Baldur's Gate #BaldurGate: Siege of Dragonspear

[Havoc]

I believe the discussion is over.

/thread

Spoiler

This answer sounds like taken from tumblr.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

It's crazy what they're doing at Beamdog.

This whole thing would have blown over quite quickly if they just apologized for a bad joke to the fanbase and released a generic PR statement.

Instead, they directly antagonize the core fanbase again and again and again. I truly believe, nothing would have come of this if Amber Scott didn't open her mouth.


You have one of the most beloved video game franchises in history. You have one of the loyalist fanbases possible, allowing you to sell 1 million copies of shitty repackages of 15-18 year old games. You have an engine, combat system, characters. You know where the story is supposed to begin and end.

How is it possible to fuck something like that up?


Marketing 101, don't insult your core fanbase. Marketing 102, don't double down on it once you do.

You might be correct, but then again the vast majority of people complaining aren't part of the fanbase at all. Look at that reddit thread that was liked a few pages back (weebinaction sub or what have you). There's tons of outraged comments from people clearly oblivious as to what Beamdog is and even what Baldur's Gate is - though that won't stop them from screaming about how another "classic" is ruined.

It may be that a significant portion of the actual fanbase is also included in the far larger universe of people who are complaining, but that's not entirely a safe assumption. On the Baldur's Gate sub, the regulars seem to be far more mellow about this (to be noted, they had disliked the EE companions as much as anyone, from what I gathered) and just want to enjoy the game without being dragged into this bullshit.

 

[imweasel]

It's crazy what they're doing at Beamdog.

This whole thing would have blown over quite quickly if they just apologized for a bad joke to the fanbase and released a generic PR statement.

Yep. Anyway, I heard that Beamdog is working on an official statement ATM. We should take bets on how much worse they are going to make this fiasco.

 

[TigerKnee]

This question will probably be lost to all the tranny talk but exactly how many chapters is SoD?

(In-game chapter number please, which starts from like Chapter 7 or something)

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Jesus Christ, how many games hijacked by these issues do these guys need.

There is Dragon Age, Sunset , Gone Home hijacked by this.

Those games weren't hijacked, they were made by SJWs for SJWs from the get-go (and aside from Dragon Age are your usual artsy-fartsy indie type of "game"). It's a vastly different situation to shoe-horning 2016 trendy SJW political stuff into a beloved 90s classic of the genre (among a variety of other technical and gameplay issues).

They fucked up an easy gig here, showcases a lack of talent and being out of touch with their consumer base.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The Sunset case was similar in that the developers acted like arrogant pieces of shit when their "masterpiece" was received with ridicule, despite the glowing endorsement from the gaming press.

 

[PhantasmaNL]

Will PS:T still be Amber Scott-ified by Beamdog? You know, fixing the story and upgrading characters personalities. Or was that project scrapped? I see lots of opportunities for an even bigger clusterfuck right there. It should also result in an entertaining Codex thread.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

Will PS:T still be Amber Scott-ified by Beamdog? You know, fixing the story and upgrading characters personalities. Or was that project scrapped? I see lots of opportunities for an even bigger clusterfuck right there. It should also result in an entertaining Codex thread.

ow yeah! Bring me PS:T with new NPC's I don't care about with poor voice acting. Wonder if it will outsell PS: ToN

 

[Dwarvophile]

It's crazy what they're doing at Beamdog.

This whole thing would have blown over quite quickly if they just apologized for a bad joke to the fanbase and released a generic PR statement.

Yep. Anyway, I heard that Beamdog is working on an official statement ATM. We should take bets on how much worse they are going to make this fiasco.[/QUOTE


I don't think they situation is so uncomfortable when they can so easily pass for victims of a misogenistic anti-tranny cabal. This is the reason why so many ticks have been tempted to endorse this SJW costume, they know they can't loose, no matter how big they fucked up, in the end it's all about the cult of victimhood in today's medias and the rarefaction of the critical mind will make sure people suscribe to their intelectual scam.

I don't know much about the internet stuff, this is not really my world, but the concept of badly written NPC seems much too subtle and not juicy enough to the main audience compared to misogenist trannycide gangbang internet conspiracy.

 

[Havoc]

I really wonder how they are going to explain the bugs and broken stuff. My bet is they won't even address it and us MUH SOGGY KNEES as an excuse for the poor customer reviews.

 

[Tacgnol]

I really wonder how they are going to explain the bugs and broken stuff. My bet is they won't even address it and us MUH SOGGY KNEES as an excuse for the poor customer reviews.

That's my suspicion as well. They barely address how broken the game is on their forums, instead focusing on the tranny and Minsc.

 

[PhantasmaNL]

So did Beamdog actually convince David Warner to VA for this?

It might be the only good thing about this game. I hope Warner got a fat paycheck out of it.

 

[varangos]

Sooooo,do you think dragon spear needs a stratagem modification or it is at that lvl already?

 

[CrimsonAngel]

It's crazy what they're doing at Beamdog.

This whole thing would have blown over quite quickly if they just apologized for a bad joke to the fanbase and released a generic PR statement.

Instead, they directly antagonize the core fanbase again and again and again. I truly believe, nothing would have come of this if Amber Scott didn't open her mouth.


You have one of the most beloved video game franchises in history. You have one of the loyalist fanbases possible, allowing you to sell 1 million copies of shitty repackages of 15-18 year old games. You have an engine, combat system, characters. You know where the story is supposed to begin and end.

How is it possible to fuck something like that up?


Marketing 101, don't insult your core fanbase. Marketing 102, don't double down on it once you do.

You might be correct, but then again the vast majority of people complaining aren't part of the fanbase at all. Look at that reddit thread that was liked a few pages back (weebinaction sub or what have you). There's tons of outraged comments from people clearly oblivious as to what Beamdog is and even what Baldur's Gate is - though that won't stop them from screaming about how another "classic" is ruined.

It may be that a significant portion of the actual fanbase is also included in the far larger universe of people who are complaining, but that's not entirely a safe assumption. On the Baldur's Gate sub, the regulars seem to be far more mellow about this (to be noted, they had disliked the EE companions as much as anyone, from what I gathered) and just want to enjoy the game without being dragged into this bullshit.

The truth is still that it would be another eye rolling moment and then nothing else if Beamdog had not shot them self in the foot with there comments and then proceed to try and fix the situation by shooting said foot more. They screwed up it is that simple it would be foot note if they hade not tried to pick an ideological fight.

 

[Ellef]

This whole mess is disgusting, all of it, both sides. All of you people make me fucking sick. It's a shame that this legendary game will now most likely be forever linked to some retarded "culture wars" bullshit that was inflated to ridiculous proportions thanks to the internet. Nothing is good anymore, everything is poisoned. Small and insignificant as it may be, it's just another thing on the pile of reasons of why I should move to a cabin in the mountains or join some monastery in the east. More noise from a troubled world.

Spoiler

 

[Torrasque01]

Article from Rex' site https://archive.is/aRfwn

Spoiler

Trying to Understand Baldur’s GateGate: The Controversy Explained
An older game finds itself surrounded in new age problems.
Nick Monroe / Features / Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, Beamdog, PC /

Baldur’s Gate was released in December 1998. It was an instant classic. The success of the title spawned an entire genre of RPGs and helped pave the way for expansions, a sequel, and remakes, to update the experience for modern audiences. Starting in 2012, the gaming studio known as Beamdog started to publish “Enhanced Editions” of Baldur’s Gate games. This was a focus primarily due to Beamdog having former Bioware staff onboard.
On March 31st, Beamdog decided to expand by developing and publishing Siege of Dragonspear – an expansion for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition that bridges events between Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II.

There’s two sides to every controversy, and this Baldur’s Gate situation is no different. A portion of the gaming community has expressed concerns about the functionality of the game. Reports indicate mod incompatibility, in-game bugs being fairly common, and overall a loss of confidence that the game was properly tested before releasing. The other side of the issues surrounding the Baldur’s Gate expansion are politically charged and center around the writing of Siege of Dragonspear itself.

Looking at it from a gameplay perspective, there are signs that is a buggy experience. On the official subreddit, a thread about bug reporting is stickied to the top of the site, acknowledgement by the mods that it is a prominent issue.
Steam and GoG are the places where the public’s reviews of the game come from. Since the public is hyper focused on talking about the game’s flaws, reviews are heavily curated and hard to come by. One popular top review on the page manages to go into detail about gameplay issues.

“I’m a huge fan of the Baldur’s Gate franchise and, over the years, have played through the campaigns more times than I can count. That said, I would urge fans of the series to hold off on purchasing this DLC for the moment. Here are a few of the issues I experienced in SoD. Attempting to import my protagonist via save file or character import results in him being stripped of all equipment. This gear is permanently lost. (If you have an endgame save from the main campaign this doesn’t occur, but I don’t have that luxury.) Game difficulty settings are broken and can retroactively corrupt save files if you’re attempting to play on the highest difficulty. Multiplayer is in an unusable state. Although I have some minor grievances with the UI updating, there is one particular change I find rather immersion breaking. If you scroll towards the edge of the map, nearly half the screen will be blanketed in darkness. This was not present in previous versions.”

A second negative Steam review shares similar concerns.
“Do not buy this game in its current state. The entire expansion is plagued with technical issues including (but not limited to) corruption of previous single-player save files, randomly changing game difficulty, inaccessible online multiplayer, and inescapable dialogue loops. While some of these problems might be the product of the v1.3 to v2.0 update, several game-breaking issues are already easily reproducible in the expansion’s content alone. Had I known on launch day just how poorly programmed this expansion was, I would have waited for Beamdog to iron out all of the kinks (a process which they seem rather lackadaisical about) and not purchased this product.”

The heavy moderation is confirmed by a comment from the Siege of Dragonspear Steam developer on site.

“The accounts that have been banned were banned for perpetuating a false narrative and engaging in a campaign of harassment that is being coordinated externally. Personal attacks against individual developers are also potential reasons for forum bans. Don’t think we don’t see what’s happening. Are there worthwhile criticisms of the game to be had and discussed? Sure. But let’s have that discussion. If you’re only here to hop on the GamerGate/KotakuInAction bandwagon, or to spout abuses at the LGBTQ community or one of our writers, you’re not welcome here; don’t be surprised if your posting privileges get revoked.”

The story of GoG’s reviews paints a different picture than the curation of the Steam page does:
“While the mechanics of the game are in line with the originals, the story falls short. It sacrifices the narrative and world building of the original Baldur’s Gate in order to break the 4th wall and beat players over the head with messages about social issues with the grace and subtlety of a Saturday morning cartoon from the 90’s.There is no problem with having messages about social issues in a game. The problem comes when one hijacks another franchise, gut out its soul and fill it with vapid maxims and fables in its place. That is one of the surest ways to kill off a franchise, and it is especially odious when it happens to a well-loved franchise. Want social justice? Sure, but stop hijacking the industry and make your own games. You’re not going to improve the industry, you’re just going to kill it from the inside out.”

According to the game developer, that GoG reviewer would have what they see as a “wrong opinion”. If you read this wanting to know actual problems with Siege of Dragonspear in terms of gameplay, then you’ve read as much as you need to. The rest of the problems are about personal opinions and gaming community discussions more focused on the medium in general.

In terms of general opinion when it comes to video game writing criticism, Siege of Dragonspear is in a rare position where certain consistency is expected. They advertised the game as “adding a new chapter to the Bhaalspawn saga. The events occurring between Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II are at last revealed,” according to their website. It’s a part of a series of stories already told. The Baldur’s Gate world was first created in 1998 when the original game came out. Making too many changes to how that fictional society expressed itself will seem unusual to anyone who goes into this with previous experiences with the series.

Jeff Grubb of VentureBeat says something to a similar effect in his piece. “Some gamers are angry that it features a transgendered cleric as well as three-dimensional women characters. You can read about some of these themes in our positive review for the add-on, which is the first new content for the original Baldur’s Gate since 1999. But some fans of that original game are furious that Beamdog would expand the beloved role-playing world to feature more inclusive writing and characterizations, this has led to dozens of heated threads on Baldur’s Gate’s forums and a deluge of negative user scores on the review-aggregation site Metacritic and the Steam PC gaming portal.”

One of the characters is transgender, and that’s been a huge talking point of the discussion when it comes to the game’s writing. Let’s see what the gamers are actually saying about the issue. I don’t claim to understand the perspective of transgender people, but the community is free to express themselves on that. One person’s twitlonger goes into detail about this transgender aspect.

“So why is the character in this game highly offensive? Simple, because the character was clearly not written by someone who is familiar with issues of transgender as if they were they would have known that a transgender person would never and I repeat NEVER reveal their secret to a person who they have only just met as though the person they were speaking to would immediately accept them and be indifferent to their gender. As I just previously pointed out many transgender people are fearful to how people will react if they revealed their secret and as such would not reveal it until they are familiar with the person, I should remind you that some countries do actually stone transgender people or in their view homosexual people to death.”

Someone else on the Baldur’s Gate official subreddit shared similar sentiments on the topic. “Don’t even get me started on how offended I am to have someone to have someone insert a TOKEN trans character into the game that’s meant to represent us??? I’d rather not be represented in a game AT ALL than have a characters opening lines be “Hi I’m trans”, christ almighty, being trans should be a minor aspect of them, not the whole character, let alone in a setting where it makes very little sense and has no explanation!”
“Really it’s all about ethics in heroic adventuring” is a line said by Minsc, a popular companion character, in the game itself. In general, the overall concerns appear to be: tying a game with a long legacy and fond memories in the gaming community, into a controversy of the industry these past few years, was bound to divide the Baldur’s Gate fan base. People may agree or disagree with GamerGate itself, but regardless of that both sides can still be upset about the fact that this writing choice was made, and implemented poorly.

The controversy came to involve people who developed the expansion itself. One of the writers, Amber Scott, stated their writing intentions in August 2015 that people referred to in the discussion surrounding Siege of Dragonspear:

“I’m the writer and creator. I get to make decisions about who I write about and why. I don’t like writing about straight/white/cis people all the time. It’s not reflective of the real world, it sets up s/w/c as the “normal” baseline from which “other” characters must be added, and it’s boring. I consciously add as much diversity as I can to my writing and I don’t care if people think that’s “forced” or fake. I find choosing to write from a straight default just as artificial. I’m happy to be an SJW and I hope to write many Social Justice Games in the future that reach as many different types of people as possible. Everyone should get a chance to see themselves reflected in pop culture.”

In a Kotaku interview, Amber made it clear that she had implemented changes for Siege of Dragonspear.
“If there was something for the original Baldur’s Gate that just doesn’t mesh for modern day gamers like the sexism, [we tried to address that],” said writer Amber Scott. “In the original there’s a lot of jokes at women’s expense. Or if not a lot, there’s a couple, like Safana was just a sex object in BG 1, and Jaheira was the nagging wife and that was played for comedy. We were able to say, ‘No, that’s not really the kind of story we want to make.’ In Siege of Dragonspear, Safana gets her own little storyline, she got a way better personality upgrade. If people don’t like that, then too bad.”
Beamdog President Trent Oster caused further controversy due to his post on Beamdog forums.
“I’d like to ask a favour. It appears that having a transgendered cleric and a joke line by Minsc has greatly offended the sensibilities of some people. This has spurred these people into action, causing them to decide this is the worst game of all time and give it a zero review score on Steam, GoG and meta critic. Now, I’d like to ask for that favour. If you are playing the game and having a good time, please consider posting a positive review to balance out the loud minority which is currently painting a dark picture for new players.”

Any game developer that requests positive reviews as a result of negative criticism should be a red flag for anyone. Asking for positive reviews as a game developer is just as bad as people “review bombing” it for their own reasons. Not only did Oster acknowledge the issue, but he supported giving it attention and making it a bigger problem than it was

Trent elaborated on his position with criticism surrounding the game to TechRaptor: “I find the controversy ridiculous. Yes, we have a transgendered character. I know a number of transgendered people and they are genuine, wonderful humans. Yes, we also have a character who cracks a joke about ethics. The original Baldur’s Gate had a whole sequence about the Bob Newhart show. If this generates controversy it makes a sad statement about the world we live in. As for my post on the forums, I merely asked people who were enjoying the game to share their positive feedback. I know our fans can become engrossed in their enjoyment and I really don’t want potential fans to miss out on the series because of protest reviews by small minded individuals.”
Dee Pennyway, assistant producer at Beamdog, decided to involve Feminist Frequency. Pennyway wrote on Twitter: “These are not real #BaldursGate fans. GamerGate launching a negative review campaign for a game that includes one line about a transgender character.”

The best solution for the developers would be to take a step back and let the community debate amongst themselves. By making a statement as a Beamdog employee, it makes it harder for a fair discussion to be had in the community. By making a comparison to Bob Newhart, Trent makes it seem like the GamerGate controversy is just a big joke.
People are free to defend the developers statements as much as they want, but it should be acknowledged that the developers made their own choice to involve themselves in the discussion, thus opening themselves to public scrutiny.

And http://nichegamer.com/2016/04/04/tale-dragons-memes-dragonspears-writing-horrid/

Spoiler

A Tale Of Dragons And Memes: Why Dragonspear’s Writing Is Horrid
BY:CARL BATCHELORON APRIL 4, 2016, 11:27 PM EDT@RPGENDBOSS



In the months leading up toDragonspear’srelease, I was easily caught up by the hype. After all, how could I not? As a devoted D&D fan and someone who – at the expense of my backlog – still plays the nearly two decade oldBaldur’s Gate, it seemed like an easy sell.

Creating more content for a game that is in desperate need of a revival at a time when CRPGs are finally coming back into vogue was a great idea, and had I been a game developer, I would have jumped at the chance to do it myself.

Of course I was warned, both by friends and by readers of this site posting in comments onDragonspearnews articles I posted, that the game wasn’t going to be worth the money.

“They hired Gaider, you know what that means”

“Did you see how bad that stream was”

“You know they’ll screw it up.”

Naturally, I didn’t believe them. Call it putting the nostalgia goggles on, but I couldn’t possibly believe Beamdog’sBaldur’s Gateexpansion would be anything but a continuation of the same events and personalities that made the original so timeless and memorable. Not even a curmudgeonly CRPG elitist like myself could believe that. While most of my friends on Steam decided they’d adopt a “wait-and-see” approach to the expansion, I went all in and pre-ordered it.

Now, to be fair, my initial experience with the game was a positive one. Though I’d later find several gameplay imbalances and poor design decisions (which will be touched upon in my coming review of the title), my first impression ofDragonspear was quite favorable. I enjoyed the smoothed out sprites, the GUI enhancements, the improved AI scripting, and the new Shaman class. Though I disliked the new method at which they spread information over the character sheet, I soon found out that was the least of my problems.

After five hours with the game, I encountered numerous situations where a combination of very poor writing and social justice pandering began to weigh the game down. Technical and gameplay missteps were one thing, but the sheer amount of modern 2016 Tumblr-level politics turned what was once a grand medieval swords & sorcery epic into the equivalent of a emotional teenage girl’s self-insert fanfic. So, after documenting these odd inclusions to the game, I went to check to see if /v/ was upset about it as well.

You’ll notice that the linked 8chan /v/ thread in my article had a user with the ID 334484, and it was this user that posted several screenshots that revealed some of the social justice themed events in the game. That user was me, and the video posted in the thread was uploaded by me to my youtube channel. The 8chan /v/ thread was relevant to the story – and therefore cited in the article – since it was the first place online where these added features were revealed to the gaming public. Say what you will about the maturity of /v/, or even 8chan as a whole, but you are unlikely to find another place as unfiltered and timely with their information as they are. Especially since a good many of the gaming press lurk the threads looking for news there.

Getting to the crux of this editorial, a fair amount of people seem to be content with pushing the false narrative that Dragonspear’s problems begin and end with the NPC “Mizhena” and her speech about her male-to-female transitioning. While it certainly is the most obvious and outrageous example of Beamdog’s tumblr-ization of the game, it is not the only one. Sadly, because many accept what they read online to be true, or simply despise doing any research beyond reading PR blurbs, you have a great many folks who are parroting the “It’s just one trans-gendered NPC” lie.

First of all, there’s the issue of Corwin. She is an NPC that you meet early on that essentially acts as your guide through the early part of the game. She is, initially, the person that informs you of your new status as a legendary hero and keeps a watch on the player’s actions, being sure to reprimand them if they act inappropriately. Though an archer, she acts like a Paladin. That, however, is not the issue with Corwin.

Her first flirtation with annoyance comes by way of her daughter, Rohma. In a conversation shortly before leaving to face Argent and her rampaging army, you are given a series of responses to Rohma in hopes of reassuring her of her mother’s safety while in your party. Playing the noble warrior, you may opt to tell Rohma that you will make sure her mother returns unharmed. A simple and sincere gesture, especially considering you’re talking to a pre-teen child. The response you get, however, isn’t one you’d expect.

“My mother can take care of herself.”

Fair enough. A little precociousness from the tyke is nothing to be upset by, nor is it bothersome when Safana chimes in and mentions how much she admires the girl’s attitude. I do have to admit though, it struck me as odd.

It wasn’t until later when, completely out of the blue, Corwin hit on my female mage main character and propositioned her. There was no discussion with her, no reputation building, no romantic conversations, no interest shown at all…but Corwin immediately hit on my main character all the same. Besides being extremely odd given the fact that my character and Corwin barely exchanged more than 4 sentences up until this point (all of which rather curt dialog that hinted she was a figid shrew), it seemed incredibly hackneyed and forced. Why would she, completely out of the blue and so soon, ask my female mage to sleep with her? Thankfully, it let me end the burgeoning relationship right then and there, but it was the first sign that something was terribly wrong with this game’s writing.

After that, I encountered Mizhena, which those working at Beamdog insist is the only reason anyone is upset at Dragonspear. for brevity’s sake, I won’t retread any ground concerning her character here.

Secondly, and perhaps even worse than Corwin’s broken mess of a character, is the modification done to Safana. While I understand Beamdog’s writers were angry at Safana for being a man-teasing “slut”, I never saw her character in such a way. To me, she was a manipulative woman who learned she could coerce men to do her bidding by complimenting them. Any woman who has had a successful first date after the age of 13 is well aware of the truth in that strategy. Though considering your average bitter female 30-something social keyboard warrior dines with cats and spends every night dampening their iPhone with tears shed while swiping through Tinder profiles, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to you that they despise having to admit that fact.

So what did they do? They completely altered Safana’s personality. No longer is she anything close to resembling the sultry seductress that defined her character both in vanilla Baldur’s Gate and various user based mods over the last 18 years. Now, she is a sarcastic, sometimes ungrateful, always spiteful thief who begrudgingly follows your orders. The difference, especially if you’ve ever ran an evil party with Safana, are extraordinarily profound.

Thirdly, as if altering a beloved NPC’s personality and crafting a textbook example of theJeannaDArchetype trope(God forgive me for linking to that god awful site) wasn’t enough for Beamdog, they decided to cast an unrepentant Mary Sue as the main villain.

Caelar Argent isn’t too bad, as antagonists go, but for as brutal and violent and unforgiving as she is, she is still cast in a very favorable, if not downright flattering light. Citizens crowd refugee camps, blood and fire drip down the mountains, chaos and death linger in Argent’s path…yet she is still worshiped and adored as a leader. Even Irenicus skirts out of her way, seeming to idolize her at one point when he approaches her camp and sizes her up in a small intermission between chapters. She is portrayed as a divine, ass-kicking, power-girl that can do no wrong and is more fearsome than the gods themselves.

The big problem with this is that it’s just sloppy writing. Irenicus was a great villain because he had obvious and hampering flaws. Mellisan, the main antagonist of Throne of Bhaal, also exhibited flaws, though hers were mainly tied to her arrogance and megalomania rather than Irenicus and his cleverly-written jealousy. In Argent’s case, her only flaw is that she ultimately has to fall and make way for your character.

If you’ve ever played tabletop with a first-timer, you probably know the type of character I’m talking about. The first-timer makes a self-insert, super-powerful, fearsome character with little to no flaws who has flames shooting out of their eyes, a flaming longsword, and a mysterious past. That’s exactly what Argent is. A poorly written, one-dimensional Mary Sue with flaming eyes and a flaming sword. It makes her a very poor villain and does not in any way make the player feel anything besides pity for the person who wrote her. Unlike Bodhi, Sarevok, and Irenicus, Argent is perceived from the start as a valiant warrior who is adored and feared in equal measure. This, in my opinion, is an incredibly lazy way to write an antagonist.

Coming in fourth, behind all the self-insert, fanfic-level writing that pollutes Dragonspear, are two instances of smartly hidden in-jokes.

You probably know these as well, since both the goblin crying “Racism” and Minsc making a Gamer Gate joke were covered in our own article about the game. While these utterances are one of the “rare select” sounds that only play once every blue moon when selecting a party member, the fact that they are uncommonly encountered doesn’t take away from the cringe factor they create.

Some of the game’s defenders (of which there are very few), say that this is no big deal either. They compare it to the Bob Newhart Easter egg in vanilla Baldur’s Gate and see nothing wrong with putting tumblr memes into a game. While I’ll agree, Easter eggs and in-jokes are nothing new to Baldur’s Gate, Oster & company don’t understand there are two gigantic differences between their joke and the Newhart joke: Timing and delivery.

Beamdog CEO Trent Oster gave an official response, viaTechraptor:

I find the controversy ridiculous. Yes, we have a transgendered character. I know a number of transgendered people and they are genuine, wonderful humans. Yes, we also have a character who cracks a joke about ethics. The original Baldur’s Gate had a whole sequence about the Bob Newhart show. If this generates controversy it makes a sad statement about the world we live in.

As for my post on the forums, I merely asked people who were enjoying the game to share their positive feedback. I know our fans can become engrossed in their enjoyment and I really don’t want potential fans to miss out on the series because of protest reviews by small minded individuals.
As for Amber’s interview, I also believe in strong female characters and I feel she did an excellent job bringing dimension and interest to Safana with her writing in Siege of Dragonspear. Her “Too bad” comment, I chalk up to a long day of interviews, having personally done such interviews.
The Bob Newhart show had been off of the air for 8 years prior to it being parodied by the three wandering kobolds in Baldur’s Gate. Most teens playing the game were still soiling their diapers when Larry, Daryl and his “other brother” Daryl were America’s funniest “wacky neighbors”. The joke went over most younger folks’ heads and, like all good Easter eggs in a game, was something that was done within the lore of the game. For all non-Newhart fans cared, it was just three comically insane kobolds bumbling through the forest. As strange as the joke was, it actually fit within the world lore.

Having to explain this in an editorial feels ridiculous, since you’d think anyone old enough to access the internet by themselves would understand the difference between a “lore friendly” joke and a mindless meme. Though when you consider the fact that people like Borderland’s Anthony Burch have made entire games based around nothing but stale, left over 4chan memes, it doesn’t seem too far-fetched.

With all of these instances of poor writing, lazy characterization, blandly written gay characters, and irresponsible meme’ing, I can’t understand how anyone wanting to defend the game can use the “It’s just one trans-gendered character” lie with a straight face. Anyone clinging to that lie is either out to manipulate buyers into ignoring the community’s warnings and purchasing Dragonspear, or they are simply ignorant of its obvious faults due to having never actually played it.

Looking at any forum where discussion of this game is taking place, you’ll find scant few people defending it. Other than Beamdog employees or non-players attempting to virtue signal, the vast majority of the forums are full of folks who are fed up with the sloppy writing and token-ization of gay characters that are so prevalent in the game.

I could, if I had the time and felt I could keep your attention here long enough, explain how escapism matters and that social justice folks are offended by anyone wanting to escape the real world. I could tell you that their guilt over being so white, so “basic”, so rich, so privileged, and so elitist is what drives them to lick the altar of “white guilt”. I could tell you that they secretly feel so guilty being privileged themselves that they spend their entire adulthood pushing their insecurities on others, all in the hope of somehow silencing that little voice in their head that tells them they’re worthless.

And this is why you have people defending a poorly written mess of a game and trying, yet again, to use it to paint any rational gamer as a misogynistic miscreant.

Here’s a novel idea: how about you call a poorly written game a poorly written game?

 

[Infinitron]

Article from Rex' site https://archive.is/aRfwn

Spoiler

Trying to Understand Baldur’s GateGate: The Controversy Explained
An older game finds itself surrounded in new age problems.
Nick Monroe / Features / Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, Beamdog, PC /

Baldur’s Gate was released in December 1998. It was an instant classic. The success of the title spawned an entire genre of RPGs and helped pave the way for expansions, a sequel, and remakes, to update the experience for modern audiences. Starting in 2012, the gaming studio known as Beamdog started to publish “Enhanced Editions” of Baldur’s Gate games. This was a focus primarily due to Beamdog having former Bioware staff onboard.
On March 31st, Beamdog decided to expand by developing and publishing Siege of Dragonspear – an expansion for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition that bridges events between Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II.

There’s two sides to every controversy, and this Baldur’s Gate situation is no different. A portion of the gaming community has expressed concerns about the functionality of the game. Reports indicate mod incompatibility, in-game bugs being fairly common, and overall a loss of confidence that the game was properly tested before releasing. The other side of the issues surrounding the Baldur’s Gate expansion are politically charged and center around the writing of Siege of Dragonspear itself.

Looking at it from a gameplay perspective, there are signs that is a buggy experience. On the official subreddit, a thread about bug reporting is stickied to the top of the site, acknowledgement by the mods that it is a prominent issue.
Steam and GoG are the places where the public’s reviews of the game come from. Since the public is hyper focused on talking about the game’s flaws, reviews are heavily curated and hard to come by. One popular top review on the page manages to go into detail about gameplay issues.

“I’m a huge fan of the Baldur’s Gate franchise and, over the years, have played through the campaigns more times than I can count. That said, I would urge fans of the series to hold off on purchasing this DLC for the moment. Here are a few of the issues I experienced in SoD. Attempting to import my protagonist via save file or character import results in him being stripped of all equipment. This gear is permanently lost. (If you have an endgame save from the main campaign this doesn’t occur, but I don’t have that luxury.) Game difficulty settings are broken and can retroactively corrupt save files if you’re attempting to play on the highest difficulty. Multiplayer is in an unusable state. Although I have some minor grievances with the UI updating, there is one particular change I find rather immersion breaking. If you scroll towards the edge of the map, nearly half the screen will be blanketed in darkness. This was not present in previous versions.”

A second negative Steam review shares similar concerns.
“Do not buy this game in its current state. The entire expansion is plagued with technical issues including (but not limited to) corruption of previous single-player save files, randomly changing game difficulty, inaccessible online multiplayer, and inescapable dialogue loops. While some of these problems might be the product of the v1.3 to v2.0 update, several game-breaking issues are already easily reproducible in the expansion’s content alone. Had I known on launch day just how poorly programmed this expansion was, I would have waited for Beamdog to iron out all of the kinks (a process which they seem rather lackadaisical about) and not purchased this product.”

The heavy moderation is confirmed by a comment from the Siege of Dragonspear Steam developer on site.

“The accounts that have been banned were banned for perpetuating a false narrative and engaging in a campaign of harassment that is being coordinated externally. Personal attacks against individual developers are also potential reasons for forum bans. Don’t think we don’t see what’s happening. Are there worthwhile criticisms of the game to be had and discussed? Sure. But let’s have that discussion. If you’re only here to hop on the GamerGate/KotakuInAction bandwagon, or to spout abuses at the LGBTQ community or one of our writers, you’re not welcome here; don’t be surprised if your posting privileges get revoked.”

The story of GoG’s reviews paints a different picture than the curation of the Steam page does:
“While the mechanics of the game are in line with the originals, the story falls short. It sacrifices the narrative and world building of the original Baldur’s Gate in order to break the 4th wall and beat players over the head with messages about social issues with the grace and subtlety of a Saturday morning cartoon from the 90’s.There is no problem with having messages about social issues in a game. The problem comes when one hijacks another franchise, gut out its soul and fill it with vapid maxims and fables in its place. That is one of the surest ways to kill off a franchise, and it is especially odious when it happens to a well-loved franchise. Want social justice? Sure, but stop hijacking the industry and make your own games. You’re not going to improve the industry, you’re just going to kill it from the inside out.”

According to the game developer, that GoG reviewer would have what they see as a “wrong opinion”. If you read this wanting to know actual problems with Siege of Dragonspear in terms of gameplay, then you’ve read as much as you need to. The rest of the problems are about personal opinions and gaming community discussions more focused on the medium in general.

In terms of general opinion when it comes to video game writing criticism, Siege of Dragonspear is in a rare position where certain consistency is expected. They advertised the game as “adding a new chapter to the Bhaalspawn saga. The events occurring between Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II are at last revealed,” according to their website. It’s a part of a series of stories already told. The Baldur’s Gate world was first created in 1998 when the original game came out. Making too many changes to how that fictional society expressed itself will seem unusual to anyone who goes into this with previous experiences with the series.

Jeff Grubb of VentureBeat says something to a similar effect in his piece. “Some gamers are angry that it features a transgendered cleric as well as three-dimensional women characters. You can read about some of these themes in our positive review for the add-on, which is the first new content for the original Baldur’s Gate since 1999. But some fans of that original game are furious that Beamdog would expand the beloved role-playing world to feature more inclusive writing and characterizations, this has led to dozens of heated threads on Baldur’s Gate’s forums and a deluge of negative user scores on the review-aggregation site Metacritic and the Steam PC gaming portal.”

One of the characters is transgender, and that’s been a huge talking point of the discussion when it comes to the game’s writing. Let’s see what the gamers are actually saying about the issue. I don’t claim to understand the perspective of transgender people, but the community is free to express themselves on that. One person’s twitlonger goes into detail about this transgender aspect.

“So why is the character in this game highly offensive? Simple, because the character was clearly not written by someone who is familiar with issues of transgender as if they were they would have known that a transgender person would never and I repeat NEVER reveal their secret to a person who they have only just met as though the person they were speaking to would immediately accept them and be indifferent to their gender. As I just previously pointed out many transgender people are fearful to how people will react if they revealed their secret and as such would not reveal it until they are familiar with the person, I should remind you that some countries do actually stone transgender people or in their view homosexual people to death.”

Someone else on the Baldur’s Gate official subreddit shared similar sentiments on the topic. “Don’t even get me started on how offended I am to have someone to have someone insert a TOKEN trans character into the game that’s meant to represent us??? I’d rather not be represented in a game AT ALL than have a characters opening lines be “Hi I’m trans”, christ almighty, being trans should be a minor aspect of them, not the whole character, let alone in a setting where it makes very little sense and has no explanation!”
“Really it’s all about ethics in heroic adventuring” is a line said by Minsc, a popular companion character, in the game itself. In general, the overall concerns appear to be: tying a game with a long legacy and fond memories in the gaming community, into a controversy of the industry these past few years, was bound to divide the Baldur’s Gate fan base. People may agree or disagree with GamerGate itself, but regardless of that both sides can still be upset about the fact that this writing choice was made, and implemented poorly.

The controversy came to involve people who developed the expansion itself. One of the writers, Amber Scott, stated their writing intentions in August 2015 that people referred to in the discussion surrounding Siege of Dragonspear:

“I’m the writer and creator. I get to make decisions about who I write about and why. I don’t like writing about straight/white/cis people all the time. It’s not reflective of the real world, it sets up s/w/c as the “normal” baseline from which “other” characters must be added, and it’s boring. I consciously add as much diversity as I can to my writing and I don’t care if people think that’s “forced” or fake. I find choosing to write from a straight default just as artificial. I’m happy to be an SJW and I hope to write many Social Justice Games in the future that reach as many different types of people as possible. Everyone should get a chance to see themselves reflected in pop culture.”

In a Kotaku interview, Amber made it clear that she had implemented changes for Siege of Dragonspear.
“If there was something for the original Baldur’s Gate that just doesn’t mesh for modern day gamers like the sexism, [we tried to address that],” said writer Amber Scott. “In the original there’s a lot of jokes at women’s expense. Or if not a lot, there’s a couple, like Safana was just a sex object in BG 1, and Jaheira was the nagging wife and that was played for comedy. We were able to say, ‘No, that’s not really the kind of story we want to make.’ In Siege of Dragonspear, Safana gets her own little storyline, she got a way better personality upgrade. If people don’t like that, then too bad.”
Beamdog President Trent Oster caused further controversy due to his post on Beamdog forums.
“I’d like to ask a favour. It appears that having a transgendered cleric and a joke line by Minsc has greatly offended the sensibilities of some people. This has spurred these people into action, causing them to decide this is the worst game of all time and give it a zero review score on Steam, GoG and meta critic. Now, I’d like to ask for that favour. If you are playing the game and having a good time, please consider posting a positive review to balance out the loud minority which is currently painting a dark picture for new players.”

Any game developer that requests positive reviews as a result of negative criticism should be a red flag for anyone. Asking for positive reviews as a game developer is just as bad as people “review bombing” it for their own reasons. Not only did Oster acknowledge the issue, but he supported giving it attention and making it a bigger problem than it was

Trent elaborated on his position with criticism surrounding the game to TechRaptor: “I find the controversy ridiculous. Yes, we have a transgendered character. I know a number of transgendered people and they are genuine, wonderful humans. Yes, we also have a character who cracks a joke about ethics. The original Baldur’s Gate had a whole sequence about the Bob Newhart show. If this generates controversy it makes a sad statement about the world we live in. As for my post on the forums, I merely asked people who were enjoying the game to share their positive feedback. I know our fans can become engrossed in their enjoyment and I really don’t want potential fans to miss out on the series because of protest reviews by small minded individuals.”
Dee Pennyway, assistant producer at Beamdog, decided to involve Feminist Frequency. Pennyway wrote on Twitter: “These are not real #BaldursGate fans. GamerGate launching a negative review campaign for a game that includes one line about a transgender character.”

The best solution for the developers would be to take a step back and let the community debate amongst themselves. By making a statement as a Beamdog employee, it makes it harder for a fair discussion to be had in the community. By making a comparison to Bob Newhart, Trent makes it seem like the GamerGate controversy is just a big joke.
People are free to defend the developers statements as much as they want, but it should be acknowledged that the developers made their own choice to involve themselves in the discussion, thus opening themselves to public scrutiny.

And http://nichegamer.com/2016/04/04/tale-dragons-memes-dragonspears-writing-horrid/

Spoiler

A Tale Of Dragons And Memes: Why Dragonspear’s Writing Is Horrid
BY:CARL BATCHELORON APRIL 4, 2016, 11:27 PM EDT@RPGENDBOSS



In the months leading up toDragonspear’srelease, I was easily caught up by the hype. After all, how could I not? As a devoted D&D fan and someone who – at the expense of my backlog – still plays the nearly two decade oldBaldur’s Gate, it seemed like an easy sell.

Creating more content for a game that is in desperate need of a revival at a time when CRPGs are finally coming back into vogue was a great idea, and had I been a game developer, I would have jumped at the chance to do it myself.

Of course I was warned, both by friends and by readers of this site posting in comments onDragonspearnews articles I posted, that the game wasn’t going to be worth the money.

“They hired Gaider, you know what that means”

“Did you see how bad that stream was”

“You know they’ll screw it up.”

Naturally, I didn’t believe them. Call it putting the nostalgia goggles on, but I couldn’t possibly believe Beamdog’sBaldur’s Gateexpansion would be anything but a continuation of the same events and personalities that made the original so timeless and memorable. Not even a curmudgeonly CRPG elitist like myself could believe that. While most of my friends on Steam decided they’d adopt a “wait-and-see” approach to the expansion, I went all in and pre-ordered it.

Now, to be fair, my initial experience with the game was a positive one. Though I’d later find several gameplay imbalances and poor design decisions (which will be touched upon in my coming review of the title), my first impression ofDragonspear was quite favorable. I enjoyed the smoothed out sprites, the GUI enhancements, the improved AI scripting, and the new Shaman class. Though I disliked the new method at which they spread information over the character sheet, I soon found out that was the least of my problems.

After five hours with the game, I encountered numerous situations where a combination of very poor writing and social justice pandering began to weigh the game down. Technical and gameplay missteps were one thing, but the sheer amount of modern 2016 Tumblr-level politics turned what was once a grand medieval swords & sorcery epic into the equivalent of a emotional teenage girl’s self-insert fanfic. So, after documenting these odd inclusions to the game, I went to check to see if /v/ was upset about it as well.

You’ll notice that the linked 8chan /v/ thread in my article had a user with the ID 334484, and it was this user that posted several screenshots that revealed some of the social justice themed events in the game. That user was me, and the video posted in the thread was uploaded by me to my youtube channel. The 8chan /v/ thread was relevant to the story – and therefore cited in the article – since it was the first place online where these added features were revealed to the gaming public. Say what you will about the maturity of /v/, or even 8chan as a whole, but you are unlikely to find another place as unfiltered and timely with their information as they are. Especially since a good many of the gaming press lurk the threads looking for news there.

Getting to the crux of this editorial, a fair amount of people seem to be content with pushing the false narrative that Dragonspear’s problems begin and end with the NPC “Mizhena” and her speech about her male-to-female transitioning. While it certainly is the most obvious and outrageous example of Beamdog’s tumblr-ization of the game, it is not the only one. Sadly, because many accept what they read online to be true, or simply despise doing any research beyond reading PR blurbs, you have a great many folks who are parroting the “It’s just one trans-gendered NPC” lie.

First of all, there’s the issue of Corwin. She is an NPC that you meet early on that essentially acts as your guide through the early part of the game. She is, initially, the person that informs you of your new status as a legendary hero and keeps a watch on the player’s actions, being sure to reprimand them if they act inappropriately. Though an archer, she acts like a Paladin. That, however, is not the issue with Corwin.

Her first flirtation with annoyance comes by way of her daughter, Rohma. In a conversation shortly before leaving to face Argent and her rampaging army, you are given a series of responses to Rohma in hopes of reassuring her of her mother’s safety while in your party. Playing the noble warrior, you may opt to tell Rohma that you will make sure her mother returns unharmed. A simple and sincere gesture, especially considering you’re talking to a pre-teen child. The response you get, however, isn’t one you’d expect.

“My mother can take care of herself.”

Fair enough. A little precociousness from the tyke is nothing to be upset by, nor is it bothersome when Safana chimes in and mentions how much she admires the girl’s attitude. I do have to admit though, it struck me as odd.

It wasn’t until later when, completely out of the blue, Corwin hit on my female mage main character and propositioned her. There was no discussion with her, no reputation building, no romantic conversations, no interest shown at all…but Corwin immediately hit on my main character all the same. Besides being extremely odd given the fact that my character and Corwin barely exchanged more than 4 sentences up until this point (all of which rather curt dialog that hinted she was a figid shrew), it seemed incredibly hackneyed and forced. Why would she, completely out of the blue and so soon, ask my female mage to sleep with her? Thankfully, it let me end the burgeoning relationship right then and there, but it was the first sign that something was terribly wrong with this game’s writing.

After that, I encountered Mizhena, which those working at Beamdog insist is the only reason anyone is upset at Dragonspear. for brevity’s sake, I won’t retread any ground concerning her character here.

Secondly, and perhaps even worse than Corwin’s broken mess of a character, is the modification done to Safana. While I understand Beamdog’s writers were angry at Safana for being a man-teasing “slut”, I never saw her character in such a way. To me, she was a manipulative woman who learned she could coerce men to do her bidding by complimenting them. Any woman who has had a successful first date after the age of 13 is well aware of the truth in that strategy. Though considering your average bitter female 30-something social keyboard warrior dines with cats and spends every night dampening their iPhone with tears shed while swiping through Tinder profiles, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to you that they despise having to admit that fact.

So what did they do? They completely altered Safana’s personality. No longer is she anything close to resembling the sultry seductress that defined her character both in vanilla Baldur’s Gate and various user based mods over the last 18 years. Now, she is a sarcastic, sometimes ungrateful, always spiteful thief who begrudgingly follows your orders. The difference, especially if you’ve ever ran an evil party with Safana, are extraordinarily profound.

Thirdly, as if altering a beloved NPC’s personality and crafting a textbook example of theJeannaDArchetype trope(God forgive me for linking to that god awful site) wasn’t enough for Beamdog, they decided to cast an unrepentant Mary Sue as the main villain.

Caelar Argent isn’t too bad, as antagonists go, but for as brutal and violent and unforgiving as she is, she is still cast in a very favorable, if not downright flattering light. Citizens crowd refugee camps, blood and fire drip down the mountains, chaos and death linger in Argent’s path…yet she is still worshiped and adored as a leader. Even Irenicus skirts out of her way, seeming to idolize her at one point when he approaches her camp and sizes her up in a small intermission between chapters. She is portrayed as a divine, ass-kicking, power-girl that can do no wrong and is more fearsome than the gods themselves.

The big problem with this is that it’s just sloppy writing. Irenicus was a great villain because he had obvious and hampering flaws. Mellisan, the main antagonist of Throne of Bhaal, also exhibited flaws, though hers were mainly tied to her arrogance and megalomania rather than Irenicus and his cleverly-written jealousy. In Argent’s case, her only flaw is that she ultimately has to fall and make way for your character.

If you’ve ever played tabletop with a first-timer, you probably know the type of character I’m talking about. The first-timer makes a self-insert, super-powerful, fearsome character with little to no flaws who has flames shooting out of their eyes, a flaming longsword, and a mysterious past. That’s exactly what Argent is. A poorly written, one-dimensional Mary Sue with flaming eyes and a flaming sword. It makes her a very poor villain and does not in any way make the player feel anything besides pity for the person who wrote her. Unlike Bodhi, Sarevok, and Irenicus, Argent is perceived from the start as a valiant warrior who is adored and feared in equal measure. This, in my opinion, is an incredibly lazy way to write an antagonist.

Coming in fourth, behind all the self-insert, fanfic-level writing that pollutes Dragonspear, are two instances of smartly hidden in-jokes.

You probably know these as well, since both the goblin crying “Racism” and Minsc making a Gamer Gate joke were covered in our own article about the game. While these utterances are one of the “rare select” sounds that only play once every blue moon when selecting a party member, the fact that they are uncommonly encountered doesn’t take away from the cringe factor they create.

Some of the game’s defenders (of which there are very few), say that this is no big deal either. They compare it to the Bob Newhart Easter egg in vanilla Baldur’s Gate and see nothing wrong with putting tumblr memes into a game. While I’ll agree, Easter eggs and in-jokes are nothing new to Baldur’s Gate, Oster & company don’t understand there are two gigantic differences between their joke and the Newhart joke: Timing and delivery.

Beamdog CEO Trent Oster gave an official response, viaTechraptor:

I find the controversy ridiculous. Yes, we have a transgendered character. I know a number of transgendered people and they are genuine, wonderful humans. Yes, we also have a character who cracks a joke about ethics. The original Baldur’s Gate had a whole sequence about the Bob Newhart show. If this generates controversy it makes a sad statement about the world we live in.

As for my post on the forums, I merely asked people who were enjoying the game to share their positive feedback. I know our fans can become engrossed in their enjoyment and I really don’t want potential fans to miss out on the series because of protest reviews by small minded individuals.
As for Amber’s interview, I also believe in strong female characters and I feel she did an excellent job bringing dimension and interest to Safana with her writing in Siege of Dragonspear. Her “Too bad” comment, I chalk up to a long day of interviews, having personally done such interviews.
The Bob Newhart show had been off of the air for 8 years prior to it being parodied by the three wandering kobolds in Baldur’s Gate. Most teens playing the game were still soiling their diapers when Larry, Daryl and his “other brother” Daryl were America’s funniest “wacky neighbors”. The joke went over most younger folks’ heads and, like all good Easter eggs in a game, was something that was done within the lore of the game. For all non-Newhart fans cared, it was just three comically insane kobolds bumbling through the forest. As strange as the joke was, it actually fit within the world lore.

Having to explain this in an editorial feels ridiculous, since you’d think anyone old enough to access the internet by themselves would understand the difference between a “lore friendly” joke and a mindless meme. Though when you consider the fact that people like Borderland’s Anthony Burch have made entire games based around nothing but stale, left over 4chan memes, it doesn’t seem too far-fetched.

With all of these instances of poor writing, lazy characterization, blandly written gay characters, and irresponsible meme’ing, I can’t understand how anyone wanting to defend the game can use the “It’s just one trans-gendered character” lie with a straight face. Anyone clinging to that lie is either out to manipulate buyers into ignoring the community’s warnings and purchasing Dragonspear, or they are simply ignorant of its obvious faults due to having never actually played it.

Looking at any forum where discussion of this game is taking place, you’ll find scant few people defending it. Other than Beamdog employees or non-players attempting to virtue signal, the vast majority of the forums are full of folks who are fed up with the sloppy writing and token-ization of gay characters that are so prevalent in the game.

I could, if I had the time and felt I could keep your attention here long enough, explain how escapism matters and that social justice folks are offended by anyone wanting to escape the real world. I could tell you that their guilt over being so white, so “basic”, so rich, so privileged, and so elitist is what drives them to lick the altar of “white guilt”. I could tell you that they secretly feel so guilty being privileged themselves that they spend their entire adulthood pushing their insecurities on others, all in the hope of somehow silencing that little voice in their head that tells them they’re worthless.

And this is why you have people defending a poorly written mess of a game and trying, yet again, to use it to paint any rational gamer as a misogynistic miscreant.

Here’s a novel idea: how about you call a poorly written game a poorly written game?

You should use archive.today for Nichegamer too: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...s-from-the-internet.31585/page-6#post-3947295

 

[Merlkir]

Writer
Self-Employed
So unemployed?

Oh you edgelords. That's what we call a freelancer, how many people in the RPG industry make a living. (Me for example. Even now, having worked on a not-PnP game for almost two years, I'm still freelancing. Some of the biggest writers in the business are freelancers. Good grief, talk about reaching.)

 

[Black]

Someone unemployed got triggered.

 

[janior]

Homeless people are also freelancers... kind of. Tin here, leftover fish there.

 

[CptMace]

Beamdog teaches us a valuable lesson. If you're not sure about the quality of your game, put a very blatant sjw reference or two in it. It will inevitably trigger at least one person (that's all you need, really) in the gaming cosmos.
Then proceed to denounce how nazis are taking down the rating of your gem because they're reactionaries.
See sjws and sorts buy and rate your game high without playing it in the name of everything that's good in this world. See every journo that reviews your game points the fact that people dislike it specifically because of the sjw and nothing else.
Profit.

This new "self-damage-controlling" switch is pretty clever.

More srsly though, can somebody finally tell us if it'll be good once the bugs are fixed ?

 

[Stainless Veteran]

I just found Amber Scott's tumblr page and we all should have seen this coming.
http://medesha.tumblr.com/

Dear god, that Safana fan art :O

http://41.media.tumblr.com/1d20e1c3871bda2e6aeac8244b63677d/tumblr_o4zcjhltgW1sj8p8no1_1280.png

Imagine if this dyke gets a hand on a bg2 expansion.

New Aerie

Spoiler

Wast improvement over old, tbh.

 

[Lacrymas]

More srsly though, can somebody finally tell us if it'll be good once the bugs are fixed ?

We already got that answer - Baldur's Gate combat (duh) with some good fights, but awful writing and linear as fuck. Make of that what you will.

 

[Tacgnol]

More srsly though, can somebody finally tell us if it'll be good once the bugs are fixed ?

We already got that answer - Baldur's Gate combat (duh) with some good fights, but awful writing and linear as fuck. Make of that what you will.

It's basically an extremely buggy IWD with much worse encounters and writing.

 

[Havoc]

Especially the ending. Literally raping a dead body here.