BG: Siege of Dragonspear release date, screenshots and more

The team is really open about everything though, so you can see everything they're working on. It's not like they're not putting in a good effort. Still, it's a shame more people hadn't played the beta for v2.0. Could have avoided a lot of this if they had received the bug reports and feedback sooner. Well, that and if they had a bit more common sense between them.

 

Careful Keneth, you are bordering on sounding understanding and appreciative. That could totally ruin your rep around here.

 

I'll forever be a cynic, but it's difficult to be mad at someone who you can see is working hard, even if they aren't especially competent.

 

The reviews are starting to pour in and, well, I can't say I'm particularly surprised.

Even all the technical issues aside, the devs should have known better than to try and push political ideology on players in a series like this.

Not to mention the level of writing seems to be fairly poor and uninspired, so people are understandably upset when the bad vastly overshadows the good.

It's gonna need a lot of patching and modding to get it into a somewhat decent state. Probably best to hold off on your purchases for now.

 

Yeah, the whole LGTB angle and political correctness kinda surprised me.
(They didn't mention any of this in their trailers, streams and whatnot.)
Felt totally out of place in a game like BG, that played on all the right fantasy tropes / stereotypes.
Worst of all it was totally a 'in yo face' approach. I don't play D&D for that kind of stuff. You need this in your game...well, Bioware's your friend.

The usual crate-load of Bugs and funny design-choices in terms of UI were only mildly surprising. The Portrait selection (the custom ones) was the real shocker for me. As someone who has a extensive library i was quite miffed. That with being a click-fest.
Other that that I don't mind the UI changes much. They are for the most part ok. And the Extra graphics options can be turned-off if desired. So no biggie that. The biggie was actually that once again, an update broke all mods. And turned yet another fundamental piece of archive around and made updating all the mods necessary...again. . Grrrrr.

That said, the addd-on boast some really nice atmosphere and mood. The IE is pushing awesome effects in terms of areas and level of details. The Crowd in BG is another nice example.

The Changes to the 'vanilla' portraits I do not mind. It's a fresh take on classics and I like the new Immy. And speaking of like....the Voice-Acting is a-w-e-s-o-m-e. Is like coming home...or old friends visiting.

That being said, I think the Devs should have been more mindful writing SoD. The core audience is not the edgy sexually confused teen, but people like us in their prime. People who grew up with those characters and spent a great deal of time with them. Non of us felt that Jaheira's heckling of Khalid was such a big deal, or that Minsc was a mockery of all people mentally challenged.
Maybe because we're from an age where none was easily offended or felt the need to seek attention my telling people constantly they liked pole or carpet or veggies.

No matter, will play and enjoy this otherwise lovely addition to our D&D BG playground. An I'm looking forward where fans and modders will take this baby.

Sorry for the rant.

 

I think a lot of the UI changes were largely designed for tablets again, which is highly annoying since IE games are first and foremost PC games and should be designed with that in mind.

And yeah, all the social/political views were ham-fistedly shoehorned in at the behest of one of the lead writers, which is kind of insulting both to normal players and the people whom these bits were supposed to represent. Unless someone beats me to it, my first SoDs project will be getting rid of all this garbage that has no place in the game.

 

I kind of liked that the "controversy" wasn't being discussed here, but I guess it was bound to be raised.

Beamdog is removing the GG jab line that they gave Minsc, "ethics in gaming", or something like that.

And apparently they will be rewriting the dialogue of the transgender character so that she doesn't explain her entire life story about being a woman stuck in a mans body if you so much as breathe near her.

 

We're equal opportunity murder hobos. No one ever cares which kobold is female before we slaughter them. Equal rights and equal lefts.

But yeah, that's a good first step. Still, this should have come up during beta testing or QA. It's like they didn't have anyone with at least two brain cells playing the game before release.

 

Yeah, but we're talking incredibly basic things here. I know common sense is so rare that it's a superpower, but come on.

Someone must have seen that and said something. Unless everyone was too afraid of being labeled small-minded and transphobic.

Not that it would be too surprising, having seen the response from the developers to people who are understandably irate.

 

The last article sums it up quite nicely. It's not the inclusion of these elements that's the problem—Dorn was already bisexual and nobody batted an eye because it wasn't shoved down people's throats—it's about their presentation and twisting of the established lore and characters. No one cares that there's a transgender character in the game when you can get a Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity in the first 30 min of the game and change your sex at will. In fact, that's what I did in one of my first playthroughs and I rolled with it even after I found a way to remove the curse. Frankly, they deserve all the hate they're getting because no one there had the sensibility to know better and instead of owning up to it, they decided the best course of action would be to further insult their player base. That said, I do feel bad for all the devs who had nothing to do with these shenanigans and just wanted to make cool stuff and a better game.

 

Well... Being a superior race what else would you expect from us Borg... I mean Americans...

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Hey.... There is supposed to b a smiley with tongue sticking out at the end of my last post but I can't see it....

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I have no played SoD yet but I have read a bunch of articles on 'the' subject. I think they must of hired Trump as executive content approved...

 

I've never really seen Cernd as some sort of "PC agenda". A stereotype, sure, but it's not like he's the only trope in the game. I mean, Baldur's Gate and Faerun are pretty much as generic as it gets. Even characters that depart from the usual stereotypes do so in a very obvious manner.

Then again, maybe I just don't see it. It's entirely possible that it was some SJW's attempt to alleviate his "white guilt" for the holocaust of American natives. Not really sure what the people's state of mind was all those years ago. Maybe token native characters were then what token trans characters are now.

 

Interesting thing about Cernd, I never saw him in that light. But it seems some people did interpret it that way.

 

Aren't fantasy RPGs games stereo typical by nature? Many show or force you to choose between various races/classes. As a player you make a choice as to what you think is the best race/class or choose to play what you want to experience. I highly doubt the devs have an agenda. I think some fans are giving them way too much credit...