Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback (Patch 9) On identity and whether it's even worth having in its existing form

Oh, and going back to the original post:




I don't know how it happened, but we are now arguing about the exact opposite of what OP proposed, that being MORE misgendering and characters characterising you based on s*x, not gender. Now we are talking about removing all gendered language referring to the player character.


And all of a sudden it is not just a couple lines talking about the PC anymore, but all conversation, or immersion is broken because there is no consistency in the world.

I do have views on this, but that’s straying into real world issues rather than talking about the game. So apologies for not engaging with this question. It’s not that I don’t think it’s valid or important, just that this forum isn’t the place. I will just say that it is not hypocrisy to view trans inclusion in the game as being more important than the upset felt by people who don’t want to see such representation. It’s a substantive moral position with which people can and do disagree, but would only be hypocritical, or at least inconsistent, if the reason I was advocating for such representation was that I believed everyone should feel equally validated and unchallenged by the game, and that’s not where I’m coming from.


I agree it’s not much, but it’s a lot more than nothing if only because it’s generating this debate. And personally, I find it important and rewarding when the game gives me concrete hooks on which to hang my head canon, however minor. Is it enough? Not in my opinion, though obviously some people already think it’s too much.

One last thing before I shut myself up on this topic, as I’ve seen at least one post making the unfortunately too common suggestion that excluding trans representation would be excluding “politics”. Even if the latter were desirable - and I think it would make for a very dull game - it’s not possible, and thinking that a game or other product that doesn’t challenge your politics somehow isn’t political seems to me to be like someone thinking that only they and people who talk like them don’t speak with an accent. Given that trans folk exist, choosing in 2023 to show the setting as one in which they don’t or where they are hidden or without stories worth telling is just as politically loaded as including them, and there are plenty of people who will find their lack just as jarring as others find their presence.

I hope you are not referring to me because I never said that THIS is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is to include non-binary ideas by restricting the perceptional freedom of others. Even more so physical freedom. Inclusion at the cost of exclusion - that is what I was talking about. But you are right that there is nothing in the game right now to fit into that category. I have no problem with them adding an optional choice. But again, I was just saying that we need to consider that there might be people who are justly alarmed by this direction in development, because there are IRL and media examples where things got pretty absurd.

Okay, I know that I said I’d shut up but I clearly didn’t explain myself well so I will try one more time. I was indeed responding to you and I think we do disagree (though respectfully I hope!) as what I was trying to say is that “inclusion at the cost of exclusion” is not necessarily hypocrisy. It might be if one thought that inclusion was a good in and of itself and should be extended equally to all viewpoints, values, identities and so on, but I don’t and personally am happy to prioritise inclusion of trans representation over the alarm of those who are disturbed by it and don’t see any inconsistency there. Of course, I wish that people weren’t upset and disturbed by such representation and would prefer everyone to be happy, but unfortunately that’s not going to be the case and I’m not in favour of compromising on trans representation to calm the distress of those who don’t want to see it, however good or poor their reason (that is, I don’t think there is any reason for not wanting to see trans representation in game that I would accept as good enough to justify excluding it).

Larian as the content creators of course need to decide how they’re going to balance the views of people like myself with those who disagree, but I’m just a member of the gaming public so am in the fortunate position of not having to accomplish this admittedly tricky and sensitive task. I’m just expressing my view so that Larian can take it into consideration along with everyone else’s.

I get your point, thank you for clarification

I suppose I might as well chime back in and mention that, since the concept of identity is regarded as "fluid" (further frustrating those who are already up in arms against it), then if the game were to provide options (via a classic Magic Mirror, for example), to alter it, then it all becomes even less coherent since the world restructures itself around the PC yet again and you can potentially have a male-coded romance scene first and then a female-coded one (I still have no clue what it takes into account for a non-binary character. Sex? Defaulting to a female one because it's first on the list?).

As for the Dragonborn, their appearance is still rather sexually dimorphic, with the males being wider and bulkier in frame with masculine proportions in shoulders and hips, and females being more slender and subdued. Plus the voices, which would realistically be, on average, lower than for most other humanoids, but still affected by different vocal cord development. While the voice options we are given are not gender-locked, it was already a gimmick back in the original BG games' days. I never really thought much of it apart from being there mostly for humorous purposes.

Earlier someone also mentioned Mizhena from Siege of Dragonspear. Honestly? My by then even less world-conscious arse simply read that character as the stereotypical "woman who was brought up as a boy" trope, which isn't unheard of and is something that would make perfect sense in the setting, and was confused as to why people were, well, confused and angry. With how that interaction was written, it was just vague enough to not be something out of Dragon Age: Inquisition where there's little guessing as to what the writers are saying there. I guess it remains a headcanon of mine to this day.

As for the question of why can the concept of gender identity and its inclusion bother some (potentially offensive?):


Also (NSFW):

So, continuing with my research into the matter, as misguided as it may seem to some (many?), I've messed around a bit more to check certain things:

- Non-Boolean:


- Disguise Self and more on perception:


Honestly, in this day and age, seeing a more or less well-known developer actually go against the new norm for once will be a refreshing sight. When something is added to just adhere to the "accepted" values and is added rather sloppily, should it even be there? If it simply has to, I think there should be an "appearance-based pronouns" checkbox or something. Wouldn't that actually encompass more, if it were added? I am ranting at this point, I suppose, and I may have crossed the line on an occassion or two as it is, so I am gonna stop here - just wanted to share what I've found out out of mostly morbid curiosity. Happy New Year to everyone.

Let me tell you a story, in the early days of D&D, we found a chain mail, it was good probably magical, but in any case, one of the male fighters tried it and it looked like a armour... so then i tried it, as a female elf, and it dident look at all like what the male fighter had, it was now a chainmail bikini...

We can smile at this, and we should, couse we are playing a fantasy game, where the heroes is chaddier and the heroins are whensier... and its not said in a mean politcal way, its just part of the nerdy fantasy setting, where boob armour is a thing... its a game where in spells as a desciptor is evil no matter what you do, and it has nothing about what right or wrong, its just part of the fantasy fact, it just is...

Im not going to tell you how you play your game or how you have fun... but please, leave fantasy to be fantasy, allow a chad to be a chad, or boob armour to exist... its escapism and just for funs and giggles


PS to play devils advocate, if you want to be a IT, and you put on a cursed item that switch your gender... what do you turn out as ?, or would you be immune as you are technicaly gender neutral ?

Some folk in this thread seem to have the view that BG3 shouldn't address gender identity at all. I know responding to that view may not be exactly on topic, but I think it's important to discuss and if you'll bear with me I'll try to get back to the topic of the thread by the end. Though I certainly wouldn't blame anyone for skipping this extremely long post . Particularly as I'd said twice before I was going to shut up on this topic - oath broken!

In case you're still with me, though, here goes ...

One argument that has been made is that we shouldn't have trans characters explicitly in the game as debates about gender identity are a modern phenomenon and/or specific to certain locations. I don't think that's true, but even if it were it wouldn't be relevant. The Forgotten Realms is not a historical setting, and for all locations on the world of Toril are often inspired by real past societies it has no obligation to reflect them in any specific ways. The setting is a collaboratively created multiverse which has already changed significantly, and is continuing to be shaped and experienced in 2023 by people who quite naturally will want to explore themes and ideas of interest to them now within that setting.

Others have said they just want escapist fun. I personally don't see any reason why trans characters and escapist fun should be in any tension whatsoever, whereas some things others find escapist fun I find, for example, problematically sexist and therefore jarringly political. So, given that there will be a host of different ideas of what constitutes escapist fun, I consider it fortunate that BG3 isn't (just) trying to be that. While we all want some uncomplicated excitement and adventure in our fantasy, to my mind it would be shallow and uninteresting if it didn't also have deeper themes or encourage us to think about our own world differently by showing us aspects of it distorted through the prism of an alternative reality.

So I'm glad that the Forgotten Realms in general, and the Baldur's Gate series in particular, do aspire to be that more complex sort of fantasy, mixing fun with serious themes. They let us explore, as has been mentioned already in this thread, structural sexism in drow society and racism in how tieflings and representatives of races considered monstrous are treated. We can find stories of slavery, oppression, corruption, terrorism, misuse of power, murder, religion and nature versus artifice. And there's also your old good vs evil or chaos vs order and what those actually mean in practice. I can't see any obvious reason why, unlike these, themes of gender identity should automatically be considered off limits.

So, for me, the question then becomes what purpose exploring such themes in the setting would have. And there seem to be lots of possible things that a role-playing game like BG3 might want to do by including trans characters. For example:

• Enable non-trans people to put themselves imaginatively in the position of a character who doesn't feel comfortable with the gender they have been assigned, or the body in which they were born.
• Let trans people roleplay someone of the same gender identity as themselves and so fully express themselves through their character.
• Imagine for both trans and non-trans players what a world in which trans people are free to be themselves without fear or stigma might look like.
• Give trans players a safe space in which to be themselves (or someone else but with their gender identity!) without facing the stigma or abuse that many encounter in the real world.
• Help those of us who aren't usually forced to confront it consider how deeply gender, or a gender binary, is ingrained in our language and our thinking.
• Encourage players to recognise and question their preconceptions and prejudices around gender identity.
• Demonstrate to trans players and to everyone else that the creators of the game recognise that there are trans people and that they deserve representation.
• Imagine what life for a trans character might be like on Toril or the Realms more generally, and how it might resemble or differ from life in our own. For example, as people have mentioned, Toril has (rare?) magic that seems able to fundamentally change the sex of one's body, as well as spells like Disguise Self that let characters convincingly change their appearance to resemble that of different genders of various races. Would all trans characters actually want to use such items or spells? And if they wanted them, would they have access to them or would it be rare and restricted? And if the latter, how might that affect the choices that trans characters make? Might a wizard or warlock trans character have taken up magic or signed a pact to access such magic? Might a trans rogue have taken up crime to steal a magic item they thought might help them, or enough money to buy it or pay a wizard for a spell? How would a non-binary character feel about the fact that even that magic reflects a binary understanding of gender? How would the experience of a person previously comfortable with their gender identity but who was (unwillingly) subject to a curse like that on the Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity differ from that of someone who was born trans, and how would their perspective be changed as a result of the curse?

In my view, any or all of the above are things a role playing game set in the Forgotten Realms could interestingly do.

Does BG3 in its EA form do all of these things? No. It does only a few of them, and then only very superficially.

Is it obliged to do all of them by full release? No, while I think all these would be valid for the game to take on if it wanted, it's also dealing with lots of other stuff and it would be unreasonable to ask all this of it too, quite apart from the fact that some of them are in tension with others.

Would it be okay to do none of them? I think the answer to that is also "no". In the context in which the game is being created, Larian cannot plead ignorance of questions around acceptance and representation of trans people, so ducking the issue entirely would seem either cowardly or pointedly dismissive. To lots of people, and especially I'd imagine to trans people, it would be a glaringly obvious omission in a game which lets us play as an elf, a halfling, a tiefling or a githyanki, to then have no variations on gender beyond allowing us to specify whether our character is male or female. Particularly, as I have argued above, given that there are interesting and valid purposes for including themes of gender identity in the game.

So, as per the question initially posed, is it worth having acknowledgement of gender identity in the game at all, if it's only what we have now in EA? I'd say yes, given I think having nothing at all would be unacceptable. It at least gives players wanting to play a trans/non-binary character (whether they're trans or not themselves) some in-game acknowledgement of who their character is, which always somehow feels more satisfying than having to entirely head canon something. And simply playing the game with those characters can help prompt some thinking about what being trans in the Realms (and in Faerun specifically) might be like. And it hopefully does something to help trans people feel seen and respected. And at the very least, it gets us thinking and talking about how a game like BG3 should actually deal with representation of gender identity, rather than ignoring the topic entirely.

As I've previously said in this thread, I really hope the full release will go further and do better in its representation of trans characters in the game world as, apart from anything else, I think there is a lot of interesting potential there. But in the meantime, I do think that the something we have in early access is better than nothing.

As I alluded to in passing in my post above, I think the Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity in BG1 raises all kinds of interesting and difficult questions about sex and gender, which goes to show that just because something is designed for fun and giggles (which it surely was) doesn't mean it can't also be thought-provoking and potentially political.

For example, does the Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity basically change your body to have the "opposite" genitalia, secondary sexual characteristics and even chromosomes? If so, then we'd probably now characterise it as changing sex rather than gender. If I, as a cis woman, put on the girdle and suddenly had the body of a man, would I then *be* a man, or would I still be a woman in the body of a man, and in that case how would I be different from a trans woman? If a trans woman puts on the girdle, does she cease to be trans, and if not why not? *Would* everyone who put on the girdle (including non-binary folk) still feel as though they were the same gender as before, and if they previously didn't experience gender dysphoria would they then begin to do so, or for some people might the fact that their body changes drive a change in their experienced gender identity? Or does the magic of the girdle actually change your mind in some way so that you are comfortable in your new body? And if so does it do so by aligning your experienced gender identity with your new sex, or by swapping your gender identity as well meaning a trans person who previously experienced gender dysphoria might still experience it but in another direction? And, indeed, as you asked what effect if any would a gender identity (as opposed to biological sex) changing magic have on non-binary folk if it "swaps" your gender, rather than aligning gender with your new biological sex? Would it leave your gender identity untouched or might it impact it in complex and unpredictable ways depending on how exactly you experienced your gender? How would the public existence of such an object/curse/spell affect the philosophy and language around sex and gender in Faerun? Surely it would, as people would need to find ways to talk about those affected by it.

I'm not even going to try to talk about how such a curse might affect intersex individuals, and suspect that while considering the possibility of a Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity might work as a simple framework for some interesting thought experiments about sex and gender identity, the girdle as a concept can't support a similar discussion of intersexuality and it would be trivialising the questions that individuals with one of the variety of intersex conditions face to even attempt one.

Of course, it's not really a sophisticated enough conceptual tool to fully address questions of sex and gender either, and it would be surprising if it were given it's basically a joke item But still, it shows that from the first Baldur's Gate game, the franchise has been raising questions about gender identity, even if it was doing so unintentionally (or was it ...?) and only in the minds of some of its players!

That's assuming we even have chromosomes in the Forgotten Realms. As someone who never replays BG II without a girdle handy, I'd really be tickled if it made an appearance in BG3. But the question remains, how does magic, and established magic like the girdle, and Edwin's quest change the dynamic any story incorporating transgender characters. If I remember correctly there's even a subrace of elves who can change their sex every night. Of course because it's new to the setting, and the zeitgeist we currently live in, it's difficult not to see it overtaking any story it's added to.

A bit of an aside but for some of the same reasons I don't like the playersexual characters in BG3, the absence of a lot of these themes from Cyberpunk 2077 really irked me. Oh you don't like sexing men? I can pop down to the shop and we'll be good to go.

There are genres and settings that are actually designed to engage with certain stories, when you mix them together you're making a variation or subversion of the genre your working in to comment on another genre.

I agree with you, its all interesting, but the problem isnt that, the problem is for it to work in the game, it needs certain predefined statements, the code has to know... everything else dosent matter, couse if it the code dosent know, we have problems ;P

My 2 cents:

1) The OP's logic is undeniable. It is not a feature I like and for sure it is not a feature I would put in a game I would, hypothetically, develop.

buuuuuut

2) It is a feature that influences only and exclusively people who actively want to engage with it. Unlike other features that break immersion whether you want to engage with them or not, if you create a character that is going to have their sex and identity coinciding, then your game is never going to be influenced by the issue OP highlighted.

So yeah, I don't think is a good feature but since it is going to influence people only if they want it to influence them, I see no particular point on why should I want it to be removed.

That doesn’t sound to me like a problem as such, just that features relating to gender identity, like any other features, need to be coded once it has been decided that they should be included in the game. And that there might need to be compromises on how many such features are included or on how the ones that are included are implemented given constraints on time and resources, but again that’s hardly peculiar to this specific case .

Wasn't Edwin turned into a woman as a curse? And then certain characters (Cernd, if I recall correctly?) would make fun of him? Revising that as an identity discovery journey seems to me like the attempts to rewrite Grencia from Cowboy Bebop who was a man that was cruelly experimented upon into a "trans" character in the recent reboot...

...Which is all fun and games (being sarcastic here) when you limit it to media franchises, but since we are touching real-world subjects at this point, it also evokes the recent trend of "transing" historical figures - for the most part powerful and influential women, apparently, because you cannot be powerful and influential and display stereotypically (by someone's standards) masculine traits and affinities and a, gasp, woman according to the oh-so-progressive views on gender these days. I suppose the fact that I am not exactly a fan of it all (hence my poorly veiled displeasure at the addition in BG3) is somewhat apparent by now.

Anyway, as for the girdle of masculinity/femininity question raised above, I guess one can assume that it would revert a hormonally imbalanced/DSD-afflicted male into a hormonally imbalanced/DSD-afflicted female. Basically, a femboy will turn into a bearded lady and vice versa, or something along those lines, or one mutation will be replaced with another. It's probably easier to just cast Polymorph Self or get willingly transformed into a hermaphrodite (with more of a masculine build, though) of an illithid at that point. We could also tackle the spontaneous polymorphs that wild magic introduces - BG1: EE had the wild mage mentor character in Neera's questline who mentions that without wild magic he "would have never experienced the joy of being a woman". Which sounds a little fetishistic (probably unintetionally, or meant to be humorous (remember when we had humour? Been a while, it feels like), as it was written prior to Beamdog going all out with Siege of Dragonspear and BG2:EE...) and hits somewhat close to home with the current views on the whole debacle.

I think a lot of people would bag on 'Edwina' but I think a lot of that is because he's a misogynist who was turned into a woman. I don't actually remember his quest very well, but I don't think it was a curse but a consequence of misreading a magic scroll. The girdle is cursed though, and I think it's flavor text sets its origin as a prank on some macho blowhard. Being cursed to become a woman is certainly a classical happening though, I'd be interested in Baldur's Gate's take on Tiresias, it's the sort of thing you'd expect from a certain type of fantasy.

I am going to eat flak for this, but I agree. Not because of the reasons you list but because of another. A corporation that is catering to make money should not care about the opinions of those that comprise less then >1% and ultimately wont make a dent in their bottom line. They can be offended all they want, i could not care less, nor could i care more. People say it does not effect them- YOUR WRONG IT DOES. The more they spent money on catering to those who do not matter, means we get less content. I may be selfish, but i would rather get levels 14-16 then a system that cares about pronouns as 99% of the players would benefit from them. Everyone else can cry me a river.

Well, one in a hundred players is still a lot of people. And it's not only trans people who want to see their representation in the game. I mean, I'm here arguing for it and I'm not trans. You're right, it does seem a bit selfish to say that I and everyone else who wants to see Faerun include trans representation "do not matter". And I certainly don't think that all that should matter to a games company is what makes an impact on their bottom line! Plus the suggestion that the creative decisions of a company should be determined by what the majority of its players want and it should ignore others opens a can of worms. I mean, how many players do a murder hobo run? I never would, and personally wouldn't put a high priority on the game letting you kill pretty much anyone without completely breaking the plot, but I'm not going to resent the effort Larian put into this as some players do want it. More players, I think I've heard, follow a "good" path, but I think it would be a pity if, because of this, Larian decided not to bother with satisfying and complex "evil" options.

Of course it's understandable that you'd prefer Larian not to prioritise stuff you personally aren't interested in. In fact in another active thread there are forum members saying they aren't interested in explicit sex scenes and therefore are hoping Larian don't spend lots of time and resources on those for just the reasons you give: ie that means less resource for features they would want to see. Hell, for all I accept that Larian are right to spend time on content that I personally have zero interest in, I also would be delighted if they decided to prioritise the stuff I care about.

But to say I and anyone else who doesn't agree with you, who might be in a smaller minority of players who want specific content, can "cry you a river" if we don't get it does seem ... harsh.

So gonna break this down a bit. Firstly, I believe that companies should be held to moral standards when it comes to the content they produce, and it's unwise and unhealthy to deem it acceptable for them to only consider money as a motivation/drive to include stuff.

Secondly and more substantively, it inevitably won't just be trans people who benefit from the inclusion of the system. I'll direct you to accessibility features like closed captioning/subtitles. The percentage of gamers who are hard of hearing is probably pretty low all told. I'm certainly not hard of hearing and I love having subtitles on. I never play a game without them. When they introduced the expanded gender choices, my second playthrough after a tiefling paladin was a non-binary drow sorcerer. I thought that from a roleplay perspective it would be interesting to play as a drow who was assigned female but identifies as non-binary. Even if the game doesn't let me engage with the question of gender any further, it allows me to think about and engage with the character concept in a way I wouldn't have been able to before. I never even considered the concept before but it was a satisfying playthrough and I really enjoyed the character.