It's irrelevant whether or not they warn you about the consequences. They push the fetish content onto the player simply by devoting so much of the player choice and narrative to it and by compromising the PC and NPC characters so heavily without providing a quick way out(not counting the painless one that's constantly on offer) . And a GM that keeps churning elaborate fetish plotlines/mechanics for the player to follow/use, but vocally warning them of the dire and horrific consequences of choosing them, is about as suspect of peddling his/her fetish as the Guardian ingame. I'm guessing in she's going to be VA by the Maggie Robertson btw.
And it's not just the one mechanic at play in the 'brainworm farmer' -narrative. From what I've seen of the chapter 1, the storyline seems to be poised to branch in a way that gives the player either the option of fighting the flayer cult(and whatever convoluted godliness is behind the brain devouring aliens) or furthering their goals. Certainly whether or not you ally with the grove&harpers or the cult, is going to have many consequences later on. I suppose, that playing as a merry murderhobo, you may ally with the cult while abstaining from inserting more turdlike maggots in your brain and from the obligatory reward drow sex, but I'd say just working undercover with the tadpole cult is still engaging with the body horror fetish, since it's such a spectacularly senseless and self-harming choice in all other respects. And then there's the business of them adding origin character backgrounds that account for the reason why characters might not want to remove the tadpole, which tend to be rather non-consensually d/s heavy.
And like 1varangian helpfully pointed out, you're stuck with the parasite, even if you do everything to fight the cult. The game initially had a premise that you'd have to remove the parasite quickly or die, and it's not like they didn't make the most of proving you're wrong. On the contrary, you're in a way punished for trying to remove the tadpole in chapter 1, even when not relying on total idiots like Volo. One more sensible attempt even seem to make the parasite stronger... which with this new mechanic might have even worse outcomes, assuming the PC doesn't want to romance lots of irreparable brain damage.
IIRC the screenwriter/director of the first Alien film was adamant that none of the women members of the cast wouldn't suffer the facehugger-chestburst experience, so as to avoid catering to a particular (male) crowd. The other thing that probably prevents the film from turning into a retrograde fetish film is that at least the main character is rather capable and has the resources to fight back against the giant... alien. In comparison, I don't appreciate the relative helplessness forced upon the player in BG3. But, I guess I should have realized from the first trailer where they were going to nudge the game narrative to.
I'll probably play BG3, but like I've said before, there's seemingly no reason to slog through the badly done body horror fetish plotline, which they seem to have devoted substantial, and ever increasing(even if just incrementally), portion of the game content to, for a second playthrough.
Last edited by IdPreferNotTo; 20/07/23 12:38 PM.
