Hi. I haven't played BG3 in early access, but I'm a big fan of BG1/2 and have been eagerly awaiting a full release later this year. However, there are a couple of recent reviews on the store page, claiming that a recent patch has introduced neopronouns and that "half of the characters are gay".

I have nothing against gay or transgender people, or their representation in media, but I would find it concerning and rather off-putting if there are signs that BG3 is being hijacked by some PC-political agenda.

Could someone confirm to what extent these rumors are true?

You can f*ck just about any party character, regardless of your selected gender, if you choose to go that route. Or, you know.. you can just not go that route.

If that scares you, feel free to loudly proclaim that you'll never buy such a title because you're SO straight that you are physically incapable of playing a game that has the option. I'm sure they'll miss your $59 dearly, and they will feel terribly for making that decision as a result. Sleep soundly knowing you stuck it to the PC political agenda, and enjoy your time playing games from 1995.

You seem to be projecting onto me quite a lot with your reply there and you didn't actually answer my questions regarding: a) to what extent the game is pushing the use of neopronouns and b) what proportion of the NPCs could be categorized as 'homosexual'.

As I said, I have no problem with gay characters being in the game and/or the option being present for the PC to have gay relationships with them, if they choose. My specific concerns are:

1) My understanding is that neopronouns seem rather controversial, even amongst the LGBT community. I personally find it difficult to take them seriously and if they are being pushed within the game, I am curious to know in what context.

2) I would be a bit concerned if there was an over-representation of homosexual characters in the game. The Forgotten Realms is supposed to be stylized as a medieval European fantasy. Having a significant over-representation of overtly gay characters in the game would in my opinion be a strange choice and not fit well with the setting and it's well-established history. The percentage of people in western society who identify as homosexual is around 15% at most. It's hard to imagine that the percentage would have been much higher than that in medieval times.

I play RPGs because I want to be immersed in a realistic fantasy setting, not because I want to be spoonfed a political message. However, these rumors give me the impression that there may be a political agenda at play. It's the suspicion of the game pushing a political agenda that I baulk at, not the homosexuality.

By the way, I regularly play games from the 90s and enjoy them greatly. Many of those games are far better than the shallow trash being spewed out by most companies these days.

You seem to be the expert in "neopronouns" on this board (a term I don't think I've ever seen before your post on it). And your mastery of homosexuality statistics is... astonishing. So why don't you go watch a let's play or two and come back and inform us simple gamers if this game violates your personal rules of whatever you call it.

at this point you can fuck one female cleric... actually that drow pretty fucks you [often ends in death]
you can also 'hold hands' with Shadowheart and thats the sum total of your current romance options so i don't see how homo comes into it?

You have the option of choosing a third, non-binary gender. You can still use him/her pronouns. What exactly did you think would happen to warrant this type of caution? Pretty sus You'd be surprised at how common this.

I'm all too aware of how common it is. It feels like every 6 months we've got some muppet coming around new game threads asking some variation of this question or posting negative reviews about the game for this reason, and every time it comes down to "I don't want to play a game that isn't narrowly tailored to my wildly distorted world view."

Quite frankly, it's tiring. Same broken record, different mouthpiece.

Yup, got a weirdo ranting about "wokeness" over on the Pathfinder: WOTR board....

I know, long post. TL;DR: I am all for introducing more LGBT characters into video games. There is no reason at all why they shouldn't be present and represented. But, in my opinion, it should be done in such a way that also balances player freedom and respect for internal consistency, especially for a fictional setting that has been firmly established over the course of 40-odd years.

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Ok, first off, let me clarify that I have no problem whatsoever with options being given to the player to create and play as an LGBT character. It totally makes sense that LGBT characters should exist in the Forgotten Realms and if the player wants to play as such a character, that is totally fine with me. I never said anywhere that I have an issue with that, so if that is what you have inferred, you have greatly misinterpreted me.

My possible concerns (based on reviews I have seen) relate to incorporaton of neopronouns and NPC demographics, and their possible impacts on player freedom and internal consistency of the Forgotten Realms setting. I will clarify what I mean by those, starting with NPC demographics. Here, you seem to be confusing realism with internal consistency. Of course, a fictional setting doesn't have to be 'realistic', but that doesn't mean that just because it is fictional that 'anything goes'. There is a concept called internal consistency - even a fictional world needs to have a set of rules and expectations that govern what can and can't happen in that setting. That concept is closely related to believeability and immersion, which are things that many CRPG gamers greatly value in an RPG. It is also a major factor that distinguishes different fantasy settings from each other. The internal consistency of the Forgotten Realms setting has been very well established over the course of some 40 years, and part of that internal consistency is that the Sword Coast region of Faerun is intended to be closely modeled on a medieval European fantasy (more specifically Western and Central Europe). Therefore, part of the established internal consistency is that the demographics and culture in the Sword Coast region (especially of the human population) should somewhat closely approximate what would expected for medieval Europe. If I walked into a village and all the kids were riding skateboards and wearing New York Knicks baseball caps, that would clearly violate the internal consistency and break immersion (note that my pointing out that fact would obviously not imply that I hate kids riding skateboards).

So, my concern around the proportion of LGBT characters in BG3 (again, coming from my seeing reviews saying that "half of the NPCs are gay") is that, if it really is that high, then it may be 'demographically skewing' to a point where it would not be a good fit for a region that is supposed to be modeled after medieval Europe. In a different region of Faerun over in the South-East somewhere - maybe the culture there is more liberal/open and so a higher proportion of LGBT characters might make more sense. Or I could get behind there being a higher percentage of bisexual characters in the overground elven population, since they are supposed to be different to humans and it would make sense for them to have different cultural values to what would be expected from medieval European humans.

Let's look at a different setting as an example: Cyberpunk. Night City seems to be a pretty liberal place that highly values individual expression. You want to have 60% of the NPCs there have LGBT tendencies, with customizable genitals so they can change gender at the touch of a button to suit their mood - go right ahead. That sounds like it would fit in very well with the internal consistency of Cyberpunk. So, I've got no problem with that whatsoever.

Another example of what I mean: let's say the developers decide to make 75% of the human NPCs in Baldur's Gate 3 over 80 years old, all shuffling around on walking frames. If I criticize that, on the grounds that it doesn't make sense and violates internal consistency of the setting, would that make me ageist? No, of course not. My issue is not "oh no, there's gay people in a video game ...", it is about concern for the internal consistency of the Forgotten Realms setting. What you describe sounds totally fine and nowhere near the "50% of the characters in the game are gay" that I read in that review. If anything, it might even be leaning the other way. If the only overtly gay characters in the game are evil/chaotic ones, that might be playing too much into the stereotype that people with 'non-conventional' sexual preferences are somehow 'deviant'. Either way, I've got no problem with what you describe. In fact, if that's all there is, they could probably afford to put a few more LGBT characters in.

Regarding the neopronouns: my concerns there relate to the possible impact on player freedom and again, internal consistency. To give an example: let's say the PC meets an NPC in-game that insists on the PC using neopronouns to refer to them. In my opinion, the player should be given the roleplaying freedom to choose to accept that or not. Player freedom is extremely important in an RPG - in that situation, the player should be given the option to reject the NPC's demand, kick sand in their face, be a jerk, if they want to be (at the possible cost of alienating that NPC). Not giving the player the option to reject it would be tying the player's hands in an unacceptable way.

Another example: the player goes into the slums of Baldur's Gate with a goody-goody character and gets into a conversation with a thuggish black market slave trader gang boss, who doesn't like the PC and is antagonistic towards them. The PC insists to that character that they must refer to them using their preferred neopronouns. Let's imagine the slaver boss turns round and says: "Oh, of course! I would be most happy to oblige and respect your personal pronoun preferences. I would never dream otherwise!". That would pretty obviously be nonsense and a total violation of internal consistency. The most believable outcome in such a situation is that they will promptly tell the PC where they can stick their pronouns; laugh in their face and probably use it as a means to further antagonize the player.

Again, I don't know to what extent the game uses neopronouns - I have only read a review saying that the game has introduced their use. But my concern, as I've tried to illustrate with the above examples, is that, if it is true, then the context in which they are used is critically important to the immersion of the game.

- Knowing the exact percentage of gay characters would involve sitting down with a pen, pad, and calculator; speaking to every character and cycling through every dialogue option to get a definitive answer on their sexuality. This is a very bizarre, very specific, and very time consuming task - which I'm not doing. Good luck finding someone who will.

- The game doesn't let you harass trans characters by mis-gendering them, and you don't get mis-gendered yourself. Including trans characters for this purpose is just sadistic. The point of adding a non-binary option is to be more welcoming. It would be like playing someone with dark skin and getting a barrage of racial slurs everywhere you go. Nobody would want to choose that option, making the inclusion a moot gesture.

Internal Consistency: You seem to forget that people have been playing tabletop in the D&D world for 40 years, in whatever way they please. Some are playing queer characters who try to f*ck every NPC they encounter regardless of race or gender. Some don't.
If you're only using the world of Baldur's Gate games as your internal consistency metric: Did you go around and poll each NPC as to their sexual orientation? Most of the time it's "go fetch me this magical doohickey" and you go run the errand and that's it; just like in the real world, someone's sexual orientation doesn't play in to casual conversation. For all you know, the NPCs in BG1 could be having massive, bisexual orgies as soon as you left the screen.

Deliberate misgendering: If freedom of choice is super important to you, maybe video games aren't your thing. The deliberate misgendering you're talking about in your fabricated-to-have-something-to-argue-about hypothetical doesn't exist in any of the BG games. You could just as easily make the case that BG1 restricts your freedom because you can't call some super masculine slaver "Sally" and constantly refer to him with female pronouns... just like if you're playing a game and the NPCs constantly referred to you with the wrong pronouns, you'd be all butthurt and say it breaks the 'realism'.

It sounds like you're playing RPGs to live out LGBTQ+ hate fantasies... if that's the case, GFY twice over. Nobody wants that crap here.

If BG3 had 75% of the people over 80 years old, walking on canes and you complained about it... yes, that might make you ageist... but again, NOBODY IS FORCING YOU TO PLAY IT. There are perfectly valid reasons for that to happen. Maybe everyone was gay all along, and the birthrate dropped and now everyone is old. If it's not relevant to the story, it just become background... just like how nobody makes a big deal about people throwing fireballs at each other with their mind powers. When something is common and accepted, it's overlooked as ordinary and not really discussed.

Finally - where are you getting these 'reviews' you talk about? They're wildly inaccurate. Maybe you should do some critical thinking about your information sources.

Buy the game in EA, evaluate it for yourself, return it if you don't like it... or just don't buy it at all. Either way, quit bugging the rest of us with your homophobic/transphobic garbage. It's performative virtue signaling to a bunch of people that nobody wants here anyway. Go back to 4chan if you want to express your insecurity by punching down. It's not welcome here.

I think we've all spent WAY more time than you're worth explaining things to you. You have your answers... do what you will.

Makes me wonder if Truth Social has a BG3 thread running....

to get her into bed you have to kill... druids [helpless kids] whatever so tech she is Bi but really she is just batshit nuts imo

Dammit... I thought I'd played every angle, but apparently I missed this part (I'm pretty bad at playing evil chars). I'm gonna have to do another playthrough, aren't it?

FML. I'm honestly a little tired of the EA content, having played it so many times through. Especially those damn druid villages. Can't wait for August...