Namrok: I really dislike this notion that any depiction of a person that's slightly tropy or slightly stereotypy is automatically racist and sexist. Critics act like a nagging wife is a total myth.
Hear hear.
I'm getting real tired of "social justice" advocates pretending that any given female or minority character should be interpreted as a "representation of all women or minorities everywhere", and that writing fictional female or minority characters who have any character flaws that make them interesting or memorable, is "sexist" and "racist".
Jaheira's writing isn't "sexist against women" any more than Xan's writing is "sexist against men". They don't represent a gender; just themselves. Their characters are indeed based on simple tropes, but it's done in a way that actually works well in the game. There is no "flaw" in that.
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That said, I think some people on this forum are far too invested in hating Beamdog and anything they make, to the point that they're simply being irrational.
PST:EE isn't another Dragonspear.
It's a tech update/remaster to bring the game to modern systems and screen resolutions.
Beamdog's writing team was not even involved in making PST:EE. It was made by Beamdog's tech team
(mostly consisting of talented modders, some of whom, like the project lead aVENGER, had been active in the Infinity Engine modding scene for a long time and are well-respected there), in cooperation with Chris Avellone
(the lead designer of the original PST). That sounds like a dream team to me.
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Namrok: The problem with Beamdog is they simply aren't coming from the same creative place as the original games were made. They come at it from a lamentably post modern perspective, where everything needs to be deconstructed, and flipped on it's head.
I think it's slightly ironic that you bring up this complaint on the PST forum, seeing how the original PST, and to some extent the whole Planescape setting, very much
is about deconstructing the Baldur's Gate / D&D setting and flipping RPG tropes on their heads.
Think about it: A D&D fantasy RPG where your character never finds a sword to wield or armor to wear... Where you don't encounter elves or dwarves... Where everything is different, often seemingly just for the sake of being different...
