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You can already add beards to female characters, add make-up to male ones, all companions are "player-sexual" instead of simply straight, there isn't a single thing tied to genre or sex, they even recently decoupled sex for genre in the latest update. I am perfectly ok with more inclusivity, and I judge the game has reached a point where it has done everything possible to account for the maximum of people. How do you even judge "perceived" sex? How far would Larian have to go to please you?

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Originally Posted by Sigi98
You cannot equalize being marginalized, and being made aware of other people being marginalized, as being somehow equally uncomforable and harmful. It is the entitlement of thinking that how other people live their lifes not only affects your life, but because you are affected by it you somehow get a say in what is allowed.

But in the case I've mentioned it is clear as day that the group that gets cancelled for their views is marginalized. What you say is the entitlement of thinking that a marginalized group is not the same as a marginalized group. Double standards, imo. Or am I wrong?

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Originally Posted by Sozz
I get that, I'm not saying the option shouldn't be available to you, just that without it being meaningfully integrated into the world, what are you really being given? A lot of people create elaborate head canons about their characters, and this seems like little more than that.

You're being given a world in which nobody gives you stupid glances, behind-your-back whispers or direct in-your-face judgement for something that is none of their business. You're being given the opportunity to for once just be, instead of having to constantly explain yourself in the face of bigotry. And lasty, you are simply being acknowledged for the person you are. Of course its not realistic with the real world we live in. But who cares? Its a fantasy world, nothing is realistic.
Nobody can tell me that they like to not be acknowledged as a person, no matter their gender, ethnicity or political views.

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Originally Posted by Sigi98
Of course its not realistic with the real world we live in. But who cares? Its a fantasy world, nothing is realistic.
Nobody can tell me that they like to not be acknowledged as a person, no matter their gender, ethnicity or political views.
This is where the argument always falls apart for me, saying that it's not realistic isn't a good defense. I care. If you want the world to engage with the issue, that's good, if you just want it be blind to you, so you can play pretend, that's another. I think in a world of magic, what is and isn't possible should become part of the lore, the narrative, the themes at play. I don't think they should just tack on things because of something going on in our mundane world.

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Originally Posted by neprostoman
Originally Posted by The_Red_Queen
Originally Posted by neprostoman
But for someone it might be a very alarming thing. Lets at least consider their POV as well.

It does undeniably seem to be the case that there are people for whom the mere inclusion of transgender content is upsetting, and I don’t actively want to make anyone uncomfortable. But this doesn’t seem to be a situation in which fence-sitting is possible. Either transgender identities are excluded from the game to avoid challenging prejudices at the cost of inclusion or representation for an (admittedly very roughly) estimated 1% of people and those who support them. Or such content is included at the cost of discomfort for those who would prefer to ignore the fact that not everyone feels they fit into a neat gender binary. However much I understand that there are those who would prefer option one, I’m always going to pick the latter option and am happy to see Larian and other companies doing the same.

So, are there people that have a reason to be against the inclusion policies? What do you think? Because from your message I get the vibe that you are clearly putting "people for whom the mere inclusion of transgender content is upsetting" to the foreground. I've read news about people whose life's were ruined because they didn't want to address seemingly men/women by certain pronounces. I think those people have the right to feel prejudice and concern and we should do our best to include them, and calm them, as well. Or else this is hypocrisy, imo.

P.S. If I didn't understand your post proper, please correct me and accept my apologies.


I personally hate real life politics pushed in to the games I play, so i do find the slip in of extra pronouns "worrying"
In the case of, I hope they leave it at player pronouns, especially in farun where there are spells to change gender, no one is going to be trapped in the wrong body.

I find it jarring and it would drag me out the game world and in to reality finding transgender people in game.

However, if its just pronouns for MC, and does not effect my individual game, im happy for the people who want it.

Just dont force it on me please

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Originally Posted by Sozz
Originally Posted by Sigi98
Of course its not realistic with the real world we live in. But who cares? Its a fantasy world, nothing is realistic.
Nobody can tell me that they like to not be acknowledged as a person, no matter their gender, ethnicity or political views.
This is where the argument always falls apart for me, saying that it's not realistic isn't a good defense. I care. If you want the world to engage with the issue, that's good, if you just want it be blind to you, so you can play pretend, that's another. I think in a world of magic, what is and isn't possible should become part of the lore, the narrative, the themes at play. I don't think they should just tack on things because of something going on in our mundane world.

then ignore that part of my argument if you please. the other part still stands.

......... I don't even know what I'm doing here. This kind of internet argument never leads anywhere. I'll leave you to it

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Originally Posted by Sigi98
You're being given a world in which nobody gives you stupid glances, behind-your-back whispers or direct in-your-face judgement for something that is none of their business. You're being given the opportunity to for once just be, instead of having to constantly explain yourself in the face of bigotry. And lasty, you are simply being acknowledged for the person you are. Of course its not realistic with the real world we live in. But who cares? Its a fantasy world, nothing is realistic.
This part? I'm not sure what I can say here; don't look to corporations for validation. The game doesn't know you, you're not playing yourself in the game, you're playing a character in the game that you want to project onto, fine, except for the important part of your comment which I responded to.

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Don't think about that way. It was interesting to read your thoughts on the matter.

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Originally Posted by neprostoman
Originally Posted by Sigi98
You cannot equalize being marginalized, and being made aware of other people being marginalized, as being somehow equally uncomforable and harmful. It is the entitlement of thinking that how other people live their lifes not only affects your life, but because you are affected by it you somehow get a say in what is allowed.

But in the case I've mentioned it is clear as day that the group that gets cancelled for their views is marginalized. What you say is the entitlement of thinking that a marginalized group is not the same as a marginalized group. Double standards, imo. Or am I wrong?

The thing is if you break it down, you have one group that wants their existence to be acknowledged and to live without having their very existence challenged, and you have another group that wants to deny the existence of those people. If the latter get their way, then they lose far more. Because its not just a matter of individual people. It extends to people who make policies and decisions about the lives of those marginalised people. Its like the climate change issue. The people who don't believe aren't equal to the ones who do.

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To be frank, I think there are enough BIG problems they still need to work on, that it would not be wise to include new dialogue choices of your character being misgendered.
I kind of dislike the idea of including trans options in a medieval setting already, but for the people that do want to play as a trans PC themselves, I kind of doubt that the majority come to a fantasy escapism game to be confronted more about their identity issues.

This would also have the problem, that many players, including me, might not even intend to be "trans" as a character when they pick female hairstyles etc on my male character. I just like longer hair, and while that is obviously culturally coded, long hair alone will not make people think you are female. I would be kind of annoyed if my Arnold Schwarzenegger Conan lookalike barbarian with long flowing locks and the bodytype of Halsin was first called "ma'am" in every conversation, simply I chose to use a female hair style.

This might be a fun idea if the game was a lot further along than it is, but at this point, I would prefer they write a great general story, fix all the issues still in the game (sneak attack issues, devils sight not working, ...) and just create a great game, instead of wasting a lot of time with little details. I mean, again, while this is an interesting idea, how many people who create a trans character in the game truly even WANT to be misgendered? And would you need to create a toggle for that to not ruin the game for those who don't?

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Gray Ghost, if you put it that way, it sounds pretty one-sided, true. So in the end one is asked to sacrifice something for the other. It works both ways still. I actually blame the media which always shows us the extremes, because for them it is all just views and subscriptions. I bet an average non-binary person would be easily accepted by an average male or female. frown

Last edited by neprostoman; 18/12/22 07:52 PM.
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Originally Posted by Gray Ghost
Originally Posted by neprostoman
Originally Posted by Sigi98
You cannot equalize being marginalized, and being made aware of other people being marginalized, as being somehow equally uncomforable and harmful. It is the entitlement of thinking that how other people live their lifes not only affects your life, but because you are affected by it you somehow get a say in what is allowed.

But in the case I've mentioned it is clear as day that the group that gets cancelled for their views is marginalized. What you say is the entitlement of thinking that a marginalized group is not the same as a marginalized group. Double standards, imo. Or am I wrong?

The thing is if you break it down, you have one group that wants their existence to be acknowledged and to live without having their very existence challenged, and you have another group that wants to deny the existence of those people. If the latter get their way, then they lose far more. Because its not just a matter of individual people. It extends to people who make policies and decisions about the lives of those marginalised people. Its like the climate change issue. The people who don't believe aren't equal to the ones who do.

The problem with that analogy is, that it is only valid if you are already of the opinion that their identity is valid. Right wing people see it more like you see schizophrenic people, where one may indeed be conviced of their delusions, but where it is not necessarily beneficial to the individual to affirm that identity.
I am not necessarily trying to provoke you here, but I think the asymmetry argument fails for that reason.

I don't care about adding more little options, like choosing pronouns etc, that is just a few lines of code, and obviously I appreciate more hairstyles, but rewriting conversations so that you can properly distinguish between s*x and gender of a character seems like a lot of work, that not that many players will benefit from. Sure, representation is nice, when it does not come at a cost. When you do not have a lot of development time and a lot still to do however...

For the same reason, I don't think it is problematic that you can not play a disabled character in the game etc
Even though a mounted fighter with a wheelchair instead of a warhorse sounds fun

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Regarding your second point, I actually agree with you. Particularly at this stage of development, trying to account for more permutations seems like a recipe for disaster. Though I think that a lot more players than people may assume would enjoy the experience of an in depth, reactive playthrough in a game that actually acknowledges a player character as trans, both trans players and cis players. I disagree with the notion that representtion shouldn't come at a cost, but at this stage, I genuinely think the cost would be too high. And there's also the added issue that I really don't trust Larian to be able to tackle the topic with the thought and nuance it deserves, so I think they're better off not going further than this.

Also if you think about it, you actually CAN play a disabled person, since there are at least two ways your character can lose their eye and suffer debuffs for it.

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You have hit upon the point of older crpg and rpg games laying dramatic, and sometimes excessive titles upon your character.

It's so the game can refer to you by a neutral title that contains no pronouns, and voice actors only had to record one set of lines. Avoid the issue by eliminating it as an issue. It's a shame larian missed this trick, then maybe they wouldn't be re-recording lines right now.

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Well, there's already a post on the Steam forums relaying that one player has been misgendered twice so far in the game. So, I don't think this 'non-binary selection' is implemented yet in game. I wonder whether they'll simply remove gendered pronouns from conversations or they'll need to re-record dialogue they've already recorded so far, at least for this new option anyway. It'll be quite the undertaking, I imagine.

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My English is bad, so I apologize if I am misunderstanding, but are you seriously saying they should rewrite the entire game to remove all pronouns?

How many players even are nonbinary, and how many of those would not buy the game if they are misgendered? That requires serious resources for NOTHING. And this is a world that is basically the european middle ages + monsters. Do you really want them to speak like modern Californians?

I am sorry, but if they do anything close to this, I am not playing the game and asking for a refund. I am fine with additional options that are not intrusive, but if you are rewriting the game for a tiny minority you are making the game worse in general, both directly and indirectly with wasted resources.

Misgendering is not the end of the world, especially if it is not even you, but a fictional character. At this point, people should just accept that the game is not perfect and accept it. There are far more important problems.

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Originally Posted by Qoray
My English is bad, so I apologize if I am misunderstanding, but are you seriously saying they should rewrite the entire game to remove all pronouns?

How many players even are nonbinary, and how many of those would not buy the game if they are misgendered? That requires serious resources for NOTHING. And this is a world that is basically the european middle ages + monsters. Do you really want them to speak like modern Californians?

I am sorry, but if they do anything close to this, I am not playing the game and asking for a refund. I am fine with additional options that are not intrusive, but if you are rewriting the game for a tiny minority you are making the game worse in general, both directly and indirectly with wasted resources.

Misgendering is not the end of the world, especially if it is not even you, but a fictional character. At this point, people should just accept that the game is not perfect and accept it. There are far more important problems.

To be honest, and I hate to say it, I think re-recording all that dialogue is a somewhat frivolous waste of resources. However, if they are going to do this, that's what they'd need to do. I suppose that in some lines of dialogue they could simply omit the gendered pronoun and and it would still sound fine. But some dialogue would need to be re-recorded. At least the dialogue would need to be re-recorded for those that toggle this option in character creation. As far as I imagine, no one that didn't toggle this option would even be exposed to these changes.

And to be fair to those that this feature is aimed at, I realize this is not a frivolous waste of resources to them, I'm only speaking from my perspective.

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The politics of this one means I'm not touching it farther than agreeing with Qoray, as is is fine but revoicing the game would not be worth it.

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It must be noted that there are, in reality, relatively few voice lines that use indirect reference of the player character - the vast, vast majority of all interactions are NPCs talking to you, where pronouns simply do not come into play. They only pop up when one NPC talks to another about you, and those instances are exceptionally rare, as things stand right now - so it's possible that Larian decided that the re-recoding work to add in a third line for each alternate pair that it applied to wasn't a huge ask. We don't know how big a task it was, but it may not be as big a task as folks think, possibly.

Someone asked earlier about people who may wish to play characters with a gender preference that doesn't match their sex, or a non-binary one, and what percentage of those people would actually care about the integrity and immersiveness of the world around them related to that - I feel as though it's not an insignificant group. Immersion in space, and a believable world are important to a lot of people when they sit down to play an RPG - a very large percentage, and that's going to hold true regardless of an individuals preferred gender identity.

The main gap is that for NB folks who have struggled with recognition, acknowledgement or poor treatment as a result, the positive feeling of having their game 'just know', universally, and be respectful, universally, may outweigh the negative they still genuinely do feel for the implausible breaks in immersion and world that such a unilateral change creates. This doesn't mean it's a good thing though; the ideal would be to have the game able to handle your identity, without breaking its own believability in the process, and that is an attainable goal... it just takes more work than a company may be willing to put in, if their only doing the base level implementation as a token PR-generation move. The unfortunate truth here is that people who have felt marginalised and denied in this way are often desperate enough to take what they're given and celebrate about it regardless... and PR departments know that.

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They have struggled with recognition for a reason, but that is as far as I will go here. I am fine with adding little features that do not really take time away, but rewriting the game actively makes the game worse for the 99% of other people. I don't think the number of lines that would need to be reworked matters here either (and btw, it is not just EA, you will have to multiply the number of lines by 6 or so). If you have to bring back people who are otherwise done with their job for a single line of dialogue, you are not paying for 5 min of work, but for travel etc and untimately have to keep paying them so they stay available in case you need to change lines again.

"Immersion in space, and a believable world are important to a lot of people when they sit down to play an RPG - a very large percentage, and that's going to hold true regardless of an individuals preferred gender identity."

Yes, but people in this medieval world not calling you "they" breaks immersion for less than 1% of players. I talked about wheelchairs earlier. About 4% of people have some sort of disability. So does the game have to add wheelchair options now, because it is completely unimmersive for some people otherwise? What about people who are fat or thin (we don't even have the Halsin body type yet, let alone weight and height sliders), or not exactly 25 like all the characters are for some reason. Given that it is a sequel, the game probably has a lot of older players, and about 30% of US adults are obese. If you want to add "immersion" it would be far easier to add it for more players, with less resources, and without taking away immersion from the rest, by implementing stuff like age, weight and height sliders in character creation.

If they put any more focus on non binary or anything like that, I am out. I don't want it in general, but when the game is still as broken, as it is, and releases so soon, I think focusing on something like that is frankly ridiculous. People don't play the game for the abstract "immersiveness", they play it for how immersive it is to them. And this change would not add to the immersiveness of 99% of players, and so yes, I agree it is just a PR move. In the end only Larian truly knows what costs this would create and how much it would improve sales, so maybe it is worth doing. But so far, I am not convinced

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