Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Latest News Gathering the Party - Community Update #2

I love that you can list off everything you "didn't" notice lol

Yeah, because a lot of twitters pointed out what I didn't notice...¿Didn´t you read my previous post? I mean.. you just quoted it o.O

Ah, it's cuz of the twitters XD

Look, I´m not afraid of a friendly discussion, but you are not making any sense and I think you do not want to discuss in good faith because I sense some underlining patronizing and mockery in what you´re saying that I do not get, so I think we should move on.

You should stick to your usual "I´ll post to call idiots to the ones that do not think the same as me" At least that is easily understandable.

Ah ok, you didnt notice it.

i did.
does that cancel out the opinion of everyone else?
And does it not change the role of the story?

Well only if you do not care about internal consistency.
Not all stories are abstract theatre plays, some of us understadn this. Some of us are interrested in history, anthropology or just culture in general. And those of us that are, are taken out of the expirience by that.
Some of us also note the intention of those that made those pieces of media.

"But why", you ask.

That is, _Vic_, what your argument boils down to. "Why bother".

Please note this, this is an important point here. "It doesnt matter to the story", by which you want to say "Why get upset if it doesnt change the product".

To that i reply to you.
"Then why make the change in the first place"
Why not make the protagonist of the Dark Tower look like the Stereotypical western Hero he was discribed as in the Books. Why not NOT do those changes.
Afterall, it doesnt CHANGE the product according to you?

Why bow to one TASTE and not the other?

And thats just coming from your end. Not for me, since i care about the background of stories. I ofthen find them more compelling than the sotry themselves.
So no.
The background is only important if you do not care about it.
But thats not an argument. Thats like saying i dont care about a Video games soundtrack because im Deaf. Sorry to hear that, but i can hear and id rather not have the soundtrack of my Fantasy RPG be directed by Sido the German cringe rapper.

Ok, I get that the context could be of importance to enjoy a movie, a comic, a book, a videogame... It gives you some sense of familiarity or immersion. I get it.

What I cannot fathom is why is such a big deal when you change the colour of the skin of the character, the sexual option or the gender and not when you change eye colour, hairstyle or the accent.

I mean, Constantine is supposed to have a heavy ET British accent, and there wasn't a campaign against Keanu Reeves when he played this character in the movies or when DR who was portrayed by a man with a heavy Scottish accent; no one that made them close the Instagram and Twitter accounts the same way it happened with other recent cases because of the massive trolling.

ED: Not ET British, more of a cockney accent, they told me =P Still not how Keanu did it. And I do not say he acted poorly. I´ve seen worse. Gabriel knight games, anyone? Fantastic games, but you want to kill the MC after the first 10 minutes putting up with his fake southern-USA accent.

you cannot fathom. But youre not everyone.

ive given the example of DAI so im gonna bring it again: why does it bother me that theres "Black people" in DAI and it doesnt bother me that theres Redguards ins skyrim? Because one of those has context and the other one doesnt.
In Dragon age. roughly 50% of all random NPCs are black. By which i mean "African american" (rather than african)
This is not explained in any way.
There is no migration wave from anohter country, theres no ethnic group that has a distinct name, or another way of speaking. They are just simply the same people who live in a place that looks like its a Pastiche of Iceland and Englnad (Ferelden specifically) who are, for no reason, Black.

Meanwhile Redguards in Skyrim make sense. They share a border, they had the war of bendr'mahk going on, one of their cities was split Berlin style for a while. Theres context there, there arises Worldbuilding in story from that.

Meanwhile in Dragon Age it just takes you out of the expirience, it makes no sense and its obviously done to appeal to the progressive american audience who just want, for no in univese reason at all, the racial makeup of American big cities to be represented in a medieval fantasy setting.

Same thing with Wticher. Remembr when games journalists sperged out because there was no ethnic minorities in witcher? Which in itself is an americanism, theres also no italians in Witcher (besides that one nilfgaardian guy i guess), most of the people looked distinctiveley slavic, a nuance that passes by the average american obviously.
Then they actually had a darker skinned guy in the DLC because, big surpruse, he was supposed to be from a foreign country. Which is how you do those things. And no other way is valid as far as im concerned.

>Accent
That too matters.
it pisses me of when something is set in a particular place but the accents are all over the place. It takes me out of the expirience.
If id have gotten a euro for every time i heard someone complian that the Spanish characters in a movie speak with a mexican accent id be a rich man.

These things matter. You just have to pay attention, its obvious that you dont pay attention to every one of those details, but that doesnt mean that there isn someone out there that does.

Although black is obvious enough, how would you know a background character is or isn't gay, Spanish, Muslim etc? You don't unless they're making a point of it, in which case the point needs to have some sort of relevance otherwise it sounds gratuitous or incongruous. I actually just added the latter as I was thinking of a less controversial example, such as Mass Effect's Anderson announcing he was born in London, but it was pertinent; the reason I went "well okay then" is because he announced it in his very strong American accent. But I now digress.

But back to the point, ish, for example how many forum members would you know are any of the above? Some may or may not have mentioned any of that stuff but maybe not enough to make a lasting impression, which is the sort of thing I was getting at. Whereas people might be more likely to remember if someone announced it when there was no relevance to the subject matter, however controversial it is or isn't.

I an not Spanish native speaker. Argentine Spanish i can understand easily, had ski lessons on my last vacation on Bariloche with a Spanish speaking instructor, Spain Spanish too, is easy for me to understand. Watched ElitE series in original Spanish audio. But Mexican Spanish by some unknown reason, i can't understand.



Race is not just skin color. Africans with albinism doesn't look white. People try to impose that every game should have the same demographics of New York, even when the game is historical. Eg : Kingdom Come Deliverance got criticized by the lack of diversity. And with Cyberpunk 2077, they included Haitians and other Black groups and ... Got criticized. Note that the creator of cyberpunk TTRPG is Mike Pondsmith. A black dude.

Racial tensions between whites and blacks are a thing which happens mostly on Americas, on other parts of the world, the culture, in group conflicts and history are completely different. When i mean Americas, i don't mean only US which had even a civil war due slavery. Haiti had the biggest slave revolution of the history, Brazil got like 20x more slaves than US and when the Princess Isabel ended slavery, the royal family suffered a coup and lost the power. On Argentina, they got send in front lines without firearms and so on. I don't mind "inclusivity" when it adds more stuff, not take out stuff and they don't wanna export conflicts to all over the world...

i mean by taking out options is Dragon Age Inquisition. No more brothels, the straight male romance option is just a ultra masculine woman and that is it. And taking out options is not a bad thing just on "diversity/wokeness"... Baldur's Gate 2 had around 300 spells. Dragon Age Origins, around 100. Dragon Age Inquisition, around 20. And only wish on BG2 could do more stuff than all DA:I spells. Elder Scrolls Morrowind had a lot of spell effects and weapons which got removed from further games. Skyrim lacks polearms, levitation, mark/recall, interventions, spell making, etc.

PS : Monotheism on Forgotten realms makes no sense.

PS 2 : Trans guys in a world where people can assume dragon forms and even cast reincarnation makes no sense either.

I agree with you on the skin colour thing. It has indeed a deep effect on your experience as a human being, it is not just a physical marker, it is a cultural one too, and when fiction ignores this, it can get strange (though if you think about this, maybe a fantasy universe where there are actual non-human races, like elves and dwarfes, maybe humans will only see each other as human regardless of the tone of their skin).

On the transgender and monotheist stuff, I disagree.

I assume you mean the Absolute story line when you mentioned monotheism (something I am very curious about by the way, give me some new non-human / morally ambiguous deity). Yes, monotheism as Christians think about it makes no sense within the Forgotten Realms cosmos, but monotheism as a sense of patron deities, like elves venerate Corellon, orcs Gruumsh et cetera, that is very much present. They don't deny the existence of other gods, only they prefer the worship their own creator deity for obvious reasons. This is the reason I am excited to find out why the goblinoids decided to worship the Absolute (I mean they have their own creator deity). I am also curious about the Absolute's identity, maybe an older deity or group of deities is trying to rebrand themselves to gain more power (there were examples for this in Faerun canon).

About transgender people in Faerun. Magic is not a mundane tool for everybody. Just because a 20th level wizard can cast wish that doesn't mean nobody is starving in the Forgotten Realms. A transmuter mage can craft a philosopher stone and produce gold from tin, yet poverty is still a thing in Faerun. The same way, just because transgender people have a much more ideal way to assume their real gender identity (via magic) that doesn't mean that a true polymorph spell is available for everybody (or that cursed belt of gender shifting from the previous titles).

Man, I hope you can get the girdle of gender, the helmet of opposite alignment and the jester's armour in BG3. It would be a nice touch.

Faerun is not a homogeneous thing. But in certain places of Faerun magic seems mundane like electricity in real life. Netheril is the most iconic example. Thay too. Making a analogy is like the "gender" controversy on cyberpunk 2077. Technology is so high on cyberpunk that except by extremely poor people, gender is irrelevant. On "high technological" or "high magical" settings, everything that we understand about gender would change completely.

I get that some people prefer low magic settings, but D&D is not a low magic game... Of course, you can try adapt it to a low magic setting by banning certain classes, a lot of spells and houseruling a lot of things to make magic more rare, risky and expensive, but you got the idea.

Yeah, Forgotten Realms is not a low-magic setting, but it is not that high magic either. Magic is rare. It is special. Wizards are rare. Sorcerers even rarer.

In both your examples (Thay and Netheril), magic is only "mundane" for a privileged few. Let's look at Netheril. There were the floating cities with the mages and apprentices and also there were the land towns with the masses of the common people living in the shadow of those floating cities. Not like every peasant had some cantrip at the ready.

Though, it could be different with races who have innate magic, like the drow for instance. They have probably a more intimate relationship with magic, than humans.

You're missing the point of the image @_vic_ posted. This only seems jarring because it conflicts with your politics. If it didn't you wouldn't notice. It only seems political when it clashes with your politics. If you counted 50% black, how many redheads did you count? How many people with green eyes? The creators of the game had vision of a world where the color of one's skin is no different from the color of one's hair or eyes.

And for some reason that seems jarring. It seems very salient to you whereas it doesn't to me. And the reason it doesn't seem salient to me is explained by one of your other comments, that the people in the Witcher look Slavic. But Americans like me don't see that: slavs, aryans, nordics, italians, celts and alpines all look 'white' . We've lost our ability to make the distinctions that seem so important to parts of the European right. (although I've spent enough time reading right wing accounts of race to know those names and can, unfortunately, see what they see) So the idea of a world where these sort of distinctions don't matter and don't need to be explained doesn't seem so fantastic and/or jarring.

Similarly, I think you might not realize when right wing assumptions make into games and other forms of fantasy. When I read Heinlein I'm listening to a lecture on the virtues of free market capitalism. When I read Larry Niven I'm getting schooled in utility maximization. The point of Alan More's The Watchmen was to let left wingers like me realize that their form of escapism is proto fascist. What kind of person decides to put on a hood and hang criminals? What are we saying when we create a fantasy world where the uber wealthy, the Tony Starks and Bruce Waynes, decide to use their money to save the world? And eugenics? Wow. Video games are the place where eugenics and related theories of genetic determinism thrive. I'm stronger, smarter and wiser than anyone else because of gifts my father passed along to me? I was just born better than others? If I had a child with another Bhallspawn would those powers be magnified. And Nethril? The creator of that setting has said in no uncertain terms that the setting is a reflection of his fundamentalist christian worldview. Same with Dragonlance -- one of the co creators wanted to convey an evangelical message, spread the good word: the gods are coming back.

TL;DR -- politics are everywhere in video games, your politics determine whether you see that and what you see.

Bingo. Every single person has their own inherent beliefs, biases, and blind spots. The things people create tend to have those beliefs and biases implemented, even if only on a subconscious level. It's only really something the player notices when it conflicts with their own beliefs, biases and blind spots. Just about any game with a plot contains a "political" message, it's just harder to notice if it's one aligned with your own beliefs and biases, because that seems "normal" to you, and is thus invisible.

It's not just that. It's very noticeable when it's being forced in but doesn't actually add anything to the game, and then its highlighted in the marketing.

Completely true. Just as in real life.

I doubt that many development teams sit down to decide what political message they will be conveying; whatever it is likely emerges naturally from the composition of the team.

Beyond that, I'm sure that specific decisions about how to portray characters are just as likely to be influenced by marketing considerations. The more you spend on a title, the broader the market you need to appeal to; not political, commercial.

As a rule, I would say that ( to my eyes ) most characters in all the RPGs I can remember have been pretty average looking, which is a reasonable reflection of what you see around you. Most of the time I have not been able to make a better looking player character, and the devs usually use the same tools.

Hair has always been a particularly problematic area, both in modelling and rendering anything convincing within the processor budget, and in dealing with the interactions with character and clothing. Short hair is obviously more easily handled, so it often dominates as a matter of practicality.

I actually trigger more on the random use of accents than looks, since in the real world accents are a better origin identifier than skin/eye/hair color or any intrinsic racial characteristic. It doesn't really matter which accent you apply to which fantasy group, so long as its invariant. Not necessarily easy to manage, as voice actors are not always able to do a wide variety of accents well, and those commissioning them may not really be familiar enough with the accents to select for them. I know I would have difficulty identifying the regional origin of most non-British speakers of English simply by accent.

I'm seeing two women in the banner above me. What gives? This is medieval fantasy -- why the women in armor and not raising children and/or doing needlepoint? Why are they even wearing pants and not skirts? What does this add to game? Why are these images being forced upon me?

Did you notice? If this were, say, 1960 you would have.

That's easy: "foreign". :p Which also includes anyone born south of Durham!

The gameplay looked cool from the short video we got of it, all the dungeons and dragons things you get to use. I am still looking for the definitive difference between divinity and dnd, it doesn't look like anything other than a reskinned divinity game. I was really worried about, after playing divinity 2, the uhm. Horrible inventory system, the source mechanics. pretty much everything that is not combat, although even that is often misinterpretive. just some feedback, not trying to be negative here, Hey you guys are working with a new engine and you have lots of extra hands. ok I'll check it out.