@SarahGabriella
Do you know why I say it is political/ideological? It is because YOUR world view is what is separating people and implementing policies to increase division. By emphasizing a person's colour all you do is label them as different. By saying that POC need POC characters in game, you are dehumanizing us. You describe us as a group that is removed from the rest of human kind. A group that cannot empathize with and enjoy stories about people who do not look like us. Your political ideology is built on racism and I refuse to play along with that game.

You also seem to be missing the main point of virtually everyone here who is disagreeing with you. We do not care about the skin colour, sexual orientation, or biological sex of the character in the game as long as the character is lore friendly and has a good story. What we are OBJECTING to is the inclusion of POC or LGBT characters just for diversity. That makes them token or throw away, which is worse than if they had not been included at all. I do not know how else to explain to you that we want a character that we can connect with on a HUMAN level. Most white characters in games that you seem to dislike so much have more to their character than the fact that they are white. Again, it is the racist that sees only colour, and I refuse to your ideological game of racism.

Beautifully put. /thread

You can always just stop commenting in MY thread that I created to find out of the game IM going to buy has what i want.

Ever heard of demand and supply? Look, it may not be to your liking, but if everyone, and I mean everyone, would hate white NPCs in games the way you do, then there would be no demand for that kind of thing. Games would stop selling and developers and publishers would soon have to turn to new strategies. Publishers don't really care if the NPCs are white or something else, they're in this business to make money. When it will be more profitable to make games with color NPCs, that will be the moment when you'll stop seeing mostly white everywhere. Right now this doesn't happen, because most people don't have a problem with it. Which I think it's for the better, because no one should judge another person for the color of their skin and enjoy the arc story that is written for those NPCs, either if they are white or something else. And since people don't have a problem with color in games (or the lack of it), people buy games the way they are. And as long as games sell, games will continue to feature white NPCs (mostly - there are plenty of memorable color NPCs as well). It has nothing to do with prefering white over color. It's just business. When most gamers will prefer color over white, then you will see a change. I don't really care that much. I mean, I don't play games for the skin color of NPCs.

Don't delude yourself. It's not your thread, it's not my thread, it's not anyone's thread. It's a thread on gog.com's forums. I expect a moderator to show up and step in any minute now and delete this useless thread since there is no information or knowledge to be gained here. And I think it would be for the better.

I have my doubts you will buy Baldur's Gate III. It has white NPCs.

Did you just skip everything I wrote and look for anything in it that could react negatively to? Fine, let me give another reasoned explanation that you'll skim and react to one word out of context with to be offended by. You're really not doing the stereotypes of your ideologies any favors right now.

Diversity bux is when a character is forced into an area that they're not from for no other reason than to have been the token diversity character. A prime example of this AS I POSTED was the very African-looking Valygar. They gave him a Chondathan (read: white European) name, background, ancestry, goals, everything. Why even make him black? His background was a huge part of his story and nothing really specific to being Amnish. It could easily have been that he was a Nubari from Malatran and that's where Lavok was from originally. It would also explain why he was in the region - the Planar Sphere had appeared there. The Nabari have a rich and interesting culture that would've been fun to discover through him. Perhaps he was part of the Wise Ones, it makes sense with the spellcasting. Maybe Lavok was one of the original Nabari Spelljammer pilots from millennia ago? SOMETHING.

Instead, nothing about Valygar ties in with his skin color. He's a Chondathan in name, personality, background, everything but appearance. And if you change his character pic, he's not even that. That's diversity bux. It's as insulting as when Beamdog included Mizhena for no apparent reason beyond wanting the kudos for having created a transgendered NPC who would tell random passer-byers about his transition. Trans players and normal players both were offended by the naked transparency of it, only folks (presumably like you) who were interested in virtue signaling and being made to be SEEN supporting it defended it. Because they don't get the difference between representation and simply including one-dimensional token characters for the sake of signaling. For quota-meeting. For earning those diversity bux.

The Forgotten Realms is the most diverse cosmopolitan fictional setting to have ever been put to paper. You don't need to look hard to find rich cultures and engaging stories to suit anything you want to write or include. People like you, so nakedly bigoted and not caring about the story or the individual, only that imaginary quotas and target numbers have been met so you can congratulate one another on your reverse-racist "open mindedness" frankly make me sick.

I've only just started but in the creation you can create a character of any gender and are then asked to design you character's dream desire regardless of gender. Thus far, I think the game looks extremely diverse without being contrived of forced.

There you go. POCs.

Here's another one. This time, a companion. An interesting one at that. A warlock.
So. Did this answer your original question? Can we consider the matter closed now?

No option for asexuals, aromantics or people who don't want romance in their games? Cruel. :D

I actually like when you're not forced into dating someone in games and can choose.

Edit: Since it sounds like the choice implies you need to do it.

I would differentiate a little. There are actually people who try to use minorities to stir up prejudice against western countries, paint them as ''intolerant' or create conflicts. But there are also some who fall for this and *actually* believe they would do something good.

Take for example the current burning of JK Rowlings books :O Sure, some people incite such stuff on purpose because Rowling is not adhering to their ideology or her books would be too "conservative". But others truly believe Rowling would have said or done something evil - because they never looked up what she actually said.

Ah, so your argument is that they SHOULD be token characters who are so shallow that they have no cultural or social representation but are quite literally just reskinned whites there for the diversity quota? I'm actually impressed, you sorts aren't usually so open about that level of naked racism. But we're going to have to agree to disagree here. Skin color is a big deal in the Forgotten Realms. If they have a blue skin Dwarf, I'd damn sure want to know what an Arctic Dwarf is doing there and would hope that they'd care enough to have at least some blurb of explanation and background. Same with a brown-skinned Wood Elf, a gray-skinned Gnome (Svirfneblin) and so on. When you have a character that is ethnically Kozakuran (FR version of Japanese) and you name him Steve from Baldur's Gate, you missed out.

Humans are no exception to having exotic races and diverse peoples, no more than any other race in the game. Any implicit real world bias or prejudice you have that makes you feel like you should demand all ethnicities of human be from all regions and be homogenized but NOT every other race has no place in this setting.

I like how you pretend arguments were made that weren't as though everyone reading can't just look back and see you're full of crap. I just got done proving a knowledge of the black people that exist in this setting along with endorsing developers to actually use that black cultures and races instead of making them white people reshaded. You're the one that seems to hate black people. You don't want anyone that's ethnically non-white (or Chondathan in this case). You want token blacks and it's shameful, bigoted and if they catch wind of this down at the Social Justice Bureau, they'd demote you back to Junior Patriarchy Smasher in a second.

hey 'sarah'! are you 'sarah' or 'gabriella' today?

Your position is patently silly. It is akin to burying your head in the sand.

'The house is on fire, but let's not talk about it'.

May I ask-would the appropriate way to deal with domestic violence be to not talk about it? We are all humans, after all. /s.

The height of silliness is to see a problem and ignore it.

Game also features a gay male high elf rogue vampire spawn. So homosexuality is checked too. Tough he's kinda pale (being a vampire spawn). I don't think you'll like him. Altough he is VERY cool!