There are a number of ongoing threads related to BG3 (the fat bodies thread and the no horny thread) that tie in to the notion of fantasy as a justification for representation. This has always stuck me as an example of the ambiguity fallacy where the term fantasy (imagining impossible things often with connotations of things that one desires) is conflated with the fantasy genre (the genre largely created by Tolkien and based on the Icelandic sagas in turn grounded in Northwest European cultures/religions). Many people are reprimanded for wanting things like essential characteristics for fantasy races with the justification that fantasy isn't real ergo any parameters are inappropriate. This is an inherently fallacious idea. It is entirely reasonable for someone to want elves to be inherently more dexterous than humans and for halflings to be inherently physically weaker than half-orcs. Simply saying that, "It's fantasy so any race can be anything," isn't actually very compelling upon reflection. Fantasy worlds must comply with some very strict internal logic in order to function effectively or the spell is broken very quickly. We are seeing some IPs tanking, partly because they are throwing out large parts of established lore which in turn breaks their internal logic.
One might even say that for the PC to be an outlier is fine and that player choice is the priority. I would largely agree with this proposition as it doesn't impact my game if your halfling has 20 strength. However, this conflation of the two definitions of fantasy bleeds in to the NPCs as well in relation to representation. There are some videos doing the rounds and some posts on these forums that discuss over representation of LGBTQI+/queer identities and this seems to be true in my experience, although this perception may be reduced if the probable bugs around romance are patched. Once again the argument in opposition to identifying this is something along the lines of, "you can believe in dragons but not in slight over representation of LGBTQI+ people?" This is also fallacious. In a game grounded in endeavouring to combine high fantasy with believable relationships the over representation of these identities is immersion breaking because the fantasy is in the genre part not the representation of relationships part.
This can also be applied to the apparent ethnic diversity of all of the fantasy races despite there being no in world reason why so may different phenotypes exist side by side. It is okay to find this immersion breaking without being told that it is fantasy so your objections are irrelevant. It can also be extended to gender roles (the two most notable martial companions are women). Sure, Red Sonja is one of the founding texts of modern fantasy but it is okay if you find it a bit silly that there are so many women swinging swords on the Sword Coast without someone telling you that you are wrong because BG3 is a fantasy game.
Last edited by Borys of Ebe; 25/08/23 08:29 AM.
