Larian Studios Forums General Chat RPG Chat Baldur's gate: Siege of Dragonspear

It's coming!
Twitch stream presentation

RTwP...

ie i couldn't give a damn, sorry

Why ?

Because it has RTwP

not my thing. Never was, never will

I'm actually buying it. the EE have managed to refresh the series.
Planescape Torment, however, is still undefeated as best RPG of the Infinity Engine.

Apparently, Beamdog is under Gamergate backlash 'cause transgender NPC which is a shame, SoD is really good RPG.
I wish they resolve situation.

Yeah, I heard something about that, even though I'm not a BG fan. What a rather sad and unpleasant situation.

I thought the criticism was more the hamfisted way they put in their political agenda, rather than the character itself. There was a reference to Gamergate in the dialog, so I assume (without doing any research) any backlash is due to that and apparently banning people posting critical reviews on Steam, etc.

I've also failed to do any research at all, so my second-(or third-) hand sources are probably not the most reliable! I suspect that, as ever, there's likely to be more to it than just a trans character (after all, I don't think Krem from Inquisition really elicited much reaction, unless I just missed it) and I think journalists are now just duty bound to mention Gamergate whenever there's a bit of a fuss.

In the time it took me to type that, I could've attempted to actually find out some of that stuff. But it's harder for me to write uninformed pontification if I'm in possession of some of the facts.

I looked up one Youtube video after I posted, but it didn't really go into any detail.
Oh well, I should get some sleep, and see if I can get up in a couple hours for the EGX Rezzed talk (2pm London time)...

There will be some changes in future patches:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/51161/beamdog-statement-on-siege-of-dragonspear

Thanks for the link: I think I kind of understand what's the deal. I didn't quite figure out what was the offending Minsc line (I read some of the discussion and my eyes glazed over a bit) so it does seem that it largely centred on Mizhena. Which is unfortunate.

I must admit that personally I'm rather ambivalent about inserting random trans characters into this sort of medium unless there's a specific reason to do so, otherwise it does seem a bit like tokenism. I think Bioware did it about as well as they could with Krem when it only came up much further down the line when talking to him in one's spare time, though I was still a bit "hmm, okay then". Although it's all very well to have some representation, it can very easily feel a bit forced. (My disclosure is that I potentially have a vested interest being trans myself, though except when relevant I'm publicly just female as I'm lucky enough to "pass").

The backlash against it seems a bit scary, though. I'm still not entirely clear what happened, and there is mention of the infamous SJW type who do often end up causing more harm than good, but unfortunately that's now just a well-established excuse for those with somewhat less-developed social outlooks to cause trouble with the assumption of impunity, because "SJWs started it. Probably." Whether or not they did in this instance, I dunno, but argh.

I wouldn't give so much about it. Give it a few weeks and everything is gonna be back to business. At the moment everything is just ranting on, but does anybody remember gay Clans for WOW? Or Anita Sarkeesian (besides men, that act like her bitter ex-boyfriends)? No? Good.

Sadly, the reviews that I have read don't speak positive about the game either. Not because of Mizhena, but because the game is buggy and the story isn't good. After all fuss about a minor NPC, this is really sad.