Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Shorty Races Getting the Short End of the Stick (Yet Again)

My point isn't that other fictional representations of racism, sexism, etc are presented as endorsements, rather that there are cases where the racism itself is trivialized into something that's "unimportant" or is simply included as an assumed fact of the world and left unexamined. Basically treated as...not acceptable so much as a personailty quirk in the people engaging in it, or even at times just as a joke. In fact Witcher 2 I feel is an offender on that front in the case of sexism. I felt that the game was often rather casually dismissive of women and let sexist language and behavior just sort of...go by. The one example that sticks out clearly in my mind even after not having played the game in a year or two is a dwarf making a "lesbomancy" joke in the middle of what really should have been an important scene, undercutting the drama of it. I'm not sure I'd have noticed the overall trend if it weren't compared to the far better approach the game had with racism.

Basically what I'm saying is that racism, real racism, is a big thing that can and usually does affect victims in most facets of their life. So if a fantasy work is going to include it, then it should be treated as seriously as it is. Imagine if a story just treated torture as a thing that "happens sometimes" and people who committed torture were just seen as people who had an uncouth hobby. That would feel weird, right? Or if a story treated breaking into people's homes and vandalizing their property that way. Those are serious crimes, and the people who do those things are wrong and something should be done about them. To take a specific example from BG3, imagine if no one reacted strongly in the grove to Kahga killing that girl. If it was presented as just, a thing that happens.

Edit: Also I'm curious why you think the insult wouldn't have much grip in setting? Do you mean the insult the companion is making? If by insult you mean our character calling the companion out, then the answer is simple. Whatever our companion's reaction to being called out, if our character isn't able to speak up in protest about our companion's racism, then that's forcing us to play a character who either passively accepts it, endorses it, or isn't willing to call it out despite internally being against it. Which is not ideal.