algroth

Inb4 you are able to unscrew and throw your pommel at enemies in Pillars 3.

This, I think, goes to the core of the problem So, let's consider this scenario: imagine we have two alternate realities that are exactly the same with the exception that an individual is born either male or female. Do you think this person would thirty years later be the *same* person in both realities, just with different genitals? You don't think their sex would inevitably condition their relationship with others, their acquaintances and social groups and the expectations set upon them? In the case of Deadfire particularly, this aspect can all amount to a character model, but for the sake of those who roleplay as opposed to using the main character as a player stand-in, sex or gender can determine a number of things with regards to a character's identity. Also if the game does reflect a difference between male and female in the setting and interactions (as is the case with the prohibition of female members in the Brotherhood of the Five Suns, or is likely to be the case with what romances are made available to the player), then for content reasons sex also determines more than just a choice of character model. As has been shown before though, the choice is not one of gender but one of sex - you are never made to choose your gender in the game. It's a distinction that could be worked on provided it is worked with enough subtlety or attention to not be a direct transposition of terms and politics of our current time bubble into this world, and if so it could also offer more diversity in the character that one wishes to roleplay as, or the ability for a non-cis player who views their character as their avatar to feel more represented by it in turn.

There's a few moments where Feargus rushes the tour so as to avoid revealing things about the project. Those are the moments I meant.

Anyone else try to pause through the "let's skip this" bits to try and see if they could get some more info on the Cainarsky project?

While i do not at all subscribe to the idea that everything about us is determined by society, this is not really relevant here. The point is that what you're describing is supposed to be some massive effect that shapes us at every step we take. Veer slightly to the left or to the right, and society immidiatly tries to put you back in your place. And that is something i simply do not see. Neither in my own experience, nor anywhere else. And to clarify, i'm not oblivious to the fact there are stereotypes, and some expectations and so on. But any of that is hardly enough to start inventing new genders. I think you are blowing a tad out of proportion the things I wrote above. You say I'm saying society will reprimand and correct you if you veer slightly left or right of an expected norm, but that ignores the fact that I do recognize plenty of diversity and choice within the boundaries set by society as to how men and women should be and act. If you step out of those broad boundaries, then you will meet friction, and at times cruelty, from certain groups in society. Stereotypes come from taking these expectations to an absurd degree, but that's not what I'm talking about here, I'm talking about gender roles. Personally I don't see how it is not a determining factor in the growth of any person, whether one recognizes it in their case or not, and also believe that your wording as I highlighted in my previous post shows you are not an exception to this rule. Likewise I do believe these are more openly challenged nowadays so the boundaries themselves are blurrier or more flexible than they have been in other times. All of this I offer as reasoning to why gender is important, and as a possible reason to why some people may not identify with their sex. Others might offer different reasons but it is something which I feel speaks to most non-cis people I know. Now, do I use this as a justification for "inventing new genders"? Well, firstly I must ask what you mean by this, but taken at face value, my answer is "no" because I don't exactly like the practice of finding new labels for each specific deviation from male or female. You can identify as both or as neither, and I think there can be a number of variations or hybrids of either, but I don't necessarily think each of them warrant a new term and pronoun to go along with these. In fact I find that practice rather arrogant and misguided, working under the assumption that your case is so singular and special that it warrants its own unique classification. But then, as a general rule I try not to pigeonhole and classify things that are in no need of pigeonholing either.

See, that's the problem. If this gender thing is as profound as you say it is, how come i never noticed it? If it is as big as you say, why i never felt any of it? And i am, being a straight man, have a much stronger feminine side than an average male would. So, if there were these big expectations, you'd think i would've noticed them, but i didn't. Never really felt like i had to conform to any kind of expectation. See, that bit I bolded is a perfect example of why it is as profound as I say it is in you too, as even as you deny noticing it there are qualities you immediately associate with the feminine and the masculine. The strength and awareness of these matters varies from culture to culture and individual to individual but it is there, in every society there is a determined role and assumed behaviour for both male and female that is indoctrinated to us from a young age. I cannot speak for your childhood experiences but in my case all of the following seemed pretty true, if not to me then to others: if you spend too much time with another guy, being close friends and so on, the rest of the kids assume intimacy and start calling you gay; if you show any tendencies that might be described as soft or feminine, you are assumed to be gay; 'gay' is itself the ickiest thing a boy of a young age can be accused of because it also implies a loss of virility, you like boys like girls do. But boys are meant to be strong, boys don't cry, boys stand up and are tough and so on. We learn from a young age thanks to peer pressure that masculinity is represented best by a particular set of characteristics, and feminity by the opposite characteristics as well. Girls like Barbie dolls, boys don't. Boys like video games, girls don't. If a boy likes girl pop, something is wrong with him, he's less of a man for it. If a woman likes boxing, she is more of a tomboy and less of a woman for it. As brother of a professional boxer I've seen countless times where women were less appealing to the men in the room because they happened to box. None of this means that because a boy likes dolls he does not identify as male or because a girl boxes she does not identify as female, of course, but the societal prejudices and pressures towards members of either sex still exist and whenever you go against them you are bound to create friction with someone or other. Again, nowadays this is opening up, the societal norms for how men and women must be is no longer as strict or clear-cut, and are growing more evident in light of growing awareness of sexism, feminism, patriachial structures, homophobia, queer culture and so on. Amidst it all more people are feeling like what they know to be "male" or "female" and what they feel society asks of them as such is not who they are and want to be. Perhaps the pressure of adhering to the gender expectations is something you never felt, I'd be inclined to believe that it's a pressure you are unaware or don't want to acknowledge you ever felt, but if you indeed haven't then it still doesn't preclude that many others have.

You sure about that? We'll see how it is when it comes out but I suppose this is a story about the protagonist's alienation as well as her search. I don't think it'll go for sympathy - certainly the McDonagh characters so far have not been classically sympathetic.

Whatever issues I had with the text was actually much more on the side of character exposition than wordy narration, personally. I do feel that certain characters like Iovara, Wymund and Thaos were overly expositional about their reveals or 'evil schemes' in the case of the latter two. Also I felt a lot of Grieving Mother's remarks while travelling with her felt very redundant and actually lessened the impact of some of the details and events. I recall us learning about how the Hollowborn were often referred to as buoys because so many were found floating dead in the water, a thought which would be much more disturbing and affecting would the Mother not go "OH MY GOD THAT IS HORRIBLE!!" right at it. Moments like these were more annoying to me than any individual bit of descriptive text that I can recall.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

(Warning for language) I want to watch this so bad.

Yeah. Just saw it. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/28/north-korea-fires-missile-japan-warns-citizens-take-precautions/

Gender is one of the main pillars of a person's identity, it sets on everyone a series of expectations both from themselves and from others onto themselves, and already conditions one's growth, education, relationships, social circles and more. In a time where we're more open to questioning these roles and expectations and our personal fulfillment of each, it's no wonder that now's a time in which people do not wish to be associated with all the baggage that comes with the gender assigned to them by their sex. Well, either I've been trying hard for years to be different, which is most certainly not in my personality, or I'm an aberration, because I don't think of myself or others in terms of male or female. There are people I want to have sex with because they make me happy in my pants, and those that don't. I want to have sex with the former, but not the later. That's as close as I get to gender identity. That's fine and it doesn't apply to everyone, but it does to many.

Sorry, I was trying to think of a clever way to hit the number 10 since the last thread was 9, and Jason X was literally the only thing I could think of. I know, was just kidding. Good title! :D

I was hoping to see a thread about the politics in Jason X. I've been baited!

I went with the last option for the lack of an option that goes "I play with the sex/gender of the person I want to play as, which is not necessarily me".

I would like to hear your opinions then! :D

Gender is one of the main pillars of a person's identity, it sets on everyone a series of expectations both from themselves and from others onto themselves, and already conditions one's growth, education, relationships, social circles and more. In a time where we're more open to questioning these roles and expectations and our personal fulfillment of each, it's no wonder that now's a time in which people do not wish to be associated with all the baggage that comes with the gender assigned to them by their sex.

Because that's what good fantasy worlds do? This is really the worst justification you could go for for the lack of this kind of content in the game (or any content for that matter).

Huh... I don't recall encountering it? Or am I missing on a joke?

How would one go about discovering that there is 'nothing' though? I'm about as strong an atheist as I think it's possible to rationally be, but I don't think we can (or ever will be able to) rule out the possibility that the Universe was created by something that could be described as a god. As soon as we start talking about things happening outside of our own physical reality we lose the ability to make empirical observations. Now it's quite possible to rule out specific kinds of gods, in particular ones that directly intervene in the world and provide moral instruction in the way of revelation, and given a large part of why the Engwithans felt the need to create gods to fill the gap was the fear of how people would act without a source of transcendental morality (something that a mere demiurge doesn't provide), but I don't think there is any meaningful way to absolutely disprove the existence of a creator. Ultimately an unfeeling/uninterested creator will be indistinguishable from the nothingness that the Engwithans found. However I still stand by my point about it not being an atheistic world. There are gods. It only feels atheistic if you insist that your gods are in fact the creators of the world. It is never explained how the Engwithans arrive to that conclusion, just that they found in their search that there was indeed nothing, and thus filled that void. It's true that there is no logical way of reaching this conclusion in our world and for our society but in the world of Eora certain things that are matters of belief in ours such as souls are made real and 'accessible' by some individuals so it could be possible that the Engwithans had found a way of reaching the Beyond (which we might see more of in Deadfire, by looking at the gameplay videos) and made the assertion that there was indeed no sentient or guiding entity that we might abscribe the characteristics of a god to. Again, though, this is all really delving into the Comic Book Guy side of things, and to my mind at least it's a bit irrelevant, because the point of this revelation in the overall narrative is that gods are human constructs and thus the inversion of theocentric to anthropocentric is complete. We can obsess about the possibilities but they aren't really relevant to what is told, and by and large go against the game's discourse as well. What we know by what we find out through Iovara and Thaos and our flashbacks with them is that the constructs that the Engwithans did create, they did so with the deliberate intention of fooling the people so as to avoid the consequences of a faithless world. They are in the end part of a *lie*, as acknowledged by both Iovara and Thaos, and not just as manifestations of concepts that came about thanks to people's faiths in the way a god might do in, say, a context like Planescape. They are there as a veil from the truth that there is indeed nothing, not there for the belief that there are forces that govern their world and so on. In the context of the game these gods do exist because we interact with them, but their role as gods is to the player's awareness revoked by the end as they are nothing more than constructs made to deceive. Whether there is *more* out there in the world of Eora I don't think is all too relevant and moreover due to the particular qualities and roles of Iovara and Thaos in the story, there is no reason to really doubt their assertions either. Whatever we can speculate about the natural and divine order of Eora is largely based on wishful thinking. Well what they say represents what they believe, but they might very well be wrong. Well, this is an issue for me, because I would agree that what they speak of should be what they believe. But that is not how the game configures their revelations at all. Iovara, for one, is set by her context in the story and by her martyrdom in the name of 'truth' for her revelation to be, in effect, true. Thaos himself is leader of a hermetic cult, but the revelation that he then confirms is one that resignifies all of his *belief* as a lie made to conceal that truth - we can only assume by this juxtaposition that the thing he concealed and which he dies keeping a secret is, in the context of this story, true. Again, we can argue outside the game that these are all subject to a personal perspective and could be the result of a chain of partial pictures, first by the Engwithans' lack of awareness of a true deity, then by Thaos and Iovara's adherence to the Engwithans' error. But again I don't see how this is shown to be a possibility by what we have to go with in the game.

They are decent tests at least. I wouldn't mind a Pillars game done in this perspective were the content there as well, but it would of course imply a heck of a lot more money, people and time to develop, which is way outside what Obsidian can afford at the moment. I would however also like to see an actual cinematographer being brought in to consult or help develop the 'camera' in the game, were something like this made in the future. Already from the tests above I can see the potential of some pretty vistas made nowhere as evocative due to inept framing, 'lenswork', camera movement and the overabundance of cheap bloom and solar flare effects. Also a landscape artist to be able to design a world of the sort into something that is interesting and diverse and not just a generic open-world mountain forest, which all of the above does feel like a fair bit. But again, it's a test, the technology is what is being shown there, not the artistry, so I guess it could have potential. If, again, they had the money and time and desire for it.

Echoing what you both wrote. R.I.P.

I do agree that scene was pretty poorly handled.

This is incredibly confusing. In russian there isn't even an equivalent for "gender", there's just "sex". So i'm having a big difficulty understanding what gender even supposed to mean in the first place, let alone when it's non-binary. And judging by the answers i'm getting, it's not that much clearer for other people as well. Yeah, unfortunately many things get lost in translation like that. Just like there is no English word for 'mu'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender Check the wiki article out. As it mentions at the start, 'sex' is part of what can define gender but gender refers also to aspects involving social structures and identity. Are you talking about the greek alphabet? Differing alphabets is something different than having a word which has no translated equivalent in another language. Like say, schadenfreude, though I think english has gone and adopted that word. No, I mean the Zen concept, which might closest relate to a state of non-being or non-existence, or existence prior to knowing. It is often translated to 'nothing' or 'nothingness' but is not quite that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative) And yeah, at the lack of a certain term or expression, a lot of languages borrow from one another. Weltschmerz is another German term adopted by the English language that I quite like. And of course for Japanese there's all the gairaigo terms.