example is all :p )

I think you're educated enough to know that whenever you make a claim based on your personnal experience, skill, and knowledge, it automatically IS an opinion, and is automatically labelled as such. The only thing we can't deny are mathematic, so they can't be considered an opinion.
And hell is it sad. I don't believe that... things... like FF7 : Crysis Core should be considered a great game and praised everywhere. That thing was utter garbage and I have a hard time accepting the fact that it is only my opinion and not the truth =(

Oh, how easy the world would be if that was the case :p Quoting from wikipedia: "In general, an opinion is a judgment, viewpoint, or statement about matters commonly considered to be subjective." Some people believe Evolution to be a subjective thing, but it's not and proclaiming that "Evolution is just, like, your opinion, man" doesn't make it so :p Like MindlessAutomata was quick to remind us, going against evidence is ideology and not an opinion. Someone disagreeing about something doesn't automatically make it subjective.

Art has countless objective qualities: Logical progression and usage of material, coherency, aesthetic reasoning, technical skill, influence of and by other art, history, contextual relevancy etc. I'd dare say that (good and influential) art is quite objective and the only thing more objective than art is science. The only subjective thing in art is whether you are drawn to the aesthetic of it. The Sistine Chapel's paintings aren't less relevant, influential or masterfully done if you don't like them. An opinion regarding art would be: "I prefer Michelangelo over da Vinci". That's it. Bad art is illogical, technically unsound and aesthetically confused.

Video games are gesamtkunstwerk, or "synthesis of the arts", they also have unique qualities that separate it from other art. Kinaesthetics and balanced and interdependent systems for example. These, along with all the other arts that video games have in them, have to be well-done. In this case, swearing and sexuality have to be made a natural part/element of the whole and not thrown in there just to be like the Witcher, like someone here mentioned :p

Nobody is forcing you (general you, not you specifically) to like any piece of art and it is your decision whether to support it or not, but claiming it's "all subjective" goes into non-genuine and ignorant territory which isn't very comfortable :p

I feel I have to have a disclaimer after every post I make - this isn't me being condescending or dismissive, I'm just sharing my expertise on the matter.

Oh, as far as I'm concerned you won't have to leave a disclaimer. Sometimes maybe your posts feel a little like you're forcing your claim to appear objective, but that's something else.

As I think I pointed out, Science is one domain in which there can't be opinions, so somehow I agree. Evolution can't be disputed, despite not being 100% proven, and objectifying to it is indeed ideology. Ideologies are after all extreme opinions, that refuse to accept some facts in order to better promote others they view as "truth". A pure, genuine opinion, is indeed having an educated view on things that do not wittingly dismiss or disregard an element that could contradict that view.

I agree there are objective qualities to a work of art, and most of those you pointed out I can work with. There is no disputing the evolution of Art, its tools, or even the skill of an artist : me drawing a stickman will never hold up to Leonardo's sketches.
My view is essentially that objective qualities are a moot point if not supported by the people, essentially rich sponsors which was a required thing during Renaissance. Without the general public acceptance, a work of art will never become really "a work of art", but will stay forever or until ultimate acceptance "trash". There's been an ongoing development of art since the times of our ancestors painting on the walls of their cave, but I feel that, at any given time, that development would have been different if, say, Poussin hadn't been named First Painter of Louis XIII, or if the Medici hadn't shown much interets in art back in Florence during Michelangelo's time.
Obviously, everything human has been at one point steered by the ideologies of each eras, but while we can't dispute the results of Science, I will always feel like we can dispute the results of Art.
Science is all about hard cold facts : it's very binary. Art is more abstract, and most of the rules that dictate what is art and what isn't are at best empirical or culturally-driven. It's why, I think, Art is so heteroclite, and from one country to the other, style, material, favorite topics, etc will be so different

Or maybe I have this view on things because I myself walk a lot on the fringes of Art, where it's extremely hard to judge what is and what isn't...

*grin* That broader culture term of your mind is usually culture as sub-cultures, which marks them as part of culture, but outside of mainstream culture, which means than your view seems not twisted at all, but generally excepted well at least on the word meaning of culture.

Furthermore past divinity games had innuendos and swearings, at least if I remember correct. There is just this simple fact that the divinity world is not a dark and dirty world like the witchers one, so there is no point nor reason for constant sex, violence and swearing.

The styles are already fundamental different on world building level which leads to a complete different atmosphere, etc and I like it the way it is. There is nothing inherently wrong with handling it different, I do like the witcher series as well*, but that is a complete different and independent thing.



* from a storytelling perspective, the combat awful and gets with each iteration even worse and at this point I would rather see play witcher the visual novel than deal ever again with that combat system.

Science is one of the fields that prospers most from opinions. Different opinions are what hypothesis build on, which leads to the development of theories and either proving them wrong or right.

Opinions are essential for scientific progress. It just that one of the core concepts about those opinions is that you should be able to proof them right or wrong at some point in time and transform them into scientific facts.

While this is true, we can't speculate what art would've been if its history was different. We have no ground to even think about it. History doesn't deal in the subjunctive. We can only work on what we have. This is true for all history though, not only art. We don't know what would've happened to France if Robespierre hadn't enacted his Reign of Terror for example.


I don't think those are considered opinions though, I'd classify them as hypotheses.

But Science can't accept opinions - maybe hypothesis are born out of opinions in the first place, but it's only when a scientist clearly establish an hypothesis that it becomes "science". I know, this is pure semantics, but I feel the difference is real though !
What I meant essentially is that you can't have an opinion on hard cold facts - like Earth revolving around the Sun. You can't have an opinion on crows being black, because appart from the rare white ones, crows ARE black. Stuff like that.



Yes! That's why the very first time I jumped into the topic, I mentionned that Art is indeed very much like History, and we know the motto "History is written by the victors". Not only are further development of History actually written by the victors, but even Historical facts can be re-written to either dismiss the vanquished, or glorify the victor. Making even History a bit subjective because sources may have been tampered with, out of spite, patriotism, or ideology.
And let's not even start on the religious texts that are written and rewritten to better fit the views of their clergy :p

Those semantics are imho super important. There are basically two kinds of opinions, those which can be validated and those which can not. Only the first kind of opinions can be topics in science. And 'able to validated' includes stuff we can only theoretical validate, a lof of scientific works took a long time to validate or disprove.

In art we deal with both kinds of opinions, which seems a constant source for misunderstandings. ;-)

PS. Hypothesis are basically elaborated formulated opinions. ;-)

That doesn't necessarily mean the history we know is false though, some of them actually wrote the truth :p While it is a somewhat true statement, it's a bit too simplistic to account for everything. For example - the Roman Empire fell to the barbarian hordes, but we know this because of the accounts from the Roman Empire, not from the barbarians.

@Apocalypse

The one defining characteristic of an opinion is that it cannot be proven true/false by empirical evidence and it doesn't require such proof. "I think Mondrian is a better painter than Monet" is an opinion, but it can in no way be proven true or false. A hypothesis is always testable, while an opinion doesn't have to be. Hypothesis =\= opinion.

I am open to the option that my brain has the saved the wrong definition on opinion, but



http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/opinion


I can not find a source that would support the claim that it would be a requirement to be not verifiable for an opinion.

As scientist I care only about 3 concepts: Positivism, critical rationalism and Occams Razor

simplified definitions:
positivism = You care only about things that can be veryfied by experiment (at least in principle). This was meant to exclude all transcendent or supernatural things.

critical rationalism = You can never be 100% sure that something is true, but you can be 100% sure that it is false if you have falsified it. Ignore everything that cannot be falsified in principle. Even if there is an objective truth an even if you find it, you can never know that if you have found it or if you found something else that gives the right results accidentally.

Occams Razor = When you have several possible explanations, take the one that require the fewest assumptions.

summary: Consider only things that can be falsified in princeple. If it is falsified, you have at least the knowledge that it is false. If you find something that can be falsified, but an experiment confirmed it, than you can consider it (well, if not true then at least useful), until you find further evidence that either confirms it again or falsifies it.
EVERYTHING ELSE IS AN OPINION.

Back to topic:
In this game you kill lots of (humanoid) enemies, lots of blood flows and people get tortured (the divine order is not very nice). I think a few words are harmless compared to this.

I do not understand this (american?) point of view: You can kill huge amounts of people and swim in lakes of blood and gore. This is absolutely OK. But if you use a few bad words (fuck, shit, tits, yeah I said it) or see a bit of naked skin it is the end of the world.

Frankly given my experience with sexuality and swearing in videogames...

I'd prefer it be somewhere else as well. Nothing says immature gaming then characters dropping F-Bombs and suddenly start sexing it up.

HECK! Until Dawn realized that and used swearing and sex as a way to make the audience HATE our leads (and quite successfully).

[quote]But if you use a few bad words (yeah I said it) or see a bit of naked skin it is the end of the world.[/quote]

Well... because of your post. Notice how well written it is until suddenly you started dropping swears?

We're not going to be seeing any sex scenes in the game, to say the least. At worst, characters will go off-screen, or we'll have a juicy text description of the encounter during or after. At best, we'll just experience two characters liking/caring about one another.

Technically, that is a close approximation to the sun and earth revolving around the centre of mass of the solar system, which is the rest frame in which the math is much simpler (even elegant, to a first approximation), but it is no more correct than saying the sun revolves around the earth.

Totally ok with beheadings, dismemberment, and people being set on fire.
Not ok with harsh language, or nudity.
That's messed up.


"(it would just be a shame if I couldn't play it)"
No, you can play it, you just don't want to.
And if you have religious objections... well, that's doubly stupid, sorry.

You mean that last half sentence was really poor quality compared to the whole post?

TBH, i don't get you either.

I'm all for civility, and in real life i swear appropriately (i.e: not much) unless the situation calls for it.

But we are murdering people by the boat load, and that's cool, but pixelated skin, or rude words is not cool?

There are game maturity codes for a reason.
You want a non-adult game? No problem.

But why is blood and death an ok pastime for children, or the terminally delicate, but bare skin and harsh language isn't?

This is a game that deals with adult situations.
War and killing are adult situations.
Nudity and swear words... somewhat less so.

I just want it to have some credibility.

If I happen to meet (or play) a barbarian who crucifies people for breakfast, I don't expect him to say "How do you do, sir ? As you have sexually assaulted my mother, would you please stand still while I remove some limbs from your body ? I would quite enjoy removing them one-by-one, pour them in butter and have insects eat the rest of you... alive."

Of course that text would fit another type of character

I do not wish that the writers use bad words just because they can.
But I think that killing many people is worse than using some words.
And the example of melianos shows, that a nice and polite way of talking can be unfitting to some situations.
PoE uses the f word several times (eternal rantings of Durance) without being a porno.
Writing must be consistent with the situation and in a bad situation (such as killing people) a bad language can be appropriate.

In Risen2, there is a dialogue between 2 NPCs where they manage to say fuck in every single sentence. It was pretty hilarious. But it suited the pirate-theme quite well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEy3oXQv7qk