The Giant Beastcast: Episode 46

But is that a problem? It`s a problem in the same way bad writing in general is a problem, if that character is badly written, but outside of that? A trans character just existing in a world without any justification shouldn`t be any different than a straight character existing in a world without any justification. The only difference is that since being straight is the default you have to in some way actually acknowledge that the character is something else if you want diversity in your game.

The Baldur`s Gate series has always had a lot of flavor text for NPCs that has no impact on anything outside of telling you a little bit about who they are, where they`re from, who they like or hate in the town you`re in etc.

@amyggen: Is a character being poorly written in an RPG a problem? Yes. Is it even more of a problem being badly written in an RPG carrying the name Baldur's Gate? Even more yes.

I'm under the impression it was something related to sex or sexuality, but does it matter?

Please don't feel like I'm attacking you or anything, this is a good conversation. I don't think the diversity credit thing really exists much anymore. I've heard that sentiment before, but I haven't really observed it since those obnoxious 90s kids shows. I feel like we've passed most of that weird adolescent stage of needing to include everyone in everything. (Did you know they were going to make an american sailor moon adaptation where sailor mercury was in a wheelchair? A flying wheelchair! With lasers! Aughhhh)

@jadegl: man, despite all the negativity towards dragon age inquisition it had quite the cast of characters. I may have to go back to it sometime.

Oh yes, I agree that bad writing is a problem. Just like a badly written character of any sexual orientation would be a problem. Baldur`s Gate II is my all time favourite game. But we`re talking about the amount of outrage this has sparked on the internet. It`s just one small conversation that has grown to define everything around the game on the internet now. If that character was straight people would shrug and move on.

If that game could be modded and played like Origins I'd be all over it.

And if the side quests were interesting at all.

In the case of Nintendo, yes, it does. As the Beastcrew says, Nintendo is the most conservative of game companies.

@aethelred: But again, that`s internet speculation based on a photo. There`s no real indication that that was the second job, as far as I know. Unless something has changed on that front no one knows for sure what that job was and probably never will.

thanks guys, enjoyed the discussion here very much.

@talonar: Interesting, when looking for the dialogue in question, this is the explanation I found in an article -

The new expansion, which is set between the events of the first and second game, features a conversation with a transgender character in which she explains her transition. Mizhena, a cleric in the game, explains the origins behind her unusual name in a dialogue tree if the player questions her about it. "I created the name myself several years ago," Mizhena says, adding: "My birth name proved unsuitable." When the player asks what was wrong with her old name, she continues: "When I was born, my parents thought me a boy and raised me as such. In time, we all came to understand I was truly a woman. I created my new name from syllables of different languages. All have special meaning to me, it is the truest reflection of who I am."

That seems, to me, to be par for the course in almost any rpg. Someone says something and you can continue to question them. In this case, it leads to her saying why she gave herself the name she did. To me, it may read a bit "info-dumpy" but it's no different than some of the stuff that I get from characters in Fallout 4 or any other RPG I've played recently, or even less recently. Many people tend to tell me their entire life stories when I start talking to them.

"Oh, thank goodness you're here? Why am I sad? Oh the guy down the street stole my lucky amulet that my mother gave me. Could you help me get it back? I really need it because I'm participating in a pie eating contest later this week and the amulet will help me wolf down 1.5 more pies per minute. Plus it will make the other participants choke on their pies. I'll give you 100 gold, cool?"

I mean to me that seems like a tried and true rpg trope, execution and subject matter aside. I'm not trying to be crass or anything, I just don't feel like this is all that different in the grande scheme of things. Not every character is intended to have a lush and full background story to explain why they said something to you, they just are who they are, and if they want to tell you why, that's cool to me.

Is that Timothy Dolan? This'll be an interesting listen.

Yeah, and the Baldur`s Gate series has a long and proud tradition of info dumps about random NPCs if you choose to talk to them about that stuff. People may complain about the execution, it doesn`t seem horrible to me, but the bottom line is that that kind of info dump about NPCs is very normal for the Baldur`s Gate games. It`s just that this time the character said she was trans instead of going in depth about her father`s castle, where she was born etc.

I use games and other media almost purely as escapism, so when stories incorporate the more contested conversations we encounter in society nowadays, it breaks that escapism for me.
It isn't the idea of a gay or transgender character or anything else in a story that annoys me, it's that when it happens, there seems to be a bright spotlight cast on it which says "Look at what we just did!", and the way media coverage eats that up, inevitably leading to agitated conversations in the fan-base, just makes it worse.

@charoncaori: I forget the name of the show, but there's a magical girl anime on crunchyroll where one of the girls is handicapped and in a wheelchair. She eventually becomes a magical girl but instead of having her magic make her legs work while transformed THEY DANGLE LIMPLY FROM HER BODY WHILE TENTACLES HOIST HER ABOUT LIKE A SPIDER AND GENTLY LAY HER DOWN ON HER STOMACH SO SHE CAN SHOOT HER MAGICAL SNIPER RIFLE.

I didn't care for the care for the show overall and only watched a couple episodes BUT MAN, THEY SURE WENT FOR IT.

@redking56: But if your grievance amounts to that there should be some justification for a minority character existing in a world, that a character like that can`t just exist without some elaborate backstory like every other character, that`s a not a valid criticism in my book. If we then go on to discuss the character her or himself, that`s another thing entirely. A trans character can be a well written or badly written character like any other, and a stereotypical character just like a black character who is the street smart or gangster character is a very stereotypical character. Let`s discuss that. But what I`m arguing against is the notion that you somehow need to justify a character existing in a world when that character is not the default color or sex.

@jadegl: @amyggen: I completely agree with you two, that character, while not good or exceptionally written in any way, is inoffensive and not a problem. I am still super angry at them ruining my favourite game of all time. See, here is the thing, when the outrage at this expansion started, I thought "oh god I hope they don't pretend the problem is the trans character" but that's exactly what happened and now this is all everyone is talking about. It happened with Anders in Dragon Age 2. That character was fun in the Origins expansion, but then they changed him completely and gave him the worst decision making known to man. But since they also made him gay, the defence was "oh they hate him because he is gay". I hated him, and my dwarf had gay sex with an Elve in Origins and that was brilliant to me.

It probably also didn't help that a writer wrote the expansion had nothing to do with the original game but instead threw characters under the bus and called the original writing sexist. That's a bad move when writing a sequel. If you didn't like the original, don't write the continuation.

Edit: I should clarify: I have seen screenshots of the writing in this game in scenes were nothing political at all was going on and it was horrific. Think trying to be Joss Whedon but being inept. NOT how the original game was. That's what most people got upset about. And the GG joke because come the fuck on.

@phuturist: Correct me if I`m wrong here but she didn`t call the original sexist, she just said that it didn`t have very well developed female characters which she wanted to do something about. That`s not at all calling something sexist. Maybe I missed a comment though. One of my all time favourite TV writers, David Simon, has written few really compelling female characters compared to male characters, which he has admitted himself. That`s not him being sexist though, that`s just him being better at writing male characters and interested in writing about very male worlds like the police, the military etc.

And SO MUCH of the loud criticism of the game has focused on that trans character and normal gamergate shit that it`s hard not to focus on that stuff, stuff like bugs etc. gets drowned out in all of the culture war noise. That`s just as much on the people screaming as it is on the developer.

Frankly i very much doubt that the vast majority of people who get upset on the latest "internet outrage" (of whichever kind) even put a single minute in the game that sparked it (for a different kind of recent example, i don't think many of the most upset toward CD Projekt for treatment of women met much of the witcher 3 cast if at all; Cerys anyone?). Bioware already "broke themselves free" from the diversity reactionaries/bigots by having a lot of games released with attempts at creating a proper cast of characters (with various degrees of success), so now it's just expected from them to have various orientations and identities included and is futile to target them. If Krem was the first instead of the latest, i thing we would have had a very different reaction from people.

ps: i agree that Krem is a cool character, and would have loved to have him play an expanded role

@amyggen: If in an interview, you say that you want your game as diverse as possible, and that the original games had lacking female characters, also ones that fall into tropes, you are basically calling it sexist. But I see your point, I should be exact with my quotes.

And yes, bullshit like the remove trans character mod are not helping at all. But you do understand how frustrating that is for someone that is super positive on diversity but super negative on simply bad writing? I mean do I need to post examples? Imho it's horrific. And I loathe developers that deflect with "only the transphobic ones don't like it!" and website running with it, because it makes it impossible for people like me to be heard. It sucks. And the developers writing "people hate our game because a single line about transgender" on their forums for better reviews and directly to fantastic outlets like Jezebel and Feminist Frequency is scummy deflection. Nice job weaponizing gender issues to get better press. Great.

Haven't listened to the Podcast yet, I hope they aknowledge the position people like me have.

Max Payne 3 is a good game, and the only other person on this site who thought so was Ryan Davis. Everyone else seems to think it's straight up bad, but I think it's got some great rockstar storytelling, style, and some fun shooting.

Some day a future civilization will find the collected stories of the wars in EVE Online and think it's actual factual history of ancient aliens.

@phuturist: I don`t really agree that that`s calling something sexist, it`s calling that aspect of the game poorly written. I don`t think she ever implied that it was the result of the original writers being sexist or anything, just that they in her opinion did not write good female characters and relied too much on tropes. But I get your point. I`ll only say that I understand the developer getting defensive about this stuff and maybe focusing on it too much with the amount of targeted shit they`ve been getting, and that one writer in particular. When such a large amount of the negative user reviews boil down to DON`T BRING POLITICS INTO MY GAME!!!! I, at least to some degree, don`t fault them for how defensive they`ve been getting.

I'm not defending people with prejudice or bigotry, but you guys mentioned treating people like they are people and the learning experiences you all had growing up when you stopped being jerks, right after saying if someone thinks like you used to they should leave the site and stop listening. That's talking out of both sides of your mouth, though I'm sure it was unintentional.

Man that game was lauded. I feel like the negativity was just this website. Like a much less intense version of the Witcher 3 situation.

The game was lauded by critics in general, but a lot of internet discussion about the game has evolved around how it is badly paced, that there`s too much MMORPG quest design, that the combat is mediocre etc. My experience is that in an Inquisition discussion you`ll find as many people who dislike that game as people who like it.

@amyggen: Especially since we've already seen an example of harassment this very week costing someone their job who had drawn the ire of a similar crowd. Being defensive there might not be conducive to discussions but it's definitely understandable given the time in which that discussion would be happening. For both of those things, the Alison Rapp and the BG thing, I think it's perfectly fine to disagree with her politics or their writing, but criticism has passed into "I hate this and I am going to take extreme steps to make sure it does not exist", which basically salts the earth for any reasonable discussion.

@amyggen: She does call Baldur's Gate sexist in an interview with Kotaku:

“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.”

"Like the sexism."

Thanks so much to Austin and Alex for talking about how you used to be jerks in your teens and early 20s. I've gone through a similar change in recent years (expedited, in my case, by finally getting much-needed mental health care) and one of the things I constantly struggle with is the idea that I'm somehow a phony or a hypocrite because of how my belief systems have changed. The idea needs to get out there that sincere positive change is possible and we don't have to obsess over the mistakes of our youth.

@aethelred: Then I stand corrected, I hadn`t read that interview. And yeah, I disagree with those remarks. BGII will probably always be my favourite game. But I`m not gonna attack her on social media or rate the game a 0 on Metacritic because of it.

@spitznock: In this case, it is explicitly not some sort of play to the media or whatever. It's not like some huge reveal. It's backstory like any other character would have. A trans character being in a game is only as political as you want to make it.

Why was the game disliked on here? I personally didn't like it for the grindy faux-open world gameplay, the bland narrative and an antagonist that never felt like a threat after he enters the story.

After this Beastcast, I'm pretty sure Naughty Dog is going to include Jeff's quote on the Uncharted 4 cover:

@d_w: Guess what? Christianity is just an epistolary character-driven strategy game played by the infamous gang lead by Paul, known as The Geek :)

I am genuinely tired of the fact that the argument that the character is "shoe-horned" in is 99% of the time coming from people that (I assume) aren't trans. Guess what? You don't have a say on that front. Overall, I agree with @amyggen over this, but I just wanted to offer my $0.02 on that particular aspect of it. If you are a trans person and want to call out the writing, go for it! But man is it annoying to hear someone claim that it's a poor representation of trans people when that person isn't even trans (and it SCREAMS of someone just trying to justify their unease with the existence of a trans character).

I have lost count of the number of times I have attempted to play DA:O and bounced off it. That game starts soooo slowly that I can never bring myself to get past the first area. Also I have yet to find a class in that game that has interesting combat options. I like me some MMO combat but jeez man.

Also, if people want to read about the EVE war they talked about on the podcast, this is a solid primer.

That wasn't my recollection, so I went back and checked the episode. They were specifically telling the people sending death threats to leave

That is amazing. Holy shit.

@johnymyko: SO good.

Let me get that Aphone, Bakalar.

@mister_v said:

I remember really loving DA:O but I also remember having issues with combat early in the game. It can be very hard. The farther you get, and the more skills you unlock with your characters, the better and faster it plays, imo.

I myself played as a rogue and split skill points between archery and double wielding. I really loved it. Shoot arrows from far away and then swap to melee combat when the baddies close in. You do have to babysit your team a bit, but it also has a really cool, if not totally under-explained, system where you can set your companions to play certain ways in certain situations. I think getting into that, which I did not, would alleviate the babysitting immensely. Again, that may speed up the game too.

Either way, I think it did start slow, and the difficulty curve was a bit rough in the early going, but I think it's the best of the series, character-wise and story-wise. I like DA:I, though. Especially following D:A 2 which I liked but found to be lacking in some areas, mainly locations to explore and the characters didn't grab me as much.

On the video card question, I had similar issues back in the day with a Radeon 5870 when I using particular power cables coming from my power supply.

Turns out, the 1000W PSU I had used more than one rail and it had issues driving the load that the GPU demanded. Once I distributed the load across different rails the issues went away.

But yeah after RMAing the card and doing a clean install, you'll have to look elsewhere like a bad mobo/ram/psu etc.

Scum bags sending death threats to creators has been a thing long before the internet existed. Hate mail and harassment has been a thing for 100s of years.

I still thought Krem was fairly throw away and I don't think I missed any of his story. However, if Krem's inclusion helped other people feel included, excellent! This backlash over the Baldur's gate character is disgusting.

The "you can't criticize something if you aren't that something/do that something" would literally negate every critic of anything ever. This site wouldn't exist.

@qrdl: hehe. I was thinking more along the lines of the Voynich Manuscript. "We don't know what this actual says but we're pretty sure it's the collected history of a lost culture."

@jonny_anonymous: of course, but you can understand how the internet kind of raises the stakes, right? Or, at the very least, raises the sheer volume.

@talonar: not what I said. I simply said that if your argument is that the character is shoe-horned in because it doesn't feel right to you, and you aren't trans, your argument is moot. If you want to say that the writing of the game stinks, fine. But I've read too many comments that are focused on this single character not feeling "real" enough to them or some such nature regarding them being trans, and it's an absurd position if you yourself aren't trans, and again reeks of just trying to find away to feel comfortable with the fact that a person is just uncomfortable with a trans character being "thrown in their face".

Another thing I'm tired of is people always leaning on the idea that all criticism is good criticism, or necessary criticism, or worthwhile criticism.