Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Could we PLEASE...

Well.. kind of.. But on the other hand why does a character need a special plot point that explores say.. his gayness. We don't need an excuse to put a hetero character. His hetero doesn't play into the story and we don't seem to mind. Why the higher standard for gayness etc?

because without the plot point, the "gayness" is superfluous and irrelevant to the story.

it's like expecting to walk down the street and just know who is gay and who isn't just by appearances, or needing to know someone is gay before working with them.

why? why does it matter?

the only time something as personal as sexuality matters is if it directly influences the character's impact on the main narrative.

If raising a family for future legacy exploration was part of the game, for example, then I would love to see same sex couples and romances that deal with adoption etc. But it has to matter,

I'm not on particularly amicable terms with Raze but even I fail to see the veiled insult, honestly it sounds more like he is giving TadasGa praise. Trust me, he is the least of Larian and Co.'s problems. Their issues stem from management and an employee representative is powerless to remedy them no matter how crafty they are with words.

Believing you shouldn't just let a illegal immigrant die from lack of medical attention doesn't mean someone supports open borders, it means setting humanitarian priorities. Maybe if America hadn't spent most of my life bragging about how great it was, the American Dream it wouldn't have gotten so my deseperate illegal immigrants.

I agree with you on no politics doesn't mean no minorities, a lot of folks that refused to watch the 2016 ghostbusters loved Black Panther. Folks that critize Star Trek: Discovery for being SJW (although it's not, it's just the bad PR that creates that impression) while equally or more diverse Orville doesn't provoke those critisms. Too many folks haven't learned it's more about the presentation then the existance of diversity. If you make your audience feel leactured and judged you will have a major problem on your hands.

Actually, it was a reference to your post "When someone is saying please no politics it's more than likely code - "please no minorities ok ty?" "
That's why I quoted "more than likely", because you were saying 'no politics', at least for tokenism.



Apparently not enough that previous administrations stopped the maintenance and infrastructure for border security, and other countries have and are building border walls.


A significant number cross the boarder on foot, as well, and multiple large caravans attempted to do so a couple years ago. It is a dangerous journey, where people are vulnerable to the elements (sometime fatal) and various kinds of abuse on the way, including a large number of unaccompanied minors. Improving border security discourages people from trying in the first place. A wall may or may not be the most cost effective deterrent, but it seems better than encouraging illegal immigration and creating a permanent underclass.



The Force is Female t-shirts and various interviews do support the claim that inserting feminist politics into the films was part of the problem, at least.


Including minorities isn't the issue. Including minorities 'because politics' is something done by ideologically motivated people who are restricted in what they can write, and therefore generally write poorly.




Hospitals treating illegal immigrants (which is currently already happening) does not require that they be officially given full health care coverage; the democratic candidates' health care plans would be more than just necessary treatment, because hospitals already provide that, as well as emergency care regardless of insurance coverage.

>Apparently not enough that previous administrations stopped the maintenance and infrastructure for border security, and other countries have and are building border walls.

Let's stick to USA. There is a lot of nuance when it comes to migration. Border security =/= building a literal wall.

> A wall may or may not be the most cost effective deterrent

That's an understatement. But more importantly immigration "problem" in usa is completely manufactured bs for conservatives. Not only immigration trend from mexico has reversed as more people are leaving the country than entering, but more importantly net economic impact is either not existant (if you look at reasearch from conservative think tanks) or positive - if you look at anyone else research. The main reason why immigration is such a big talking point, because it hits conservative emotional triad - fear, disgust, otherness. It''s very easy target to point finger and say "look at them, that's why your life sucks" and ignore serious nuanced systemic issues.

>The Force is Female t-shirts and various interviews do support the claim that inserting feminist politics into the files was part of the problem, at least.

Force is female t-shirts came from The Archer Film Festival which is a high school student film festival dedicated to empowering female filmmakers. In 2017 Nike launched the add campaign. That's a huge fucking reach dude.

>Including minorities isn't the issue. Including minorities 'because politics' is something done by ideologically motivated people who are restricted in what they can write, and therefore generally write poorly.

Can you substantiate your hypothesis by any research? Or is it just anecdotes again?

walls a pretty good border security all things considered.
the biggest issue greece has with border security is that they dont have a well defined land border that they can build a wall on.
Meanwhile for hungary and israel it tends to work...

>A significant number cross the boarder on foot, as well, and multiple large caravans attempted to do so a couple years ago. It is a dangerous journey, where people are vulnerable to the elements (sometime fatal) and various kinds of abuse on the way, including a large number of unaccompanied minors. Improving border security discourages people from trying in the first place.

That's false. If you look at EU experience from this report: https://www.tni.org/en/businessbuildingwalls This is also a deadly business. The heavy militarisation of Europe’s borders on land and at sea has led refugees and migrants to follow far more hazardous routes and has trapped others in desperate conditions in neighbouring countries like Libya. Many deaths are not recorded, but those that are tracked in the Mediterranean show that the proportion of those who drown trying to reach Europe continues to increase each year.

Five years ago, open borders was supposedly a right wing proposal to get cheap labour.
Bernie Sanders: "Open borders? That's a Koch brothers proposal"

Democrats were for a wall before they were against it


Claiming walls are racist doesn't do much to deal with criminals entering the country illegally, human trafficking, people entering without medical screening who may or may not be sick, and may not be vaccinated, affecting herd immunity for various diseases in certain locations, etc.



Was I referring to the fact that the t-shirts existed, or who was wearing them and how they were being promoted?



Can you substantiate "When someone is saying please no politics it's more than likely code - "please no minorities ok ty?" " by any research?
Do you actually doubt that overtly pushing a particular ideology can result in character and plot designs that are not to the betterment of the story?



I used reasoning and gave examples. If you can not argue the reasoning or counter the examples, I don't see why you would accept any research I provided.



I thought you wanted to stick to the US?

I agree with you that feminist politics is being injected into alot of media, which often dishonest and manipulative.

But I will point out that if you really want to cut back on illegal immigration maybe America can stop destabilizing Latin America every time a Latin American country elects a leftwing government, the US starts pulling crap them to get them over thrown while giving their backing and praise to right-wing dictators that torture and steal from their citizens to give to the rich.

And then Americans complaining about illegal immigration after helping to wreck other countries is a self inflicted problem.

Europe's own immigration crisis was caused by America continuously screwing around in the Middle East with regime change wars back up by having no meaningful plans for rebuilding and peace after each war, which leads to more wars.

>Five years ago, open boarders was supposedly a right wing proposal to get cheap labour.

Right, being against open borders or a literal wall are mutually exclusive positions. Got it.

>Claiming walls are racist doesn't do much to deal with criminals entering the country illegally, human trafficking, people entering without medical screening who may or may not be sick, and may not be vaccinated, affecting herd immunity for various diseases in certain locations, etc.

Building a literal wall doesn't really address these issues either, it's just a symbolic act. A meme if you will. A meme that costs billions of dollars. If you want to combat those issues there are better ways to spend those billions of dollars.

>Was I referring to the fact that the t-shirts existed, or who was wearing them and how they were being promoted?

Ok, I am really not following you. How does this t-shirt support claim that "inserting feminist politics into the films was part of the problem, at least."? I am 99% sure that for dysney money >> politics. Whatever sells. I am pretty sure that their decision to include minorities or plot points have more to do with toys and to whom they can sell, than any political ideology.

>Do you actually doubt that overtly pushing a particular ideology can result in character and plot designs that are not to the betterment of the story?

Your initial claim was much stronger - " therefore generally write poorly." "Can" is an easy give. On the other hand "Parasite" won too many awards to mention, including oscar for best movie and it's highly ideologically driven, so is latest Joker etc etc.

Um.. what?
You said concern over illegal immigration was "completely manufactured bs for conservatives", and I replied that it was once a concern for liberals, as well.
In any case, I fail to see how continuing this would be productive.



The producer of the movies, and a group of others, wore a t-shirt with a feminist slogan, did interviews promoting feminist talking points, promoted the movies as feminist, critics reviewed the movies saying they were great feminist films, the film content had feminist tropes (Mary Sue female character, incompetent male characters), people who criticised the film were widely called misogynist, there were articles in the press pre-release about exclusively male trolls online 'review bombing' Rotten Tomatoes by saying they were not interested in seeing the film, getting the site to disable that feature for the film, and 'correct' the user review scores after release, etc.
Is your position really that the film content and quality was unaffected by the feminist ideology?


There were minorities in the original films. Somehow there was no backlash.



Was either film advertised and promoted as an ideology, and not the content of the film, with any criticism entirely the result of hating the ideology or proponents of that ideology?
There is a difference between a film having an ideology and a film being used to overtly push an ideology.

I meant that rhetoric surround immigration is manufactured. The problems are insanely exaggerated by the right. Building the wall has no merit, it's purely pandering for trumps base.

>There were minorities in the original films. Somehow there was no backlash.

I really can't think of any? Maybe Lando? If there were they had no major roles. Also no internet as we know now back then.

But anyway I went way off topic with what I wanted to say. My idea was - that people with anti-minority bias are too quick to attribute any and all negativity towards sjw, inclusivity, feminism w/e when it's more likely just incompetent script writing.

>Is your position really that the film content and quality was unaffected by the feminist ideology?

I have no idea how much feminist ideology affected it. I am 99% guaranteed that writing script to sell toys and attract largest possible audience had way more to do with writing than anything else. I actually didn't know about that there is feminism angle for marketing, as most people I just watched trailers, but it doesn't surprise me. Attracting female audience that might not be interested in "nerdy" movie is $$. Also outrage marketing is the new hot thing.

>with any criticism entirely the result of hating the ideology or proponents of that ideology?

Feminism is much more controversial than class warfare in todays climate.

I think one could make the case that a significant part of that controversy is precisely because of class.

There was actually an article written about this topic some time ago argueing that having races in games reinforces racism in the real world. It never caught on for whatever reason.

Isnt it interesting how we all agree that men (on average) have a higher STR score than women in real life yet males never get a STR bonus in games? And I guess to balance it out, give females a higher WIS or something. I guess in an effort to avoid "drama" people just ignored it. Anyway, your quote below...



...the only true statement it this whole thread.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker had it? I dont know about DOS2 because I didnt play it much but I've been through PF:K several times and I cant pinpoint any particular ideology being pushed. Would you care to clarify? Because if you mean small events where a character with a particular personality is driven by ideology thats practically unavoidable in an RPG. Because the game is embedded in a world that mirrors our own.

So its Europeans countries fault ?
So basically european countries should let them in or else theyll.... hurt themselves?

Yeah, thats not how negotating works. if i stand in front of your house and threaten to shoot myself unless you give me all your money, im pretty sure youd closer your front door

This is one of my biggest gripes with the whole "inclusion" model that a lot of media has been pushing. I understand that there are still some major shortcomings in most countries regarding the issue, however, the way it's handled in media is as though people are singularly defined by their sexuality or skin color, rather than their actual character.

When I go out to perform errands, go shopping, get my hair cut, or even go to work, I have more than likely seen or even conversed with people from the LGBTQ community, or who don't adhere to the male/female/hetero grouping, or several people from minority groups. I more often than not don't even realize this though since they don't wear a badge on their shirt saying "nonbinary" or "homosexual" and don't live their lives defined completely by stereotypes or informing everyone they meet.

There's no reason we need special plot points or quests or entire character arcs to tell us NPC #1 is black, homosexual and votes red or blue, when in reality, I don't give a flying fudge about any of that. I want to care about NPC #1 for other reasons than some forced inclusion that looks more like a box being checked off on a list (looking at Andromeda and Bioware).

I would say the perfect inclusion of a homosexual character in a game was Ellie from TLOU's base game. We get mild hints in the game, but unless you're looking for it you wouldn't really notice. Instead you develop an attachment to the character for a number of other reasons and the character is in no way defined by their sexuality or being female. They're just human.

+1

Yes and no. LGBT people are still at risk of getting aggravation even in supposedly tolerant societies if they give any hint of it in public, whether it's the smallest show of affection for their partner or in the case of trans people who don't "pass" well enough, simply existing in public. "At risk" can be anything from a passive-aggressive under-one's-breath insult to being pushed, spat on, assaulted and even murdered. Society is tolerant on some levels but there's still enough of an element of "but don't dare give any hint of it in public" because some people consider stuff that is perfectly normal for non-LGBT people to suddenly be promoted to "forcing it down our throats".

OTOH, are fantasy role-playing games the best medium for this? Some subtle amount of inclusion, maybe; caveats are reasons already mentioned by many which is most people are fairly relaxed until someone starts preaching. Nobody plays video games to be preached at.