This is why I gave people a heads up about Larian Studios and defended them, really if they fuck up it will be because of their business practices and if they don't deliver the game on the promised date. Not going to lie, this is making me want to support them in spite of the early access fuckery lol. I'd probably wait for their 'whatever' edition to come out like most singleplayer games and buy it on a discount though. They might have 'gay' scenes and shit like that in their stuff but it's not a political thing because they have just as much straight shit going on too.
If they bow to the woke mob and start banning people or locking threads for voicing concern over LGBT activists then I'll shit on them completely.
It's a trend with Larian. They used to be completely free of this nonsense. DOS1's genesis was, in Swen's own words, because he wanted to play a game with his girlfriend. Canonically that's what the MC in DOS1 was supposed to be: you and your girlfriend, or vice versa you and your boyfriend. The female character famously had high heels and bikini armor in some outfits, and they got lambasted for that and got rid of it in DOS2, which is also when they were pressured into hiring a lot of writing staff (it used to be just 1 guy), all of whom were either dangerhairs or former gaming journos (no really, look it up).
So yeah, it's a mixed bag. Larian does make pretty cool gameplay; when DOS1 came out being an unapologetic grognard turn-based game like that was still a pretty bold decision. If you like turnbased RPGs, it's hard to beat them in this regard. But... the creative side, the storytelling, is getting so absurdly woke it becomes a question of whether you can stomach it. I know it's at the point now where I am very much on the fence, despite being a fan of them since the early 2000s with the first Divdiv. I expect the writing/creative direction to only get worse in future titles.
They come across like classic midwits to me at best and probably think they can play both sides and all of us know that never works with the left. Either they're going to get smart and start acting like a proper business and boot any of the weirdos out who start getting angsty over them selling fan service and silliness in their games because that's what sells in RPGs or they do what every dev does and cower in the face of negative articles being written about them and people who don't buy video games getting angry at them. Catering to these perpetually angry political factions never works, doesn't matter which side they're on because nothing will ever be good enough.
I don't think that's possible. The press pressure helps, but the reason companies go this way is they hire people who genuinely ARE activists and think this way. These people push their ideas, and everyone around them doesn't want to be rude to them, so it just escalates from there. The call is always coming from inside the building to some extent. You have to really scourge these people out and make them unfeel unwelcome, or they take over. By the time it reaches the point that it is visible in character creation and "male/female" sliders being unacceptable, the fight is already over.
This is why I gave people a heads up about Larian Studios and defended them, really if they fuck up it will be because of their business practices and if they don't deliver the game on the promised date. Not going to lie, this is making me want to support them in spite of the early access fuckery lol. I'd probably wait for their 'whatever' edition to come out like most singleplayer games and buy it on a discount though. They might have 'gay' scenes and shit like that in their stuff but it's not a political thing because they have just as much straight shit going on too.
If they bow to the woke mob and start banning people or locking threads for voicing concern over LGBT activists then I'll shit on them completely.
It's a trend with Larian. They used to be completely free of this nonsense. DOS1's genesis was, in Swen's own words, because he wanted to play a game with his girlfriend. Canonically that's what the MC in DOS1 was supposed to be: you and your girlfriend, or vice versa you and your boyfriend. The female character famously had high heels and bikini armor in some outfits, and they got lambasted for that and got rid of it in DOS2, which is also when they were pressured into hiring a lot of writing staff (it used to be just 1 guy), all of whom were either dangerhairs or former gaming journos (no really, look it up).
So yeah, it's a mixed bag. Larian does make pretty cool gameplay; when DOS1 came out being an unapologetic grognard turn-based game like that was still a pretty bold decision. If you like turnbased RPGs, it's hard to beat them in this regard. But... the creative side, the storytelling, is getting so absurdly woke it becomes a question of whether you can stomach it. I know it's at the point now where I am very much on the fence, despite being a fan of them since the early 2000s with the first Divdiv. I expect the writing/creative direction to only get worse in future titles.
They come across like classic midwits to me at best and probably think they can play both sides and all of us know that never works with the left. Either they're going to get smart and start acting like a proper business and boot any of the weirdos out who start getting angsty over them selling fan service and silliness in their games because that's what sells in RPGs or they do what every dev does and cower in the face of negative articles being written about them and people who don't buy video games getting angry at them. Catering to these perpetually angry political factions never works, doesn't matter which side they're on because nothing will ever be good enough.
I don't think that's possible. The press pressure helps, but the reason companies go this way is they hire people who genuinely ARE activists and think this way. These people push their ideas, and everyone around them doesn't want to be rude to them, so it just escalates from there. The call is always coming from inside the building to some extent. You have to really scourge these people out and make them unfeel unwelcome, or they take over. By the time it reaches the point that it is visible in character creation and "male/female" sliders being unacceptable, the fight is already over.
Oh yeah, preaching to the choir on that one.