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Baldur's Gate #BaldurGate: Siege of Dragonspear
- Thread starter Infinitron
- Start date
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2008
- Messages
- 2,160
Yeah, I was just talking about SoD. Still, I think they described the expansion as 25 or so hours long and I can't imagine it being nearly that long unless you really read aloud (and slowly) every bit of dialogue and explored every inch of every map thoroughly.
varangos
Prospernaut
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2016
- Messages
- 393
Mortmal
Arcane
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2009
- Messages
- 9,656
10 hours campaign , thats what i was just telling before release, i was right again, i can predict future and how things turn to shit. Not only its short but its mediocre content. I am exceedingly good at it..
Reinhardt
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2015
- Messages
- 33,262
And Flaming Fist is KKK in disquise. When i was wounded and hungry after Gorion's death, they tried to kill me when i, by mistake, clicked on the wrong shelf. But if white cisgendered bandits robs strong independent heroine of Baldur's Gate - no one cares.
Check your privilege, Amber!
Check your privilege, Amber!
Gauldur's Bait
Arbiter
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2015
- Messages
- 247
I have now finished the game with a custom party of 4 imported from a BG1 multiplayer where all characters had reached the XP cap. I launched the game on Core Rules. I had a Fighter/Druid (CHARNAME), an Inquisitor, a F/M/T, and a Cleric.
This will be a long post and here is a SPOILER WARNING spanning the entire game including ending and story. Will comment on both positives and negatives then try to formulate some sort of conclusion and I have tried to structure the post as well as possible in order to preserve readability. You don’t need to roll an 18 in intelligence to deduce from my username that I might be familiar with the previously released Baldur’s Gate games.
First however, let me say that that I am in no way opposing equal rights for women, or have anything against people belonging to sexual minorities (or other minorities) – I couldn’t really care less about what people do to/with each other as long as there is informed consent from all involved. There are many people in my or my close friends social circles that belong to some minority or other and they are all great to have around. My knowledge of GG is also basically non-existent while SJW has become more familiar as it, as a phenomenon or, if you will, ideology or movement, is everywhere in society and not limited to gaming. I rarely play anything on-line nor do I follow “gaming sites” or e.g. twitter so maybe that is why I have not been exposed to matters GG-related.
So, with that out of the way, let’s have a look at Baldur’s Gate – Siege of Dragonspear.
Positives:
1. It’s infinity engine second edition D&D combat, with the first few and last areas inside Baldur’s Gate – for those who liked it before and ONLY care about more of this and only this from the expansion, then they will probably like it now as well. There are enemies from the Baldur’s Gate series, but also from the Icewind Dale games and other D&D games (e.g. displacer beasts) so there is a lot of variety in terms of enemy types.
2. Many of backgrounds are very well drawn (you have to zoom out enough), and fit the setting.
3. Some massive battles towards the end, which is a first in the infinity engine:
4. Related to 1&3, the developers have apparently tried to make sure that you have as varied encounters as possible, which makes the game score a lot of nostalgia points.
Then to the negatives.
First some technical stuff and shorter points (not in any specific order - for me at least 1, 4 and 10 were especially displeasing).
1. There are bugs that are mentioned in several previous posts, and I experienced at least three crashes to desktop during my playthrough, one was during alt-tab to another program.
2. The journal does not work properly, details in a post on page 38 of this thread.
3. At least two quests appeared buggy. I did not get any reward from Kharm after freeing Kharred in the Crusaders Camp even though the dialogue suggested otherwise, and I set the “barrel of whoosh” exactly where indicated, yet I was later given only the dialogue option that I failed to place it in the right spot (Funnily enough, after I placed the barrel, I did not receive any confirmation that it was placed correctly, nor was I longer able to move it.)
4. All spells do not work correctly. I trapped the Green Dragon in Otiluke's resilient sphere yet he was still able to attack me with his breath attack and knockdown ability.
5. A war hammer called Sundermaul +3, triggers an earthquake which shakes the screen upon hit seemingly very often, especially on story mode (see below why I know that), making that weapon practially unusable on the lowest difficulty setting. This seems to be a bug as the description to my recollection said 10% of hits would result in this effect.
6. Drows encountered did not carry Drow equipment (a minor point, but would be important for the lore, also the drow appear in an area after which you still have to go above ground to access other areas, so the equipment would be used only briefly by the party and would not necessarily cause balance issues.
7. Some Item names are poorly chosen (apparently they constitute an attempt at humor) and do not fit into the game at all:
8. Path finding is still poor. My F/M/T with permanent Haste-boots was often “trapped” behind my slower moving CHARNAME or Cleric, e.g. walking in a jerking motion right behind the slower character.
9. Battles seemed way too easy on Core Rules - play on harder difficulty if you have an even remote idea of what you are doing, and especially if you export a party maxed out in BG1.
10. Combat encounters are mostly just a lump of enemies, at least on core rules. They might be initially placed out in something resembling a pattern, but when battles starts they often become a mob moving closely together towards the party. I would say at least 80% of encounters suffer from this issue. The image below displays enemies that are seemingly positioned in a more organized way, but it is because the archers are obviously stationary and behind is a shaman casting spells, thus stationary (encounters even in BG1 were better, and obviously so were those in BG2):
Now, onto some more serious criticism of the game, from a wider perspective. The game is definitely pushing a political agenda in a manner completely outside the spirit of the Baldur’s Gate series, setting, and lore. There is no other possibility than that this was done consciously and deliberately, as this political agenda is evenly dosed throughout the game.
Hence, especially those sites and critics who say that the game is receiving negative reviews solely because of the inclusion of a transgender character, read this: Mizhena is in the end one the smaller issue pertaining to the pushed agenda (the developers made this issue worse by their own comments regarding it. But using this as a weapon and labelling the critics of the game as haters of sexual minorities is the easy and “politically correct” (and thus also sensationalist in the attempt to profit from the controversy) route to take, and also probably generates many clicks when simplifying the issue to “Baldur’s Gate fans hate transgender individuals”. This is actually intellectually dishonest, unfair towards the critics of the game, generally cheap and poor journalism. The fact remains of course, that Mizhena is badly and shallowly written, the developers have also commented that they could have done a better job with her and transgender individuals have commented that no-one in their community would be so open with such a sensitive issue.
There are many other issues with the game which reveal how hard a specific agenda is being pushed. These have been swept aside by “critics of the critics” as they are much harder to rebuke (and actually require one to play the game for a while), and I will go through these next. As an added bonus, my main character I exported from BG1 happened female – this led to the revealing of the pushed agenda in dialog options a male character would, with about 0,99 certainty, not have. So let’s get into them.
In my longer post on page 38 of this thread, I already highlighted the fact that there is clear agenda concerning the refugee crisis, and that is connected also to the discussion on income distribution. Your gold from Bg1 is stolen, and you find out that it has been distributed by a group of refugees to all the other refugees in town and you are asked the question “don’t they need it more than you?” – in very in your face way. The thing is, that you can slay this group with your paladin without the paladin becoming fallen, which is one example of that politics have been more in the focus than the actual gameplay during the design.
The “inclusion agenda” is also clearly visible in some item descriptions; the last sentence in the item description below speaks for itself:
There is, also early in the game, a short dialog in the game, where you meet a couple of refugees on their way to Baldur’s Gate, and they ask for directions. You are given to dialogue choices, 1) Give directions and 10GP, 2) Give directions and tell them to hurry. I chose 2 – they have a crusade on their heels after all and there are people giving them money in Baldur’s Gate as I mentioned above – and the reaction is that one of the refugees tells the other that “See, I knew they wouldn’t help us.” I mean –what the hell? I gave you directions and told you to hurry, they did not ask me for money or anything else – only directions.
Further, I could not see a single female coward character in the game, but several male ones. These situations are also so poorly written that they stand out and are remembered for the wrong reasons. Examples include at least: The dwarf outside the Lich cave, the crusader troops on the first bridge encounter, Torsin de Lancie, the troops in the starting dungeon, and a group of bugbears guarding the castle dragonspear courtyard (the last one MIGHT be a skill check, I had a F/D with very high charisma).
The feminist agenda is most clearly visible through a character (Human Male Skald) called Voghlin. When you meet him, he is with Jaheira and you can ask him to join your camp. He then asks the question – capitals in-game: “are…ALL…kinds welcome at the camp?” which was pretty blatant. This is not feminist of course, but when my female character initiated dialog with him, this happened:
That speaks for itself. I have no possibility of being funny to him (Voghlin is obviously clearly just having a laugh) or giving a witty or even a balanced and dry response. After all I have endured in BG1, Vohglin still triggers me with a "hey wench" apparently. This is not an RPG, this is propaganda.
Best of all, the next time dialog is initiated, it is as if nothing happened:
Again an example (ref. the paladin killing the refugees, above) of how politics are shoved into the game at the expense of design (at this point I began to lower the difficulty as I didn't want to waste any more time than necessary on this game).
EDIT: this one fits here, the dialog option 3...
But wait! We are still missing the magic p-word! Oh, no we’re not. Leave it to Irenicus to check the privileges:
Thank you Beamdog for taking a huge steaming dump on one of gaming history’s best villains.
It can be mentioned here, that Mizhena has one dialog towards the end of the game, which turns into a pathetic “threat exchange” with CHARNAME (I’ll bash your face in; Well, I’ll smash your skull; Well, then I’ll crush all your bones; etc. etc.) until Mizhena concedes the CHARNAME is pretty tough. It is cringeworhty and awkward but unfortunately I have no screenshot.
Last, there is also some war criticism in the game, both against use of poison in warfare (closest thing to chemical warfare besides magic in that setting) which is seen as an item name “poison of terror” and Irenicus commenting that “even poison is not beneath you”. Further, torture as a poor means of gathering information is also treated:
and we are reminded that soldiers die in wars and not the officers, as a rebuke to an in-game officer, De Lancie, established as a coward:
Finally, combining this war criticism with an image of the large dragon skeleton now embedded in the Dragonspear tower:
the main story of Caelar’s Crusade can be read as an allegory criticizing USAs invasion of Iraq after 9/11, with a dragon the obvious substitute of the airplane. In the end of the game it becomes clear that one purpose of Caelar’s crusade was to “save the thousands that died at Dragonspear” and this is the reason that she has so many followers – they all had relatives or friends that perished at Dragonspear. The word crusade intrinsically includes a religious component, and remember that George W. Bush mentioned during the Iraq invasion that he has God on his side (I can’t recall the exact phrasing). And what would the outcome of the crusade have been, unless the CHARNAME had stepped in – a portal opening that causes terror and death to spread over the world, in the game in the form of demons from the Nine Hells. People probably have different opinions of the Iraq invasion and I won’t discuss it here, I just wanted to point out the reference. I had a chat about this with a senior game developer whose name will not be mentioned, just to make sure I hadn’t moved into tinfoil hat territory with this last one.
Anyway, due to shoving politics down my throat and a poor execution when it comes to gameplay , writing, and mechanics, this is without a doubt the worst “RPG” I have ever played by far, and my biggest disappointment when it comes to games. I was hoping for Beamdog to minimally just play it safe as already that would have satisfied a lot of people loving the series. Instead they chose…this. No thank you.
This will be a long post and here is a SPOILER WARNING spanning the entire game including ending and story. Will comment on both positives and negatives then try to formulate some sort of conclusion and I have tried to structure the post as well as possible in order to preserve readability. You don’t need to roll an 18 in intelligence to deduce from my username that I might be familiar with the previously released Baldur’s Gate games.
First however, let me say that that I am in no way opposing equal rights for women, or have anything against people belonging to sexual minorities (or other minorities) – I couldn’t really care less about what people do to/with each other as long as there is informed consent from all involved. There are many people in my or my close friends social circles that belong to some minority or other and they are all great to have around. My knowledge of GG is also basically non-existent while SJW has become more familiar as it, as a phenomenon or, if you will, ideology or movement, is everywhere in society and not limited to gaming. I rarely play anything on-line nor do I follow “gaming sites” or e.g. twitter so maybe that is why I have not been exposed to matters GG-related.
So, with that out of the way, let’s have a look at Baldur’s Gate – Siege of Dragonspear.
Positives:
1. It’s infinity engine second edition D&D combat, with the first few and last areas inside Baldur’s Gate – for those who liked it before and ONLY care about more of this and only this from the expansion, then they will probably like it now as well. There are enemies from the Baldur’s Gate series, but also from the Icewind Dale games and other D&D games (e.g. displacer beasts) so there is a lot of variety in terms of enemy types.
2. Many of backgrounds are very well drawn (you have to zoom out enough), and fit the setting.
3. Some massive battles towards the end, which is a first in the infinity engine:
4. Related to 1&3, the developers have apparently tried to make sure that you have as varied encounters as possible, which makes the game score a lot of nostalgia points.
Then to the negatives.
First some technical stuff and shorter points (not in any specific order - for me at least 1, 4 and 10 were especially displeasing).
1. There are bugs that are mentioned in several previous posts, and I experienced at least three crashes to desktop during my playthrough, one was during alt-tab to another program.
2. The journal does not work properly, details in a post on page 38 of this thread.
3. At least two quests appeared buggy. I did not get any reward from Kharm after freeing Kharred in the Crusaders Camp even though the dialogue suggested otherwise, and I set the “barrel of whoosh” exactly where indicated, yet I was later given only the dialogue option that I failed to place it in the right spot (Funnily enough, after I placed the barrel, I did not receive any confirmation that it was placed correctly, nor was I longer able to move it.)
4. All spells do not work correctly. I trapped the Green Dragon in Otiluke's resilient sphere yet he was still able to attack me with his breath attack and knockdown ability.
5. A war hammer called Sundermaul +3, triggers an earthquake which shakes the screen upon hit seemingly very often, especially on story mode (see below why I know that), making that weapon practially unusable on the lowest difficulty setting. This seems to be a bug as the description to my recollection said 10% of hits would result in this effect.
6. Drows encountered did not carry Drow equipment (a minor point, but would be important for the lore, also the drow appear in an area after which you still have to go above ground to access other areas, so the equipment would be used only briefly by the party and would not necessarily cause balance issues.
7. Some Item names are poorly chosen (apparently they constitute an attempt at humor) and do not fit into the game at all:
8. Path finding is still poor. My F/M/T with permanent Haste-boots was often “trapped” behind my slower moving CHARNAME or Cleric, e.g. walking in a jerking motion right behind the slower character.
9. Battles seemed way too easy on Core Rules - play on harder difficulty if you have an even remote idea of what you are doing, and especially if you export a party maxed out in BG1.
10. Combat encounters are mostly just a lump of enemies, at least on core rules. They might be initially placed out in something resembling a pattern, but when battles starts they often become a mob moving closely together towards the party. I would say at least 80% of encounters suffer from this issue. The image below displays enemies that are seemingly positioned in a more organized way, but it is because the archers are obviously stationary and behind is a shaman casting spells, thus stationary (encounters even in BG1 were better, and obviously so were those in BG2):
Now, onto some more serious criticism of the game, from a wider perspective. The game is definitely pushing a political agenda in a manner completely outside the spirit of the Baldur’s Gate series, setting, and lore. There is no other possibility than that this was done consciously and deliberately, as this political agenda is evenly dosed throughout the game.
Hence, especially those sites and critics who say that the game is receiving negative reviews solely because of the inclusion of a transgender character, read this: Mizhena is in the end one the smaller issue pertaining to the pushed agenda (the developers made this issue worse by their own comments regarding it. But using this as a weapon and labelling the critics of the game as haters of sexual minorities is the easy and “politically correct” (and thus also sensationalist in the attempt to profit from the controversy) route to take, and also probably generates many clicks when simplifying the issue to “Baldur’s Gate fans hate transgender individuals”. This is actually intellectually dishonest, unfair towards the critics of the game, generally cheap and poor journalism. The fact remains of course, that Mizhena is badly and shallowly written, the developers have also commented that they could have done a better job with her and transgender individuals have commented that no-one in their community would be so open with such a sensitive issue.
There are many other issues with the game which reveal how hard a specific agenda is being pushed. These have been swept aside by “critics of the critics” as they are much harder to rebuke (and actually require one to play the game for a while), and I will go through these next. As an added bonus, my main character I exported from BG1 happened female – this led to the revealing of the pushed agenda in dialog options a male character would, with about 0,99 certainty, not have. So let’s get into them.
In my longer post on page 38 of this thread, I already highlighted the fact that there is clear agenda concerning the refugee crisis, and that is connected also to the discussion on income distribution. Your gold from Bg1 is stolen, and you find out that it has been distributed by a group of refugees to all the other refugees in town and you are asked the question “don’t they need it more than you?” – in very in your face way. The thing is, that you can slay this group with your paladin without the paladin becoming fallen, which is one example of that politics have been more in the focus than the actual gameplay during the design.
The “inclusion agenda” is also clearly visible in some item descriptions; the last sentence in the item description below speaks for itself:
There is, also early in the game, a short dialog in the game, where you meet a couple of refugees on their way to Baldur’s Gate, and they ask for directions. You are given to dialogue choices, 1) Give directions and 10GP, 2) Give directions and tell them to hurry. I chose 2 – they have a crusade on their heels after all and there are people giving them money in Baldur’s Gate as I mentioned above – and the reaction is that one of the refugees tells the other that “See, I knew they wouldn’t help us.” I mean –what the hell? I gave you directions and told you to hurry, they did not ask me for money or anything else – only directions.
Further, I could not see a single female coward character in the game, but several male ones. These situations are also so poorly written that they stand out and are remembered for the wrong reasons. Examples include at least: The dwarf outside the Lich cave, the crusader troops on the first bridge encounter, Torsin de Lancie, the troops in the starting dungeon, and a group of bugbears guarding the castle dragonspear courtyard (the last one MIGHT be a skill check, I had a F/D with very high charisma).
The feminist agenda is most clearly visible through a character (Human Male Skald) called Voghlin. When you meet him, he is with Jaheira and you can ask him to join your camp. He then asks the question – capitals in-game: “are…ALL…kinds welcome at the camp?” which was pretty blatant. This is not feminist of course, but when my female character initiated dialog with him, this happened:
That speaks for itself. I have no possibility of being funny to him (Voghlin is obviously clearly just having a laugh) or giving a witty or even a balanced and dry response. After all I have endured in BG1, Vohglin still triggers me with a "hey wench" apparently. This is not an RPG, this is propaganda.
Best of all, the next time dialog is initiated, it is as if nothing happened:
Again an example (ref. the paladin killing the refugees, above) of how politics are shoved into the game at the expense of design (at this point I began to lower the difficulty as I didn't want to waste any more time than necessary on this game).
EDIT: this one fits here, the dialog option 3...
But wait! We are still missing the magic p-word! Oh, no we’re not. Leave it to Irenicus to check the privileges:
Thank you Beamdog for taking a huge steaming dump on one of gaming history’s best villains.
It can be mentioned here, that Mizhena has one dialog towards the end of the game, which turns into a pathetic “threat exchange” with CHARNAME (I’ll bash your face in; Well, I’ll smash your skull; Well, then I’ll crush all your bones; etc. etc.) until Mizhena concedes the CHARNAME is pretty tough. It is cringeworhty and awkward but unfortunately I have no screenshot.
Last, there is also some war criticism in the game, both against use of poison in warfare (closest thing to chemical warfare besides magic in that setting) which is seen as an item name “poison of terror” and Irenicus commenting that “even poison is not beneath you”. Further, torture as a poor means of gathering information is also treated:
and we are reminded that soldiers die in wars and not the officers, as a rebuke to an in-game officer, De Lancie, established as a coward:
Finally, combining this war criticism with an image of the large dragon skeleton now embedded in the Dragonspear tower:
the main story of Caelar’s Crusade can be read as an allegory criticizing USAs invasion of Iraq after 9/11, with a dragon the obvious substitute of the airplane. In the end of the game it becomes clear that one purpose of Caelar’s crusade was to “save the thousands that died at Dragonspear” and this is the reason that she has so many followers – they all had relatives or friends that perished at Dragonspear. The word crusade intrinsically includes a religious component, and remember that George W. Bush mentioned during the Iraq invasion that he has God on his side (I can’t recall the exact phrasing). And what would the outcome of the crusade have been, unless the CHARNAME had stepped in – a portal opening that causes terror and death to spread over the world, in the game in the form of demons from the Nine Hells. People probably have different opinions of the Iraq invasion and I won’t discuss it here, I just wanted to point out the reference. I had a chat about this with a senior game developer whose name will not be mentioned, just to make sure I hadn’t moved into tinfoil hat territory with this last one.
Anyway, due to shoving politics down my throat and a poor execution when it comes to gameplay , writing, and mechanics, this is without a doubt the worst “RPG” I have ever played by far, and my biggest disappointment when it comes to games. I was hoping for Beamdog to minimally just play it safe as already that would have satisfied a lot of people loving the series. Instead they chose…this. No thank you.
I have now finished the game with a custom party of 4 imported from a BG1 multiplayer where all characters had reached the XP cap. I launched the game on Core Rules. I had a Fighter/Druid (CHARNAME), an Inquisitor, a F/M/T, and a Cleric.
This will be a long post and here is a SPOILER WARNING spanning the entire game including ending and story. Will comment on both positives and negatives then try to formulate some sort of conclusion and I have tried to structure the post as well as possible in order to preserve readability. You don’t need to roll an 18 in intelligence to deduce from my username that I might be familiar with the previously released Baldur’s Gate games.
First however, let me say that that I am in no way opposing equal rights for women, or have anything against people belonging to sexual minorities (or other minorities) – I couldn’t really care less about what people do to/with each other as long as there is informed consent from all involved. There are many people in my or my close friends social circles that belong to some minority or other and they are all great to have around. My knowledge of GG is also basically non-existent while SJW has become more familiar as it, as a phenomenon or, if you will, ideology or movement, is everywhere in society and not limited to gaming. I rarely play anything on-line nor do I follow “gaming sites” or e.g. twitter so maybe that is why I have not been exposed to matters GG-related.
So, with that out of the way, let’s have a look at Baldur’s Gate – Siege of Dragonspear.
Positives:
1. It’s infinity engine second edition D&D combat, with the first few and last areas inside Baldur’s Gate – for those who liked it before and ONLY care about more of this and only this from the expansion, then they will probably like it now as well. There are enemies from the Baldur’s Gate series, but also from the Icewind Dale games and other D&D games (e.g. displacer beasts) so there is a lot of variety in terms of enemy types.
2. Many of backgrounds are very well drawn (you have to zoom out enough), and fit the setting.
3. Some massive battles towards the end, which is a first in the infinity engine:
4. Related to 1&3, the developers have apparently tried to make sure that you have as varied encounters as possible, which makes the game score a lot of nostalgia points.
Then to the negatives.
First some technical stuff and shorter points (not in any specific order - for me at least 1, 4 and 10 were especially displeasing).
1. There are bugs that are mentioned in several previous posts, and I experienced at least three crashes to desktop during my playthrough, one was during alt-tab to another program.
2. The journal does not work properly, details in a post on page 38 of this thread.
3. At least two quests appeared buggy. I did not get any reward from Kharm after freeing Kharred in the Crusaders Camp even though the dialogue suggested otherwise, and I set the “barrel of whoosh” exactly where indicated, yet I was later given only the dialogue option that I failed to place it in the right spot (Funnily enough, after I placed the barrel, I did not receive any confirmation that it was placed correctly, nor was I longer able to move it.)
4. All spells do not work correctly. I trapped the Green Dragon in Otiluke's resilient sphere yet he was still able to attack me with his breath attack and knockdown ability.
5. A war hammer called Sundermaul +3, triggers an earthquake which shakes the screen upon hit seemingly very often, especially on story mode (see below why I know that), making that weapon practially unusable on the lowest difficulty setting. This seems to be a bug as the description to my recollection said 10% of hits would result in this effect.
6. Drows encountered did not carry Drow equipment (a minor point, but would be important for the lore, also the drow appear in an area after which you still have to go above ground to access other areas, so the equipment would be used only briefly by the party and would not necessarily cause balance issues.
7. Some Item names are poorly chosen (apparently they constitute an attempt at humor) and do not fit into the game at all:
8. Path finding is still poor. My F/M/T with permanent Haste-boots was often “trapped” behind my slower moving CHARNAME or Cleric, e.g. walking in a jerking motion right behind the slower character.
9. Battles seemed way too easy on Core Rules - play on harder difficulty if you have an even remote idea of what you are doing, and especially if you export a party maxed out in BG1.
10. Combat encounters are mostly just a lump of enemies, at least on core rules. They might be initially placed out in something resembling a pattern, but when battles starts they often become a mob moving closely together towards the party. I would say at least 80% of encounters suffer from this issue. The image below displays enemies that are seemingly positioned in a more organized way, but it is because the archers are obviously stationary and behind is a shaman casting spells, thus stationary (encounters even in BG1 were better, and obviously so were those in BG2):
Now, onto some more serious criticism of the game, from a wider perspective. The game is definitely pushing a political agenda in a manner completely outside the spirit of the Baldur’s Gate series, setting, and lore. There is no other possibility than that this was done consciously and deliberately, as this political agenda is evenly dosed throughout the game.
Hence, especially those sites and critics who say that the game is receiving negative reviews solely because of the inclusion of a transgender character, read this: Mizhena is in the end one the smaller issue pertaining to the pushed agenda (the developers made this issue worse by their own comments regarding it. But using this as a weapon and labelling the critics of the game as haters of sexual minorities is the easy and “politically correct” (and thus also sensationalist in the attempt to profit from the controversy) route to take, and also probably generates many clicks when simplifying the issue to “Baldur’s Gate fans hate transgender individuals”. This is actually intellectually dishonest, unfair towards the critics of the game, generally cheap and poor journalism. The fact remains of course, that Mizhena is badly and shallowly written, the developers have also commented that they could have done a better job with her and transgender individuals have commented that no-one in their community would be so open with such a sensitive issue.
There are many other issues with the game which reveal how hard a specific agenda is being pushed. These have been swept aside by “critics of the critics” as they are much harder to rebuke (and actually require one to play the game for a while), and I will go through these next. As an added bonus, my main character I exported from BG1 happened female – this led to the revealing of the pushed agenda in dialog options a male character would, with about 0,99 certainty, not have. So let’s get into them.
In my longer post on page 38 of this thread, I already highlighted the fact that there is clear agenda concerning the refugee crisis, and that is connected also to the discussion on income distribution. Your gold from Bg1 is stolen, and you find out that it has been distributed by a group of refugees to all the other refugees in town and you are asked the question “don’t they need it more than you?” – in very in your face way. The thing is, that you can slay this group with your paladin without the paladin becoming fallen, which is one example of that politics have been more in the focus than the actual gameplay during the design.
The “inclusion agenda” is also clearly visible in some item descriptions; the last sentence in the item description below speaks for itself:
There is, also early in the game, a short dialog in the game, where you meet a couple of refugees on their way to Baldur’s Gate, and they ask for directions. You are given to dialogue choices, 1) Give directions and 10GP, 2) Give directions and tell them to hurry. I chose 2 – they have a crusade on their heels after all and there are people giving them money in Baldur’s Gate as I mentioned above – and the reaction is that one of the refugees tells the other that “See, I knew they wouldn’t help us.” I mean –what the hell? I gave you directions and told you to hurry, they did not ask me for money or anything else – only directions.
Further, I could not see a single female coward character in the game, but several male ones. These situations are also so poorly written that they stand out and are remembered for the wrong reasons. Examples include at least: The dwarf outside the Lich cave, the crusader troops on the first bridge encounter, Torsin de Lancie, the troops in the starting dungeon, and a group of bugbears guarding the castle dragonspear courtyard (the last one MIGHT be a skill check, I had a F/D with very high charisma).
The feminist agenda is most clearly visible through a character (Human Male Skald) called Voghlin. When you meet him, he is with Jaheira and you can ask him to join your camp. He then asks the question – capitals in-game: “are…ALL…kinds welcome at the camp?” which was pretty blatant. This is not feminist of course, but when my female character initiated dialog with him, this happened:
That speaks for itself. I have no possibility of being funny to him (Voghlin is obviously clearly just having a laugh) or giving a witty or even a balanced and dry response. After all I have endured in BG1, Vohglin still triggers me with a "hey wench" apparently. This is not an RPG, this is propaganda.
Best of all, the next time dialog is initiated, it is as if nothing happened:
Again an example (ref. the paladin killing the refugees, above) of how politics are shoved into the game at the expense of design (at this point I began to lower the difficulty as I didn't want to waste any more time than necessary on this game).
EDIT: this one fits here, the dialog option 3...
But wait! We are still missing the magic p-word! Oh, no we’re not. Leave it to Irenicus to check the privileges:
Thank you Beamdog for taking a huge steaming dump on one of gaming history’s best villains.
It can be mentioned here, that Mizhena has one dialog towards the end of the game, which turns into a pathetic “threat exchange” with CHARNAME (I’ll bash your face in; Well, I’ll smash your skull; Well, then I’ll crush all your bones; etc. etc.) until Mizhena concedes the CHARNAME is pretty tough. It is cringeworhty and awkward but unfortunately I have no screenshot.
Last, there is also some war criticism in the game, both against use of poison in warfare (closest thing to chemical warfare besides magic in that setting) which is seen as an item name “poison of terror” and Irenicus commenting that “even poison is not beneath you”. Further, torture as a poor means of gathering information is also treated:
and we are reminded that soldiers die in wars and not the officers, as a rebuke to an in-game officer, De Lancie, established as a coward:
Finally, combining this war criticism with an image of the large dragon skeleton now embedded in the Dragonspear tower:
the main story of Caelar’s Crusade can be read as an allegory criticizing USAs invasion of Iraq after 9/11, with a dragon the obvious substitute of the airplane. In the end of the game it becomes clear that one purpose of Caelar’s crusade was to “save the thousands that died at Dragonspear” and this is the reason that she has so many followers – they all had relatives or friends that perished at Dragonspear. The word crusade intrinsically includes a religious component, and remember that George W. Bush mentioned during the Iraq invasion that he has God on his side (I can’t recall the exact phrasing). And what would the outcome of the crusade have been, unless the CHARNAME had stepped in – a portal opening that causes terror and death to spread over the world, in the game in the form of demons from the Nine Hells. People probably have different opinions of the Iraq invasion and I won’t discuss it here, I just wanted to point out the reference. I had a chat about this with a senior game developer whose name will not be mentioned, just to make sure I hadn’t moved into tinfoil hat territory with this last one.
Anyway, due to shoving politics down my throat and a poor execution when it comes to gameplay , writing, and mechanics, this is without a doubt the worst “RPG” I have ever played by far, and my biggest disappointment when it comes to games. I was hoping for Beamdog to minimally just play it safe as already that would have satisfied a lot of people loving the series. Instead they chose…this. No thank you.
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Fuck you Beamdog, Gauldur's Bait kept writing F/M/T and it took me three seconds to realize it wasn't Female-Male-Tranny.
Gauldur's Bait
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Thanks for reading. Some small typos in the post that can no longer be changed.
Gauldur's Bait
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Sorry!Fuck you Beamdog, Gauldur's Bait kept writing F/M/T and it took me three seconds to realize it wasn't Female-Male-Tranny.
Space Insect
Arcane
You should post more. Just asking for clarification, but did one of the devs really say it was an allegory for the Iraq War?
Gauldur's Bait
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Thank you. Not a Beamdog dev, no. Just wanted a second opinion.
Ausdoerrt
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Maybe the shot isn't very representative of how massive the battles get, but I'm replaying IWD2 right now, and there's plenty of this and more, combined with encounters designed to break your formation etc.
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I noticed with the gold thing at the start, if you decide to mete out punishment, depending on which option you choose, you can either lose reputation or none. I think it's bugged as I believe you are supposed to lose reputation either way if you harm the refugees.
Here are the screenshots to mete out punishment and not lose any reputation. Knowing which option to choose without losing reputation is so satisfying.
Here are the screenshots to mete out punishment and not lose any reputation. Knowing which option to choose without losing reputation is so satisfying.
At the Ducal Palace when you find out all your gold is gone. Yep, all your gold was bet on the greyhounds.
You eventually meet up with the refugees below at the Three Kegs Tavern. The first two options below weren't good enough for me so I went with Option 3. A paupers Grave for you. Die you bastards!
Dynaheir then interjects below. Punishment? You bet Dynaheir, I just lost a mountain of gold!
Then you have the option with agreeing with Dynahier or selecting Option 3 or 4 below to send these guys to their graves.
I originally choose Option 4 and when I met up with Corwin, there was a dialogue option which then lost reputation. I decided to reload and choose Option 3 and when I met up with Corwin, there was no dialogue option to lose reputation.
In the end you lose all your gold from the base game. All that time playing BG, all those hours amassing a Kings fortune, now gone. You have nothing. ZERO gold. Time to start looting containers and selling stuff again.
You eventually meet up with the refugees below at the Three Kegs Tavern. The first two options below weren't good enough for me so I went with Option 3. A paupers Grave for you. Die you bastards!
Dynaheir then interjects below. Punishment? You bet Dynaheir, I just lost a mountain of gold!
Then you have the option with agreeing with Dynahier or selecting Option 3 or 4 below to send these guys to their graves.
I originally choose Option 4 and when I met up with Corwin, there was a dialogue option which then lost reputation. I decided to reload and choose Option 3 and when I met up with Corwin, there was no dialogue option to lose reputation.
In the end you lose all your gold from the base game. All that time playing BG, all those hours amassing a Kings fortune, now gone. You have nothing. ZERO gold. Time to start looting containers and selling stuff again.
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Gauldur's Bait I think the Root of the Problem is actually a cut item from original BG1.
Gauldur's Bait
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With the same description?
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Gauldur's Bait
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Would you look at that! Thanks for looking that up.
I will maintain however, that the item is included now in SoD for the purpose I suggested. It is too "on target" to be included just by coincidence.
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