It's just sports to them, pushing their ideological wishes and attacking what they perceive as the opposition. It is, as I said, remarkable how politicised video gaming has become in certain places. It is sad though, that in this case this group seems to be willing to actively sabotage and tank sales of an expansion that could be the only hope for a BG3. Admittedly, with recent isometric RPG revivals, the actual Baldurs Gate brand is less important, but you have to wonder why people, who must care about the franchise to some extent, are willing to destroy it for political "success". Scorched earth tactics is one explanation, but what do they get out of it?
Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear |OT| Tales of a Sword Coast Legend
- Thread starter MisterShine
- Start date
mattiewheels
And then the LORD David Bowie saith to his Son, Jonny Depp: 'Go, and spread my image amongst the cosmos. For every living thing is in anguish and only the LIGHT shall give them reprieve.'
I see the iOS version is $10 right now. Does that mean once the expansion comes, it'll be a $20 iap on top of that?
It's obvious control issues, these dudes just want to feel in control of something. It's the endgame of the anonymous power people feel like they've been granted on the internet, it just feels like the people with the worst political views seem to be the loudest about it.
MisterShine
Member
We don't know what the mobile price will be, but probably? Or they'll do a 10 dollar version + 10 dollars worth of DLC to get all the features. For instance with the android version you have to buy the EE characters separately.
ot: http://steamcommunity.com/id/mrshine/recommended/385970/
My review after about 8 hours into the expansion. I'm not posting the content of the review, only to say that after 2 and a half hours after posting it, the review has 46 ratings already, 12/46 helpful. Shit is fucked on steam.
21/65 after 3 hours. I really hope all this traffic to the main page is translating to sales!
Large Professor
Member
All the positive reviews seem to get down-voted.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
It seems people with the most fringe ideas and agendas devote much more of their time to yelling about it than most others. Statements and text posted on the internet persist and that is exploitable. It's easy to build a garbage mound that blocks the view of the actual landscape.
Anyone can post a screed alluding to a vast anonymous army of which they are the harbinger, and gather a few dozen or hundred others together to pave over websites and forums with a disinformation campaign.
Dandy Lyin
Member
Guys, they aren't transphobic. They are just hardcore writing critics.
There are complete idiots on both side of the spectrum to be fair. People can't express their opinion anymore without being called either a SJW or a whateverophobe and being yelled at. No constructive debate whatsoever. Harassment happens both ways too. I just can't wrap my head around it.
Maybe I'm naive but I wouldn't worry about that too much. SoD is a really solid game and eventually people will recognize that no matter how much idiots try troll the reviews.
Tye The Czar
Member
The best way to school these manchildren is to vote with your wallet and give positive reviews.
TatteredHat
Member
Honestly for every politics complain I see, I see another complaint about technical issues or writing quality. I'm sure that there are people out there genuinely trying to tear the company down for including a transgender character but I'm inclined to believe that that's not the only issue people have with this expansion.
NoblesseOblige
Banned
And you buy they're honest? Especially when I see people making those determinations based on an hour of play.
AWizardDidIt
Member
The technical issues are a real thing, and multiplayer especially is in pretty bad shape. It's not a buggy mess, but there *are* bugs and I've heard of one or two show-stopper issues that really need to get fixed. Writing is a subjective thing but on a whole the writing of the expansion really is about up to BG2 levels and I can't think of too many criticisms of the writing you couldn't also level on BG2 at some level so take that as you will.
Make sure all your characters have ranged weapons (bows, slings, etc). Even early level fighters in BG1 can go down quick so it really helps to have your people engaging at range as often as they can. The game generally switches in favor to melee once you have a few levels under your belt but for the early few levels, ranged rules all.
This is of course purely based on my own experiences with SoD, but I played through it and the worst technical issue I experienced was the same voiceover repeating twice. I saw way more bugs when playing PoE or W2 for example.
Writing is more subjective issue, but I thought Beamdog did excellent job with it. If I hadn't known that SoD wasn't always part of the Bhaalspawn sage I couldn't have guessed it. I actually was pretty surprised by that because the content they added to BG1, and BG2, felt mediocre at best.
Did you start with BG1? The start of BG1 is very rough even if you know what you are doing. Until you get few levels under your belt unlucky hit can pretty much one shot any of your character, especially the ones with hit low hit die.
About 15 hours in and so far this expansion has been decent dungeon crawling. Challenge is nice on Hard-difficulty. Only minus is, that you can't return to areas after chapter changes.
Thing that bothers me, is
. It sounds like 10 years old kid. Other than that no complaints. So far I haven't encountered any bugs or crashes.
Discovering
gave me good laugh.
Dragonspear is worth the price. IMO
I don't understand the internet rage about some of the NPC:s :|
Thing that bothers me, is
Goblin Shaman voice
Discovering
Baeloth new "Black Pit"
Dragonspear is worth the price. IMO
I don't understand the internet rage about some of the NPC:s :|
Once you hit level 2 things get a lot easier. Those first couple of hours are pretty rough going though, especially if you're unfamiliar with the AD&D rules.
On both sides? I don't hear any supposed "SJW" (what is that even, left leaning folk?) throwing so much shit on the wall that it completes blocks all discussion, even genuine criticism. And I am sure that in some parallel universe, instead of a """discussion""" about the existence of fictional people with more varied gender identities, we could actually talk about what the expansion could have done better, where it could have been improved. This would also help the devs get more useful feedback on bugs and glitches.
So, one side, "SJWs" stays mostly in their bubble, while the other ruins everything for everybody. How is can you see middle ground here?
This reminds of this nice sketch.
Pilgrimzero
Member
Be prepared for pain. Game is rough for a bit. Range is king.
Spacejaws
Member
Uh to be fair she did insinuate that Baldur's Gate was fairly sexist towards female characters and paticuarly used Safana and Jaheria as examples and SoD would help change that.
It does not warrant the reaction at all, no where near it, but even then I took a double take reading that. I still don't really see why sexism had to be mentioned at all.
It's like Miyamoto coming out with a princess peach game and saying 'oh yes the previous mario games are all sexist and this should fix that."
Whereas you should just release a princess peach game if thats what you want to do. Not spend effort highlighting the morality of it all.
In this situation they should have just wrote the characters and say they developed them further but bringing sexism into it is like saying you are making the sequel to Blade Runner and announce that the original didn't have enough right wing Christian moral messages and you would fix that.
I don't think I'm wording this all correctly but effectively yes they all should be able to make what they want and it doesnt at all warrant the response but the statements seemed like needless tinder to an already highly combustible situation and they should have taken that into consideration.
ViridianHues
Banned
I want to get into these types of games, but the older ones seem overwhelming for newcomers. Would Divinity: OS be good starting point?
AWizardDidIt
Member
Her statements were not at all out of line. She isn't wrong that Safana and Jahiera are one note characters that relied on sexist tropes in BG1 and SOD does quite a bit to make them both actualized characters (though BG2 did already do this for Jaheira, SOD sort of just extends that character somewhat).
Why shouldn't an author of a work state that their contributions will be made to be more inclusive for a female audience? Why should that be something shameful she has to hide behind? It's really not fair to her on any level.
ElectricThunder
Member
It is Beamdog---every single release, without fail, is going to have some broken bits that take some-several weeks and whatnot to get sorted out alongside all the various improvements. They are dealing with an ancient and and spiteful codebase that everyone somehow thinks Just Works despite the fact that it was never even overtly intended to be modded, let alone all they've tried to squeeze and grapple and bolt onto the thing.
I'm pretty sure they'll get it sorted, and probably much faster than the several month gaps it took on most of the earlier BG1/2 EE updates.
I'm pretty sure they'll get it sorted, and probably much faster than the several month gaps it took on most of the earlier BG1/2 EE updates.
TatteredHat
Member
I certainly think there's some merit to people apparently having issues with their savegames corrupting or their imported characters ending up permanently losing all their equipment, yes.
BG is obviously very story driven, so one hour of play should give you a decent indication on what the writing is going to be like, but that's way more subjective than complaints about tech. issues.
Is there something particularly wrong with the "ethics in heroic adventuring line"? I thought it was clever, quite honestly.
Anyway, I agree with animlboogy over there. Gamergaters' claims do not have any real basis and it's not at all about politics. Ironically, they are the only ones that have an agenda here.
Anyway, I agree with animlboogy over there. Gamergaters' claims do not have any real basis and it's not at all about politics. Ironically, they are the only ones that have an agenda here.
MisterShine
Member
Not a terrible choice, but Pillars of Eternity would be far better. PoE is basically a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate in modern trappings, Divinity is a turn based RPG more similar to the old Ultima games.
D:OS has a different battle style (it's Turn-Based instead of Real Time With Pause, as in the Infinity Engine games), so I don't know if it'd be that effective. I haven't played it yet but, considering the amount of praise it received (both on GAF and elsewhere), it's still a worthy game to play.
Pillars of Eternity, on the other hand, retains Real Time With Pause combat and its rules are less obscure (if you haven't played Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition) for newcomers. Plus, it recently added a story mode so you can worry even less about the combat than even on Easy difficulty.
Just my two cents.
ViridianHues
Banned
Looking forward to playing this game. The people who are the most vocal CENSORSHIP IS BAD!!!! DONT GET OUTRAGED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! always seem so easily outraged by everything. I dont think you have any example of a Steam forum and Steam reviews getting massively brigaded by so called SJWs, but here we are again with the shitty gamergate crowd.
if you go for it, you'll have a shitload of content to enjoy: the base game + the two parts of the recently released expansion.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
At any rate I have loaded the expansion, but am still playing through BG EE with a new party because hey, it's BG and there's achievements now. I poked around in SoD with a test character just to check out the opening.
I admit I do find it fascinating how easily, what's the word... triggered? ... some people have been by a single, extremely mild joke directed at the GG movement.
One would almost think such people were taking the idea of political commentary in video games too seriously, rather than just playing video games.
I admit I do find it fascinating how easily, what's the word... triggered? ... some people have been by a single, extremely mild joke directed at the GG movement.
One would almost think such people were taking the idea of political commentary in video games too seriously, rather than just playing video games.
Dandy Lyin
Member
GGers take themselves very seriously.
Spacejaws
Member
I don't think they were out of line. I just think they were wrong.
Safana is barely a character in the first game to be overtly sexualized, and even then sexualization isn't the crux of sexism, having these characters as useless for anything but their sex in far more in keeping with the typical sexism in games than what they actually are. Safana seems like a seductress thief trying to get you to do her dirty work. Is that now a trope that must not be touched without being labeled sexist? Jaheria a nagging wife? She's the godamn authority figure badass between the two of them, Khalid is depicted as the stuttering bumbling fool. Or is Khalid a sexist trope aswell?
Then you have characters like Shar Teel and Alora and Dynaheir I would not associate any of them as a great example of sexism. Even Imoen just seems naive and cheeky not a sex item even though typically in any other game shes placed perfectly to be the protagonists love interest (until they changed her lineage for bg2 obviously)
If anything BG2 is more sexualized, now you view them as characters to romance and 'complete' rather than random adventuring buddies. To claim the BG is sexist to me feels like saying the Teletubbies is sexist. Is so far removed from those issues that it is strange to hear it brought up. That is not to say the team shouldn't be proud for pushing diversity, but yeah people actually don't want to hear you celebrate yourself. Have you ever been in a situation where someone talks about how great they are for recycling, or being a vegetarian or that they help at a soup kitchen and drive a prias to save the earth. These are things you should do because you believe in them, showing a bit of modesty rather than broadcasting your superiority is actually a welcome trait.
Whereas what they should be talking about is that the game is good.
Where in the hell do you pull this from? I've absolutely got no problem with the transgender character in the game and fully support beamdog to make whatever they want.
Really? I played Ultima VII and bits of I, IV, VI and VIII and felt that Original Sin was nothing like them, outside of maybe the ability to drag things around. And that's hardly major.
Original Sin is different from Baldur's Gate, the Ultima games and other CRPGs in terms of being much more combat-oriented and not really being concerned with world-building or anything like that. It suffers from an almost MMO-like quest design where you have a town with a number of quests, both story and side missions and there's basically several places you can go from there. It's also designed in such a way that you'll end up doing all the sidequests on your way to the main objective (and all those four destinations are actually necessary for the main story), so there's no real exploration involved. Eventually you move to the next hub and it's basically the same over there. This deisgn philolosphy also kinda reminds me of Diablo II with turn-based combat and non-random maps and the level of the NPCs' involvement and relevance to the story is probably even lower here. Divinity: Original Sin is a fun romp with sublime combat, but it's really not in the same league with Baldur's Gate or Ultima (which are different enough from each other, but still have a certain degree of complexity and grandeur in common), just a different kind of game.
AWizardDidIt
Member
@Spacejaws: It's been said before, but in BG1 every character was a thin caricature of some kind. Safana, Jaheira, all of them. Amber Scott was simply pointing out that two of these characters were based on sexist caricatures and that they'd be doing more with those characters. She didn't mention what she thought about other characters and that's *beside* the point because she was only speaking on these two. I'm sure if the interviewer had gone on to mention Khalid she'd tell you that they expanded his personality as well beyond the belittled husband trope he was in BG1, but that was never the subject. You're inferring a whole lot more than the actual context of her statement implied. Mentioning "sexism" does not equate with some great crime of the original series, it's just pointing something out and saying they're trying to do better. Why is that so bad?
CrichtonKicks
Member
Technical issues I can't speak to because it's been smooth for me other than an import error on starting equipment. But the writing quality is more than fine. It's not the best of the genre but it's still good and any drawbacks are not worthy of being the focus of a negative review.
The writing in SoD does rings around the writing of BG1. No contest. It may or may not be BG2 quality but if the level of story and character was fine for you in BG1 then you should be ecstatic with SoD.
Sometimes I wonder if people have been playing BG1 with mods for so long (especially the Party Banter and romance mods) that they have forgotten how absolutely threadbare and one-note all of the companions were in the original release.
NoblesseOblige
Banned
Yet everyone who have actually committed to the game are reporting the writing is leagues better. There's clearly an agenda going on taken by a bunch of overgrown children, but if you can ignore that then that's your prerogative. Not sure what sort of reasonable person puts any weight in steam user reviews anyway, they're notoriously busted and hot garbage. A shame they actually seem to influence people.
Spacejaws
Member
To be honest I think it's the line
If there was something for the original Baldurs Gate that just doesnt mesh for modern day gamers like the sexism, [we tried to address that]," that set me off.
That sounds very definitive 'the original game was sexist".
Literally if this line was removed from that article it all become about further fleshing out the characters. This line got me just because it feels incredibly misguided.
I don't mean to ruffle anyones feathers but are there literally modern players who have turned on Blaudr's Gate and uttered the sentence, "all this sexism doesn't agree with me."? I really can't believe that would be the case.
AWizardDidIt
Member
I just don't understand why the notion of some bits of BG1 being sexist sets you off. BG1 was made by an entirely male development team for a primarily male audience, and sometimes that shows. We view games with a different lens nowadays and topics that weren't thought of in the sphere of video games are a consideration today. That comment is the most tame non-statement I can ever think of in regards to this topic. She even goes on to clarify there's just a couple of examples, which frankly for the time it was created is pretty laudable as is. It's not meant as an indictment of BG1, just a change in how games are made and the audience they're made for.
EDIT: I guess my summary is, Amber Scott was saying there's some sexism in BG1. She did not say that BG1 was sexist. If you're inferring her statement to mean the latter, you're missing the point entirely.
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
Some of us are Steam reviewers though, and all criticism is worthy of consideration.
Anyway, most of the top-rated negative Steam reviews are talking about bugs, broken multiplayer, and so on.
Most of the GOG reviews have been nonsense though.
Anoregon
The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
Have any of you guys ever had a monk PC in BG2 or BG1 enhanced? I don't think I've ever played one, and am curious about how viable they are. I want to try and do something other than the kensai/mage route for my upcoming run, even though that shit is fun as hell.
AWizardDidIt
Member
Monks are notoriously weak in BG1 and notoriously strong in BG2. Some of the monk kits introduced in EE do help early level monks with viability at low levels so if you plan to roll monk I'd recommend choosing one of those. By the time you get to BG2, monks wreck shop.
Spacejaws
Member
Well that goes back to my initial statement then doesn't it
I feel that the words could have been chosen a little better that's all. I'm not even really that set off I was just taken aback by the concept BG was considered sexist and cleary to Amber she does has some opinions on it(and others in the team I'm sure) which are for her to have. But...my main point was there are alot more people with less stable dispositions who have a tendancy to implode with things like these and it cleary has happened to some degree. Is tempting the bear is a good thing?
D
Deleted member 126221
Unconfirmed Member
Monks start really weak, and stay pretty weak for the whole BG1 level range, you are mostly going to rely on your other party members to carry your monk through. In BG2 though they really start to shine becoming one of the strongest classes in the end.
Stiler
Member
To me, my own personal opinion.
I think storylines can suffer if you go out of your way to force your own political/moral message into a story, especially if the world/characters are already established or known.
If you want a moral message you can write it normally, let the story evolve and just tell the story you want without having to ham-fist it and make it obvious.
From what I've read and some of the videos I've seen or heard it sounds like they changed established characters and did things to make the inclusive style they wanted to portray as something at the forefront rather than letting it happen naturally in the story.
That is one of the quickest and most jararing ways to take people (mainly those who are already invested into the previous storylines/characters) out of game because you're writing things that go against or change what they already knew.
I think storylines can suffer if you go out of your way to force your own political/moral message into a story, especially if the world/characters are already established or known.
If you want a moral message you can write it normally, let the story evolve and just tell the story you want without having to ham-fist it and make it obvious.
From what I've read and some of the videos I've seen or heard it sounds like they changed established characters and did things to make the inclusive style they wanted to portray as something at the forefront rather than letting it happen naturally in the story.
That is one of the quickest and most jararing ways to take people (mainly those who are already invested into the previous storylines/characters) out of game because you're writing things that go against or change what they already knew.
AWizardDidIt
Member
Well that goes back to my initial statement then doesn't it
Sort of? People shouldn't be afraid to use the S word when pointing out a casual example for fear of some internet gestapo purposely misconstruing their words and then dog piling them. It's embarrassing.
Cool, I just bought everyone ranged weapons expect my main character because he can't equip those.
Yeah it was on sale and I always wanted to play this series. I played the beginning of BG2 on my brother's PC when it first came out but it was too much for me back then.
I have played a bit of Pillars as well but didn't finish it. I probably will when I get the expansions.
AWizardDidIt
Member
Thank you for making that thread. Now we can use this thread to talk about the game and not the fabricated controversy
Another tip to those starting Baldur's Gate for the first time: avoid early damage spells for your mages in favor of CC spells like sleep or blind. Early mages contribute almost nothing to damage in a battle early on and you don't want to waste valuable spell slots on 4 damage magic missiles that can be better spent on a sleep spell that disables every enemy in a fight.