Barothmuk

It was certainly inferred. You pointed to arguments that "feudal societies were sexist" as an example of a poor argument to justify why the Witcher setting is sexist. It seems natural to assume that you must find depictions of feudal societies as sexist is a negative thing for games to do. Just because it's a fantasy setting that doesn't mean the creator can't allow the setting to conform to the material realities of the real world. Of course, if one wishes to avoid settings that attempt to tackle depicting feudalistic societies accurately one could always turn to the various 'Renaissance Fair' style fantasy settings.

My responses. I was far more interested in gauging the reasoning behind why you believe depicting feudal societies as sexist is somehow negative. It may have been implied but I hadn't accused you of it yet.

You completely avoided the point. For reference, I agree that the Witcher's depictions of sex are immature more often than not, I just find the arguments you provided to be quite poor.

But for someone to make that point they'd have to be arguing against the claim you have made, i.e. that depictions of feudalism that show negative social attitudes (e.g. sexism) are in of themselves bad. People that usually complain about the sex scenes in the Witcher 2 usually hold the opinion that they should be handled more "tastefully" like ME1 supposedly did. I personally don't have too strong an invested interest in the existence of sex-scenes however I do loathe the puritan attitude that demands depictions of sex either be forbidden or completely sanitised. I haven't played nearly enough of the Witcher series to call myself a fan of it (Only own the second one and even then have never had the time to properly finish a playthrough) I was merely pointing out what seemed to be an absurd argument.

The implication here being games must whitewash the ****tiness of feudal societies? And yet still more realistic then the sex scenes that are labelled "good" e.g. Mass Effect.

Monks get a stealth bonus as well. Source

Yeah, I can sort of see that. Shame the concept art didn't translate over. Oh well, it's probably set in stone now anyways.

Bah, turns out there was a class/race thread just on this side of boards. Anyways, like I said before, I'll probably roll aumaua first. I usually like to give the new races a go and the portrait in this week's update looked pretty cool. As for class I think monk has been the most interesting looking class shown thus far so I'm probably going to go with that.

Looks pretty gender ambiguous to me: Sure it has a mane of sorts, but it doesn't look like lion nor does its mane look like that of a lion's so you could pass it off as an attribute of both sexes. To be honest it looks more like a werebobcat than a werelion.

I can't be certain what it means but I did stumble across this: Source

Just your standard "what x will you play as?" topic where no one reads the posts as you're only here for the poll. Doesn't make for interesting conversation but someone had to do it. I'll probably be rolling aumaua as I usually prefer to play as one of the 'unique'/non-standard races and I thought the aumaua portrait in this week's update looked pretty cool.

I'm going entirely off memory here so anyone can feel free to correct me. The human race is split into three playable ethnicities: - Meadow: Not explicitly stated but do appear to generally look 'caucasian'. - Savannah: Visually they look 'mestizo' with a native culture that looks Balkan. - Ocean: Visually black with a native Renaissance style culture. Elves are split into two ethnicities: - Wood: Know nothing about (at least visually) - Pale: Tall, albino, with some having epicanthic folds (Asian eyes). Dwarves have two: - Mountain: Know nothing about. - Boreal: Nothing explicitly stated but visually and culturally there seems to some kind of quasi-Inuit style influence. The rest are either visually alien or haven't had that much said about them (Aumaua have loose Japanese and Polynesian cultural influences, Godlikes can be born anywhere, Orlan (Orlans?) are little, furry and haven't had anything said about their cultural influences). Of course it's worth mentioning although there are clear visual racial differences the peoples of PoE are divided more by culture than by race thereby having it possible to play an orlan with an "ocean human" (Vailian) style culture, an ocean human with a meadow culture and so on (although certain combinations would of course be seen in-universe as odd). Also worth noting is none of these races are meant to be synonymous with Earth cultures or ethnicities so obviously it'd be foolish to boot up the game hoping to play as Chinese, American or whatever.

Great update. I'm curious, is it possible to configure one's class in such a way so you can play as an 'animancer'/necromancer type character?

I sure do love me some derp interaction.

Play as dwarven scholar Korl Morx and his Godlike companion Friedrich Angels as they travel across the world distributing pamphlets on Commodities, Wage Labour, Surplus Value and so on all the while avoiding the curséd Aedyr and Vailian bourgeoisies. Hardcore mode has gameover result in National Security storming your house and arresting you as a potential communist insurgent.

Sadly there isn't that much information yet. From the wiki: In my thread "Would You Want Polynesian inspired Aumaua?" J.E. Sawyer had this to say: They were not. There are two major aumaua-dominated cultures in the world, one that is closer to the Dyrwood (but still not that close). Their clothing looks very different. When Polina made her first full-scale aumaua illustration, he looked so out-of-the-ordinary that the physiology combined with the outfit and equipment made him seem like he wasn't part of a fantasy setting anymore. Personally, I thought it was pretty cool, but we did additional illustrations of aumaua who had culturally integrated into Aedyr/Dyrwood/Readceras/The Vailian Republics. Ultimately, aumaua characters in the game can be geared in the same outfits that other characters can use, so we wanted to make sure that they were physiologically distinctive even in "normal" gear. Orlans are fairly isolated (more by choice than by anything else), but many have integrated into the colonial settlements of the Dyrwood. Aumaua actually have a lot of contact with other races and were some of the earliest long-range coastal explorers in the world. "Nearby" aumaua have stylistic visual elements taken from Japanese and various Polynesian cultures, but their cultures themselves are not based on Japan, Samoa, Maori, etc. Regardless, even though information is sparse I think it's safe to assume they're unlikely to be portrayed as similar to orcs.

Good. The last thing this game needs is to be degenerated into Biowarian schlock fap-bait. Truth. I was particularly excited by Sawyer's promise of exploring themes of institutionalized racism, class struggle and religion.

Those advocating personalities for the custom companions are completely missing the point of their existence. Custom companions allows the player to have complete freedom in determining their thoughts, histories, personalities and so on. Those who wish to have more 'defined' companions or companions with personalities will be able to recruit the companions crafted by Obsidian.

I'm playing through BG:EE now and I can definitely say I had missed the voiced incantations. The OP said "it would be cool incantations like these were used in this game" not that he wanted them replicated.

Don't give those greedy door hinge companies ideas.

In my opinion it'd be inaccurate to describe it as a "spectrum of grey" and I imagine anyone who perceives morality as completely subjective would think the same. When it's "grey morality" it simply means it's all grey. There is no objective right or wrong and all have their own subjective positives and negatives. I disagree. You have clarified that you believe morals and motivations to be distinct but interrelated thus there should be actual, coherent motivation to be "an evil character" rather than simply being evil for the sake of being evil aka "ferr teh evulz" (or something to that effect). However you still have not said what you consider the evil option. For Obsidian to effectively implement what you consider to be the "evil" option you're going to have to clarify what you believe that to be.

In this situation what "evil" option would you prefer? Not have one? Why should a selfish and ambitious character even bother with an old lady and her cats? We don't know if the OP is defining "evil" as selfish and/or ambitious. I asked what "evil" option the OP would prefer the player to have in this scenario because after two pages he has yet to say what exactly he is referring to when he says "evil".

In this situation what "evil" option would you prefer?

Not quite. I was contrasting consequentialism with the type of deontology that derives the rightness or wrongness of one's actions from the specific action itself rather than the outcomes of the action. Broadly speaking deontology does require a codified set of rules which naturally could vary depending on the person however in this scenario in which I was trying to create a binary morality meter I'd say it's safe to assume the deontological set of rules would be those that most could agree on. (e.g. killing is wrong, stealing is wrong and so on).