@Xaxares, a piece of advice: Don't try to reason with Hick and Stig. They have both been at this since the release of Siege of Dragonspear 3½ years ago. Don't try balanced opinions either. Answer one of their "points", they'll just come up with three others and move the goalposts. They don't want reason, they don't want balanced opinions. They hate Beamdog with a passion, but without reason or balance. And if they run out of arguments, they'll start namecalling instead.

Neither Hickory, myself, or anyone else hate Beamdog without reason. Hence why we always present the reasons and back them up with facts.

But that doesn't fit with your narrative, does it?

I have bought every version of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. Once on Beamdog's client, to support the devs. Once on GOG to support the site. Yeah, I hate Beamdog with a passion. Duh!

Montresor_SP, another ill-informed shill.

I would like to see 'balanced opinion' regarding Beamdog's lies for example. They lied about removing the originals. That's a fact and they had to admit that. No opinion will change this.

You probably won't believe me on this, but I do not know who are the people downvoting your posts, nor did I request their aid or somesuch. Anyway...

I still fail to see how anything I have said is "apologist". To return to the original subject, the question I was originally replying to was whether or not Siege of Dragonspear has a "political correctness agenda", and I stand by my stance that it does not. As I've mentioned before, one conversation in a game that probably at least a good half of players will never even see does not make a game suddenly have an agenda. If anything, I could think of a few examples where it could be argued that the game is instead biased against female characters.

I'm going to get into spoilers here, so for the benefit of anybody who's following this conversation who hasn't played Siege of Dragonspear, you might want to look away:



SPOILERS BELOW

1. The biggest example would probably be Caelar Argent herself, where it's revealed at the end of the game that she's been lying about the true reason for the Crusade all along. Her real goal is to rescue her uncle, Aun Argent, who many years ago voluntarily offered himself up to the baatezu Belhifet in Caelar's place after Caelar foolishly read some forbidden tomes and summoned Belhifet, who promptly laid claim to her soul. So for all these years she's been crippled by guilt over her uncle's gate, and now, to right that wrong, she leads thousands of souls into the Nine Hells to certain doom under false pretenses.

Now, if I was a feminist, I could argue that this is another classic example of how pop culture reinforces the stereotype that women shouldn't be put into roles of responsibility because their "emotions" will get in the way and lead them into making disastrous decisions. What's more, Caelar is a general, a role typically reserved for men. DOUBLE societal no-no! She has to fail, and fail HARD to show that this thing must not be permitted.

2. The second big example I can think of is Schael Corwin, one of the new companions in SoD. She's notable because she's probably the first companion in a D&D game who's also a single mother. I personally wasn't very wowed by her story and interactions, but it's the final conversation with her that's memorable. At the end of the game, you're framed for the murder of a high-ranking VIP, and, if you're a Good character, despite everything she knows about you and everything you've been through together, and EVEN if you're romancing her, Schael turns on you and helps arrest you. Later in prison, her last words to you are about how, even if you're innocent, you should plead guilty and allow yourself to be executed for the good of maintaining law and order (since the city of Baldur's Gate is in turmoil over your arrest, with half believing you to be Sarevok 2.0 and half believing you're innocent, and the two sides are ready to start rioting in the streets).

So again, if I was a feminist, I could raise a ruckus about how this is a disgraceful first appearance of a single mother in a fantasy RPG, a "See? You gotta shun single mothers because they'll never be able to truly love you." message that reinforces single parents as "untouchable has-been's". What's worse, if you played through as a Good character that made mostly noble choices throughout the game (as I did), the Dukes exile you from Baldur's Gate and you never ever get to see Schael redeem herself for that last scene. (If you made mostly Neutral or Evil choices through the game, you instead have to escape through the sewers, and if you're Neutral or have romanced her, then Schael shows up as part of a squad sent to recapture you, but she changes sides and helps you escape. I myself was not aware of this possibility until some other players told me about it.)

END SPOILERS



So there you go, that's two examples for how one could claim that Siege of Dragonspear does not have political correctness. Far from it, in fact! But do I actually believe that? No, I don't, because overall the game feels just like the other Baldur's Gate gates, a fantasy adventure romp through the Forgotten Realms that, yes, could have been better here and there, but it was still enjoyable enough.

And that's basically the point I've been saying all this time. Despite all the controversy surrounding the EEs and Beamdog (some of whose points I reiterate I feel are entirely valid and Beamdog should not be immune to criticism over them), I still feel that Siege of Dragonspear is a fun experience for anybody who enjoyed the BG saga and it's worth taking a look at. (By all means, wait till GoG has another one of its 50-75% discount sales too. That's what I did!) I just don't want players who enjoyed the other Infinity Engine games to miss out on something they might actually wind up liking.

Ehhh, I don't think it's worth the time. As I mentioned before, this conversation only fires if your character is female and you didn't recruit Voghiln into your party when the opportunity first arises. It hardly seems worth the effort making a mod to adjust a conversation that I never saw and wasn't that bothered by anyway.

Yes, you do.

In this case, it sounds like the changes required would be rather small, so I'm thinking it might be worth making that mod for practice, even if you never release it.

How can anyone argue whether Siege of Dragonspear had a political agenda when the developers came right out and stated that they did? This isn't a question of puzzling the hidden meaning out of some centuries-old manuscript, it was openly written about online by the developers themselves how they wanted the game to be more socially progressive and correct "problematic" missteps of the originals.

The "agenda" they said they were bringing amounted to nothing more than "don't be sexist, and acknowledge sexism where it is present in older works". It's a sad reflection on 'gamer' culture that this is somehow controversial.

It's a sad reflection on "progressive" culture that the original Baldur's Gate is an example of such extreme sexism that it requires historical correction.

Still, if editing out cultural wrongthink in videogames is where the social vanguard is currently planted destroying history, maybe Mark Twain and Harper Lee can rest a little easier from the book-burning brigade.

Edit: Oops, I posted in the wrong topic. For anyone who wants to know what it said (which has absolutely nothing to do with this topic), I moved it to a more appropriate place:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/obscure_or_underrated_fantasy_rpgs/post37
(Look at the part thaf follows the [begin new post...] comment)

They aren´t that bad, but Beamdog has shown that they can do far better with the EnhancedEdition of Planescape Torment.
As Beamdog isn´t finished patching BG EE, BG II EE and IWD EE I really hope that they´ll reach the level of quality of PS:T EE one day...

Who used the word "extreme"? I didn't. And there was no "correction" to Baldur's Gate - the Enhanced Editions and Siege of Dragonspear left the original dialogue entirely unchanged (barring spelling corrections etc.).

Except they gave Safana and Jaheira completely new personalities in SoD. Their old personalities are back to normal in BG2. I guess they suffered a few weeks of personality changes during SoD for reasons...


Because what is sexist in the US in 2016 isn't sexist in The Forgotten Realms. The word "wench" for example isn't sexist at all in The Forgotten Realms.

The writer also changed Safana and Jaheira's personalities because they didn't "portray women in a good light" (her words). That had nothing to do with any sexism.

Adding that GamerGate comment to Minsc was rather agenda driven too, wouldn't you say?

I find it funny that people here are downvoted for saying something negative about Beamdog. Still, I don't know why such slimy agendas are needed to be shoved in people's throats these past few years.

They have faults too but I won't be a hypocrite to say that some of the improvements they did for Icewind Dale worked for me like the "get all items on the ground" tool and added BG2 kits for those who want their characters to be more powerful.

At the end of the day, Beamdog doesn't have the BG3 license so I hope that the people responsible for BG3 won't repeat the same mistakes that Beamdog did.

EDIT: LOL, I'm being downvoted as well...poor fools have nothing to do with their lives.