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Yeah, when you put it like that, it sounds like common sense alright. But I'm not fully convinced that's the case. See, Bioware have been writing LGTB characters into their games for some time now. Bethesda too. And yet it's BD who have managed to stir a hornets nest, and having played all the games in question, only in the case of SoD I honestly feel that the accusations of tokenism and virtue signalling are warranted. I'm all for having female characters who are not terrible stereotypes. In the cases of Safana and Corwin, that at least seems to be the intent. However, the whole thing with the tranny cleric goes in the opposite direction because the character is there obviously to be inclusive and stuff. Not only is her dialogue atrocious (execution), the character has zero depth. You can't discuss the Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity with her, or anything else, just react with "cool story, tell it again". Not even a stereotype -- more like a cardboard cutout. This fits with the writer's statements that everyone should get a chance to see themselves reflected in pop culture. Whether that reflection is accurate, fitting, respectful or elegant doesn't matter, it seems. And if you think it does, well, "too bad". If the intent is what you say it is, then great. If the intent however is to secure the moral high ground by ticking a series of checkboxes, then not so great. In their defense, they have committed to expanding the character, we'll see how that goes.

Nah. You made a statement in your ignorance, that turned out to be technically right, just barely: a : more than one <several pleas> b : more than two but fewer than many <moved several inches> c chiefly dialect : being a great many http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/several "Several" writers. Not really, no. Just three, one of which did only additional (read: minor) work. And I didn't address the rest of your post because it's your typical contrarian hogwash that is rather devoid of substance: you said that the SW example was non-analogous (remember: your saying it is so doesn't make it so), and yet went on to claim that you wouldn't care if the narrative were good. But that's an irrelevant cop-out, because in this case the narrative isn't good. The onus is on her to prove that she can produce good writing. The rest of your counterexamples are also irrelevant as they pertain to original works, not sequels to well-established franchises, when the author is already under scrutiny for having attempted what a part of the original works' fanbase consider nothing but cashgrabs, or simply don't apply because there are no discernible political agendas affecting the final product. Another swing and another miss. Keep it up and you're going to pull a muscle. Again, whether you would be bothered or not is a cool story, but I couldn't care less. Your personal sensibilities and tolerance for arrogance are not a basis for anything, let alone the way other people should react to stuff. Talk about stupid and deluded. And no, I have nothing to get over. I didn't like Scott's statements. I didn't like the way they reacted to the controversy, banning people left and right and insulting critics. I didn't like that Oster asked for BD denizens to brigade themselves. So if they keep it up, I will simply not give them money in the future. Unlike you, who apparently have seen the need to give them money to make a point of some sort, I'm not losing any sleep over it.

You know, in all fairness, I would too. Thing is, Heinlein was a decent writer and could perhaps make it work. Scott seems to struggle with the basics, and as a result, the narrative is kinda flaccid. Try too hard to shoehorn your politics into it, and the whole thing just isn't going to work. If you don't care that it feels fake and forced and tell your critics to go suck it, it's just hubris. @Gromnir, haha, yeah. Three writers, one of which did only "additional" work, technically is "several". Then again, you're a master of being "technically" right. Stop going out of your way to disagree with me, old timer. I'm not interested.

Swing and a miss. I'm not even sure why you're replying to me, as I've said before that the whole thing had been blown out of proportion. Let me reiterate: giving the game a score of 1 star over this is absurd, not to mention "campaigning" against it. Unlike you, I did buy the game and played it through, and as the GOG release was delayed, I did it after the ****storm began. So, no, I didn't "reject" anything. More like the opposite. I even said I'm willing to buy more games from BD provided they can dial back the attitude. Not even the political agenda, mind, but the high-and-mighty attitude, which is what has rubbed me the wrong way since the start. Doesn't bother you? That's cool. I'm not on your payroll, so I'm not terribly concerned that you are "disappointed". Build a bridge and get over it. And yeah, remember that time Robert Heinlein bought the rights to Lord of the Rings and rewrote the Company into a bunch of die-hard anarcho-liberals fighting against the oppressive tyranny of the kingdom of (The) Man? Funny, me neither. And by the way, there aren't "several" writers involved with this project. The game was written by Amber Scott and Andrew Foley. Swing and a miss.

You can't say that with a straight face. You just can't.

Source? https://archive.is/4HIow#selection-4325.1-4341.5 Everyone has a hidden agenda. Except me! - Michael Crichton Yeah... if only Scott were as entertaining a writer as Crichton was, though. Huh, that's pretty tame. "I like to create diverse characters" is hardly the same as "I'm going to cram my agenda down your throat!" But hey, to each their own. You're cherrypicking, but that's not even what she said. She also self-identifies as a SJW in the same post, and in this context, it's not a good thing. She's a Sarkeesian (of "disagreeing with me is harassment" fame) follower. But really, it's only "pretty tame" because you happen to agree with the agenda. I'm guessing that if some writer working on Star Wars VIII happened to be, say, a hardcore communist and defended his right to appropriate the IP to use as a soapbox for his political bull, you wouldn't be so cool with it. Because that's what happened - the stuff in the game is pretty tame indeed. She didn't really shove anything down anyone's throat that I could observe. From her statements, though, she clearly reserves the right to do so if she wanted. Are you surprised that people reacted badly? As far as I'm concerned, she's welcome to do all the "SJW games" she wants. She gets better at writing plots and characters and I might even buy some.

Source? https://archive.is/4HIow#selection-4325.1-4341.5 Everyone has a hidden agenda. Except me! - Michael Crichton Yeah... if only Scott were as entertaining a writer as Crichton was, though.

Saw this topic title and thought it would be to vote for the next president of WoT. I am disappoint. Aliens wouldn't want to touch the US presidential election with a ten foot pole, anyway.

Well, problem is GOG is a joke in this regard. You don't need to own a game to post a review and rate it, so it's pretty pointless to even participate. There are tons of reviews by people who obviously haven't played the game, and others claiming to have bought it solely to support "progressive and inclusive developers" with no interest in the game itself and no intention to actually play it. People are aware of this, so reviews are downvoted based on personal biases and brigading. It's a mess. GOG have chosen quantity over quality, and this is the result. My tastes and biases should be known by now to anyone who hasn't put me on ignore, and that's why posting my opinion here may not be a complete waste of time. On GOG, not so much. edit: forgot to mention that they seem to have broken stealth, in some instances. If you are detected or start combat and then go back into stealth, enemies will attack the party regardless, even if it's out of sight and no matter the distance. This behavior isn't always consistent, though, and it's probably not all AI scripts that have it. If everyone is stealthed or invisible, enemies will continue following the stealthed character until they fail a stealth roll. I'll have to test a bit in BG2EE to see if it's a 2.0 "feature" or just a fluke in certain areas in SoD. I'm totally addicted to backstabbing, so it's kind of a big deal for my playstyle. :/

I've finally completed it. I liked it in general. The writing is not great, but not as terrible as I've been reading. Certain situations come across as contrived, and the plot is fairly linear, but again these are flaws that were originally present both in BG1 and BG2, not to mention ToB. The plot seems to draw heavily from the local FR mythos, which if you're unfamiliar with and don't bother reading the books the game throws your way, can feel "out of the blue". This is another flaw with the writing, because BG1 kept beating you over the head with Alaundo's prophecies and Bhaal lore that the plot required to make sense. C&C is fairly minor and doesn't really affect the ending as far as I can tell. The ending itself, or rather, the epilogue, is probably the weakest part, as it's unimaginative and maladroit, especially regarding the canon party in BG2. Seriously, just allow BG2 to import a savestate, how hard can it be? BGT handled it better, and frankly I'm sick of Minsc turning up after I've repeatedly killed him. The game could also use exactly 87.942% less Hooded Man, by my estimation. Too much of a good thing and all that. After playing through with both Safana and Jaheira in the party, I honestly can't tell what's the big deal about their supposed "way better personality upgrades". Despite my previous comment on the matter, I really can't. Jaheira isn't half as annoying as she was (will be?) in BG2, and Safana acts exactly as I'd expect her to. Not that she had much of a personality to begin with in the originals, so maybe her current incarnation is conflicting with folks' headcanon? Dunno. The political statement thing has been blown out of proportion, as you would expect from anything and everything on the internets. When it's done, it's done rather clumsily. But it's not all that common or at the forefront of the narrative. The worst offender is, to me, the lack of roleplaying and flavor options. Generally you can reply as: a) LG guy, b) boorish/churlish thug or c) passive-aggresive snide idiot. I generally do my first playthroughs in all RPGs as LG paladin-type guy and then explore other options, and I can already tell that even a neutral PC would be hard to play without breaking character. Visually, it's as good as anything in previous IE games -- this is both good and bad. The spell effects are all recycled, as are the sprites, including some from other IE titles. I can only think of a single instance that had a new sprite, and the lack of new assets in this regard is kind of glaring. They brought back a bunch of the original voice actors, so that's a plus, too, and they've stated that if they can hunt down Jaheira's original voice actor, they will add voice to her lines in a patch. I enjoyed the music, but Sam Hulick's work seems to be hit/miss for some people. Bugs. Yeah, there are bugs. Quest-related (though only affecting minor quests from what I've seen), the infamous LoB bug that prevents playing on the hardest difficulty, and multiplayer bugs that they just can't seem to fix completely. Beyond that, nothing game-breaking... so more or less industry-standard, sadly. Not an excellent game, but all in all, I got my 20€ worth. Provided they can dial back the attitude, I'd probably buy another IE game from Beamdog. I just remembered that I haven't been able to get into the mood to play PoE...

Patch 2.1 is out. For the Beamdog version, anyway. Looks like fixing multiplayer is the focus, good on them. And turns out that broken mods were a side-effect of the Steam DLC packaging model (yay Steam, go!) -- it's literally downloaded as a zip file which the game reads, whose contents are obviously ignored by WeiDU when installing mods. One of the devs has released a tool that makes the expansion's assets recognizable by mods.

While I agree with the sentiment, that's not completely fair. We have a -thoroughly corrupt- monarchy over here, but referendums, in subjects where they may be called, cannot be overruled by the Crown. Theoretically a (series of) referendum(s) could turn the country into a republic (again). Anyway, yeah. I hadn't actually read the beeb link, I had only heard about this yesterday in the news, in passing. Per wiki: So yeah, the law is a joke. You can have referendums, but the States General (general assembly?) can overrule them, and they can't be called for anything really important anyway. Go go democracy.

So... Netherlands has a population of 31,05? I might consider moving there if that's the case. I hate crowds. What I don't understand is why you say it's a joke, considering that turnout was over the 30% required by law to be binding. Doesn't that mean it's rather the referendum law that it's a joke then? What happens if the turnout doesn't reach the minimum threshold, the gov't can do whatever, or do they have to repeat it over and over? Regardless, how come most people you know didn't even know there was a referendum to begin with?

LOL Token character: Hi, my name is X <CHARNAME>: Huh, that's an odd name Token character: I didn't like the old one it so I made it up <CHARNAME>: Um, why? Token character: Well, cuz I'm a tranny and also a really special snowflake That's pretty much how the conversation goes, "very organic" indeed. Do people you know tell you about their sexual orientation/identity literally after the first ****ing question you ask them? As it stands, the sole, defining trait of the character is that it's trans. And a priest vendor. It's not just us saying this now, btw. It's Beamdog too, given that they have all but admitted that the character was included solely for tokenism purposes and are committing to "expanding" her. You mean before or after the writer came out and said that if people didn't like her [politically charged] changes to established characters they could deal with it, and the CEO accused critics of being "small minded"?

I'd say "don't let the door hit your ass on your way out", but this isn't my first rodeo and I know we won't be so lucky. Yeah, you and me both pal. EDIT: you had to wait until the second post in this thread to yell for censorship? Tsk, tsk. Losing faculties?

Nonono, they are doing it "responsibly", you understand. They aren't Wikileaks. When was Bruce appointed as head of ICIJ and why didn't I get the memo? Ah, but who cares...

Yeah. Not cool. I'm guessing the original versions were still outselling the EEs after all these years, and we can't have that.

Yeah, I have to agree with that. You know you've failed when actual transsexuals show up to tell you that you done ****ed it up with lazy-ass writing whose only reason to be there seems to be using them as your personal soapbox. Most worrying of all seems to be Oster & co.'s take on criticisms, and how weak their grasp on the issue is -- they seem to be content to lump it all together as "misoginy/transphobia" and chalk it up to a GG conspiracy. Maybe it's a Bioware thing? The hubris, I mean... I've long settled for opinions which I know reflect my own biases, which works well enough when looking at games. Be sure to tell me if you ever find a truly unbiased opinion, though... My opinion, which I know you didn't ask for: the writing is weak. Railroading, flimsy motivations, badly set up scenarios. These issues all existed in the original BGs to a certain extent, so take it as you will. The identity politics posturing will bother you the more you read about it outside of the game. It is grating and immersion breaking, and the rewriting of old characters to give them "way better personality upgrades" is unforgivable, but it doesn't warrant giving the game a 0 on Metacritic. Area and encounter design seems to be good so far as is the atmosphere, and the visual and VO bells & whistles are all pretty good. I'm playing on Insane (bonus dmg disabled) and while I had no trouble at all in the initial dungeon, I've had my ass handed to me a few times after that (though I can't be sure of the extent to which SCS is responsible for this). I haven't found any gameplay balance problems due to OP items or spells yet, and the inclusion of such feels to me exactly like it did in vanilla ToB. I don't agree with calling this a mod, unless you also consider ToB a "mod". I'm not having problems with the difficulty resetting itself and haven't tried playing online, which seem to be the most severe issues affecting people. It isn't a flawed gem... it's just flawed. That being said, no reason why you can't have $20 worth of fun with it. That's more than I can say for a lot of the shovelware being pushed out these days.

That would require the ability to laugh at yourself -- something these people have shown a distinct lack of. Considering that the writer in question is a Sarkeesian fan, that could be taken (and therefore would be taken) as taking a potshot. Also: How To Shoot Yourself In The Foot (lol) Sigh. I've made a deliberate effort to avoid the GG drama, but it seems to be everywhere now. Me, I'm having fun so far, haven't found any glaring technical issues and the quality of the writing seems to be about on par with the original BG1. I suspect people often forget to take off their rose-tinted glasses before talking about it. Some stuff does seem forced -foreshadowing should be subtler- but nothing that has managed to seriously erode my suspension of disbelief. I'm not very far in yet, though.

Yep, content needs updating to mesh with "modern day gamers" and "sexism" has to be fought everywhere. Because **** internal logic, down with the patriarchy, privilege something something. They had a thread over at BD discussing this too. Barely made it to page 2 before it was shot down and offenders were dealt with. You know things are ugly when you're told to go to the KKKodex if you resent someone else's political agenda being shoved down your throat. And now I'm probably treading on thin ice myself because badmouthing other companies is a big no-no here at Obsidz'... So in other news, I'm playing through this. Installing some mods (SCS and tweaks) broke tons of strings and now items have random and nonsensical names and descriptions. Hasn't affected dialogues, so...

And because I always have to be that guy: https://www.gog.com/game/baldurs_gate_siege_of_dragonspear Hey, it's something at least...

Well, I could go on a rant about anti-consumer practices, convenience, control of my purchases and so on. Otherwise, I could refer you to Zoraptor's (and other's) well-reasoned and articulate posts on the matter. But odds are that this is all old news to you and nothing is going to help you understand (not necessarily agree, mind), and per your own admission, it wouldn't help anyway, so any such effort would be about as pointless as your own post...

Yeah, as others have said, Steam is a big no-no for me. I'd love to support Obsidz, but much like with Dragonspear, I'll only buy it on GOG. I've used Steam in the past and have other games I really like in there (Alien Isolation for instance), but I'm just not adding any more titles to the list.

Good post. Meanwhile in Yurop

No, more like the "nothing better to do but to whine over a single word" type. Not a lot. You guys seem to feel you have the word "rational" on lockdown so I just wondered how other world event play out in your heads. Yeah, it's not really my fault that you throw words around without knowing what they mean. I didn't quote myself to define "rational", I quoted a dictionary. What you said is *wrong* based on the universally accepted definition of the word. Take it up with the English language. Send me a memo when they change it so I can adjust my grand proclamations accordingly, okay?