The only real concern I have is when a situation is clearly forced for the sake of real-world political-correctness.

There's stories, movies, games, art, etc. out there that can have unique and diverse characters without trying to drape it in shiny things and pretty lights and scream "look at me, look at me, I'm being progressive and therefore you can't criticize me!" Not only that, but I also find nothing wrong with NOT having a diverse cast of characters. There can be situations where only men are involved, or only women, or only straight characters, or bi, or white, purple, pink, etc. Hell, even having a cast of characters that have actual flaws is better and far more interesting than a cast of characters that are considered "proper" in this day and age.

Art, in general, is made to criticize things, to be unpolitically-correct. To go against the status quo and get people thinking. To get people discussing. The problem is when art turns to propaganda and becomes something that's no longer expressing unique, diverse, and different ideas, but only the ideas that the powers that be determine is proper for public consumption. Ideas you can't disagree with without being a pariah.

For the longest time, gamers and game developers have fought long and hard against those who demand games be censored and toned down due to graphic violence out of a sense of ultra-conversative morality. Often, this was done for show and politics, and most gamers saw it for what it was. Those who didn't investigate thoroughly enough, non-gamers, journalists, etc. were typically the ones who bought into this.

The current issue is that certain organizations similarly demand censoring and changes made to games out of a sense of being "appropriate" in another light. That being a burning desire to be politically-correct, to force diversity and push commentary approving political-correctness as it pertains to the real-world within fictional ones.

I'm not saying it can't be appropriate to a story's lore or background, but it's pretty clear at times when it's being done for the sake of enforcing certain ideologies that preclude any real difference of opinion in the slightest. When even the mildest, most carefully-worded arguments are shouted down as being "sexist" or "racist' or whatever other demonizing term there is available just to shut up any opposition, you know there's a problem. Even when those within the political parties of the real-world that seem most-likely to go along with this stop and ask what's really going on only to get shouted down as being "facist" to shut them up, it's clear there's no desire to truly discuss things. It doesn't matter who or what they are, if they disagree, they get a "friendly" labeling to try to dismiss their individual thoughts and ideas out of fear someone will listen.

It's at the point where even the most loosely-related, if related at all, criticism is assumed to be a direct strike against women, gays, transgenders, or whatever other group of people someone feels slighted for on their behalf. Even if the criticism was made by a member of one of those or more.

There's no allowance for a difference of opinion. Publishers are afraid of a negative backlash in the least when it's popular right now to be ultra politically-correct. Your game doesn't have a "strong female protagonist"? A popular tabloid-esque blog will write a scathing review about your game and sic some noisy people on you until you change things. Your game features a male character who has a romantic preference for only female player characters? Rant until he's changed to have a much deeper physical appreciation for other males. If not caught during development, then into the sequels, spin-offs, and remakes these things go.

This kind of thing happens. You know what happened when Black Widow in the Avengers 2 film expressed a desire to wishing she had a choice of having a child or not? Angry people ranting on twitter and scaring Joss Whedon off the internet for writing a female character who MIGHT want a child and not appearing "strong" enough to not care about losing the ability to bear a child.

So when I see posts by people who don't understand why others might be even the least bit upset over something like this, it's hard not to join the frustrated gamers, a diverse group of them from across the world made up of different genders, races, romantic preferences, political and religious beliefs, and etc. who are fighting a second fight against those who want to deliberately censor and alter games and the way new games are made, no longer because of ultra-violence, but now over an appearance of lacking political-correctness.

In the end, gay characters are likely to happen, at least quietly, in the worlds of D&D. People with different opinions and beliefs are also very likely to happen. That's no problem to me, and I welcome that. But if you plan to write and re-write stories, characters, lore, etc. just to do the equivalent of "bible-thumping" with political-correctness because you want to be part of the "in-crowd" that demand their way or no way, then you're no longer an artist pushing at the boundaries, just another puppet retreading what's popular and "proper".

Very pleased to see the OPs post is invisible due to low rating
Well done folks
Don't get pulled into this trolls rightwing political paranoia
It's lowlife and disgusting

I am reminded of the Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity in Baldur's Gate and Edwin in Baldur's Gate 2 changing sex due to the Nether Scroll.

Sex change magic exists in both the Baldur's Gate games since they were released, I don't see anything lore-breaking in it.

It seems all arguments about it breaking the lore are just people projecting their own homophobia onto the game's world.

You're probably right about what he meant. I guess it just struck me the wrong way because the original question had been about Bioware's other original RPG's so I wasn't expecting a Pillars of Eternity reference (much less criticism of it). I definitely understand that working in a pre-existing universe is a lot easier for the writers because they don't have to put as much effort into the world-building and can put more focus on their own story, but I think that a game does need to establish the important parts whether or not it's an original universe. I mean, I walked into BG1-2, Torment, and the Witcher games while knowing very little of the universes they were set in and everything still made perfect sense. So for me, not having extensive background knowledge of the universes, it's a similar experience to Pillars of Eternity or Dragon Age where I'm also learning things about the universe on the fly. The way he phrased it made me think that Dragonspear will have very little in the way of lore because we can just look it up online, and if that's the case then I'm disappointed about it.

Hee hee, yeah :-P I'm not really surprised in general. Comparing the stories in BG1 to BG2, it's obvious that Bioware originally put a lot more effort into the story and developing the characters in BG2, so I would expect any future games to follow suit and try to create more fleshed out characters and expand upon what BG2 was already doing. Having said that, I haven't played the EE versions yet and I notice a lot of people say that the additional bits have very poor writing, so I may very well end up hating Dragonspear for that reason (or the bugs). But I don't really see anything wrong with the general ideas mentioned in the article as long as they were well-written.

Magic items and spells that change a person's biological sex isn't quite the same as going through the process a transgender goes through in the real-world, or the possible negative situations they might live through. Whether it be the surgeries, the looks and judgements from family and/or others, or worse.

If anything, that comparison could be seen as belittling of the trauma some transgenders have gone through. Having a nice, relatively tidy magic spell to transform you into the biological sex you wish to be instead of the messy, not-perfectly-complete process us contemporary humans are stuck with would be preferable.

That being said, a magic item or spell that turns you from a complete biological man into a complete biological woman, for example, still makes you a complete biological woman. There's no argument or debate about what you are at that point, though, if they, in that example, were straight prior the complete and magical transformation and retained that orientation, then it could be argued that they're no longer straight.

But that's a completely different argument. As for the rest above, I see no room for "homophobia" involved where only magically-complete transformations are concerned.

It's OK to link to Kotaku:
http://kotaku.com/the-struggle-to-bring-back-baldur-s-gate-after-17-years-1768303595
They wrote the story you're using as a source, they deserve the traffic.

And if giving Jaheira and Safana more depth rather than have them be shallow stereotypes is a problem to you... Baldur's Gate II must have been devastating.

I'm referring to the arguments made by the people in this thread. The game never claims that gay people don't exist or have all been exiled, so why would having a gay character be breaking the lore? The game already established that sex change spells are a thing, so why would a character acknowledging they they were born and raised as a male but now live as a woman be breaking the lore?

I agree that the game world doesn't reflect reality, that's part of the reason why I said people who are complaining about this are projecting their own bigotries.

I loved your comment. It really made me laugh out loud so +1 for you.

I was thinking about buying the expansion, but now I'm beginning to reconsider it. Well, we'll see.

I was going to say something about how this topic is ridiculous, but it seems like everyone has beaten me to every angle I wanted to bring up.

Instead, I'll just leave this clip from the expansion here and go get my popcorn.

I don't think it's fruitful to call people homophobes/bigots for feeling that real world issues are being shoe-horned into the games that they (potentially) like.
Not that it couldn't or shouldn't be done, but if it's done sloppy it cán break the immersion big time.

That it's fantasy, doesn't mean you shouldn't care about the writing. The examples I've seen, show some very lame-ass attempt to put these real-world issues in the game and that's a shame. If Amber Scott feels it should be adressed in a game like this, that's her prerogative. When she does it with an uninspired and immersion breaking presentation, she will be criticized for it and rightly so.

That said, if the rest of the game is good, who cares? (I'm waiting for some reviews before buying, and maybe a discount, as I've already spent so much money on this series :P)

Bad writing is bad regardless of the sexuality or gender of the character.

Was Hexxat a good character to you?