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Avowed has pronouns

Kokoloko85

Member
So is this game gonna get buried by the usual anti DEI force on this site and online? Or is there gonna be bunch of Defense and excuses because its an Xbox make game?

Keep that same energy you bums lol
 
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Topher

Identifies as young
But it was ok?

I recall a lot of triggered peoples for the bear sex scene before release, never about genders.

Exactly my point. Folks didn't have much problem with it then. Clearly things have changed. I remember a lot of folks mocking the bear stuff, but that's about it.

Especially after Concord. I've known this place since 99

goodfellas GIF

Then how does this have anything to do with warriors or being Xbox exclusive?

Why should that matter? A good game is a good game, a bad game is a bad one. The pronoun system in place for your RPG character creator is secondary to all of that. Larians next RPG is probably going to feature the exact same thing and will probably be another great game, is it going to suddenly matter then again?

Again, if devs could restrain themselves and leave the trans aspects with pronouns then I don't think this would be an issue now. Maybe by the time Larians next game is released things will have calmed down, but right now the stench of Veilguard's identity politics is fresh in a lot of people's minds.
 

Topher

Identifies as young
I can and will ignore the pronoun bullshit in create a character. When a game attempts to saddle me with one of these crazy people as a companion or heavily involved in the story then I'm out. We already know all of your companions in Avowed. None of them fall into this category and the female human mage isn't ugly with masculine looking features.

Avowed-Cosplay-Guide-Giatta-page-1.jpg

Pretty much my attitude as well. If the identity politics ends with the character creation screen then personally I'll be fine.
 

MagiusNecros

Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
I already pre-ordered it. It is going to have minimal DEI stuff. I really doubt it will beat you over the head with it.
If it's on the writing level of Pillars of Eternity then great. If it's on the level of Outer Worlds then mega oof. It is of course too much to hope for Obsidian to bring out another Kotor 2. Guess the best thing to research is the writers and what their past works are.
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I think everything just gets hated on online. Thats why you’ll have all sides thing they are the only victims lol. I wonder if it will be treated like Dragons Age for example on youtube


In what sense do you mean?

Again, nothing they have shown or any of the previews have shown or talked about so far is even coming close to the shadow of the whole Barv stuff from Veilguard.

I think this is an extremely tame version of representation but like Topher Topher said, people are still ready to pounce after Veilguard.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
I already pre-ordered it. It is going to have minimal DEI stuff. I really doubt it will beat you over the head with it.

I really wish they would just put in a toggle to turn that stuff off.
Outer Worlds beat you over the head with the “corporations and rich people = evil, asexual lesbians = stunning and brave” message.

Maybe Obsidian have miraculously bucked the trends of the entertainment industry and toned it down over the last 5 years, even as almost every other western studio doubled down. I’m not holding my breath.
 
I think everything just gets hated on online. Thats why you’ll have all sides thing they are the only victims lol. I wonder if it will be treated like Dragons Age for example on youtube

Nah I don’t see it getting that bad, unless some shots of dialogue get released that triggers the incels.

Maybe I’m out of the loop but didn’t DA end up being a pretty solid game?
 

LectureMaster

Gold Member
Pretty much my attitude as well. If the identity politics ends with the character creation screen then personally I'll be fine.
That's why keep laughing at people using BG3 as counter point "Oh loot at the 2023 goty, it's non-binary but great game". Bullshit, identity politics had absolutely nothing impactful on the game's design, narrative, or gameplay whatsoever. While veilguard is designed revolving around it in every aspect. That's why people distain veiguard while enjoying bg3.
 

Zathalus

Member
Again, if devs could restrain themselves and leave the trans aspects with pronouns then I don't think this would be an issue now. Maybe by the time Larians next game is released things will have calmed down, but right now the stench of Veilguard's identity politics is fresh in a lot of people's minds.
It’s only an issue because people are making it an issue. With the current social media climate things are never going to calm down. Stoking outrage online over ideological and other issues is far too easy and lucrative to stop doing. Is it possible this game is a LGBTQ love fest? Sure, but since the game lacks any actual romance I’m betting it will have less “woke” elements than BG3.

The sensible thing to do is wait for reviews and user impressions. Or just check it out on gamepass if you have that. The amount of people raging about this is disproportionate to what the actual interest in the game was anyway. I’d pretty sure that a lot (but not all obviously) of people saying they won’t purchase the game because of this had no interest in buying the game in the first place. Look at how much traction the previews got.
 

Mister Wolf

Gold Member
That's why keep laughing at people using BG3 as counter point "Oh loot at the 2023 goty, it's non-binary but great game". Bullshit, identity politics had absolutely nothing impactful on the game's design, narrative, or gameplay whatsoever. While veilguard is designed revolving around it in every aspect. That's why people distain veiguard while enjoying bg3.

I'm still trying to figure out what was DEI about BG3. None of the characters talk that tranny bullshit. All companions are traditionally attractive even if being a different species. None of them are fat as fuck. None of the women spout a bunch of feminist propaganda.
 
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yazenov

Gold Member
Apparently the character creation screen was embargoed from the recent previews, so there are probably some gems in there

They are 100% trying to hide that shit in fear of the backlash and sales tanking. I mean the game already looks like shit, and now add this game to the DEI detected list. MS is shameful, If you're including the DEI bullshit in your game, at least try to own it :p

I guess after all the dead DEI games in 2024, they know what's coming next. Lets dig a grave for this game next to the rest of the pile of dead DEI filth.
 
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Topher

Identifies as young
It’s only an issue because people are making it an issue. With the current social media climate things are never going to calm down. Stoking outrage online over ideological and other issues is far too easy and lucrative to stop doing. Is it possible this game is a LGBTQ love fest? Sure, but since the game lacks any actual romance I’m betting it will have less “woke” elements than BG3.

The sensible thing to do is wait for reviews and user impressions. Or just check it out on gamepass if you have that. The amount of people raging about this is disproportionate to what the actual interest in the game was anyway. I’d pretty sure that a lot (but not all obviously) of people saying they won’t purchase the game because of this had no interest in buying the game in the first place. Look at how much traction the previews got.

It is a kneejerk reaction at this point, but I can't blame folks frankly. People don't want identity politics to continue to be inserted into their games. Better to "make it an issue" and let it be known. If it turns out to be nothing, all the better.
 

The Cockatrice

I'm retarded?
The anti-wokeism movement is getting embarrassing.

Pretty much. Its why Im prolly not gonna spend my time much here. The anti-woke brigade started with the right intentions, but now they've turned into EXACTLY what we were always up against which was us vs canceling things they didnt like. Some people here are now canceling the game for having some stupid pronouns and arent even talking about the game itself. Seems like social media has truly brainwashed some people here.
 

Kokoloko85

Member
In what sense do you mean?

Again, nothing they have shown or any of the previews have shown or talked about so far is even coming close to the shadow of the whole Barv stuff from Veilguard.

I think this is an extremely tame version of representation but like Topher Topher said, people are still ready to pounce after Veilguard.

In the sense that people just slaughter it and dont give an honest opinion about the rest of the gameplay. And so so many videos. Everywhere I looked there was people hating on it.

I didnt play it past an hour pr 2 with a EA play, but the combat was way better than before and so were the graphics, animations etc. I just couldnt stand the dialogue, voice acting and forced DEI crap. And the effort into certain things wasnt there.

Yeah if its just pronouns then its nothing like Veilguards issues. Saying that Outer Worlds also got alot of negative feedback from some players because they thought it was being too woke at times, so I wouldnt be surprised if theres alot more DEI stuff in Avowed. Hope not

Some games including veiguard, were being lined up for shooting and DOA before much of the game was shown anyway.
Theres been some games that were hated for just pronouns when the rest of the gameplay had no signs of DEI.
 
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Kacho

Gold Member
Pretty much. It’s why Im prolly not gonna spend my time much here. The anti-woke brigade started with the right intentions, but now they've turned into EXACTLY what we were always up against which was us vs canceling things they didnt like. Some people here are now canceling the game for having some stupid pronouns and arent even talking about the game itself. Seems like social media has truly brainwashed some people here.
Not even remotely comparable. Discussing things people dislike and voting with your wallet isn’t cancelling.
 

Little Chicken

Gold Member
Right, and we have a ton of peoples from RPG review sites praising the >15 hours they've played.

On top of you know, already knowing the world they've built from Pillars of Eternity and seeing the continuation here for so many beasts and lore.



Bullshots? They were gif'd from trailer.

Or if you want twitter shit compression



Gc4Uz-HaQAACRjv


Those shots above seen in exactly this guy's capture



How is that first minute of that video even remotely close to mediocre? For an RPG where its maker made 2d Isometric games, a storyboard game recently and the visually impressive (/s) Fallout New Vegas?

What's the reference of graphics you want for this kind of game? Which?

I hope I would find both of you guys in Baldur's Gate III thread mentioning how mediocre it looks, right? Certainly you took the time to shit on that as well.

Wow looks amazing :messenger_sunglasses:
 

Topher

Identifies as young
Keep telling yourself that buddy.

Kacho Kacho is right. It isn't comparable. Forbidding mentioning the game's name or any discussion of it in any way, that's cancelling. Folks saying they are not buying the game because of pronouns is a matter of individual choice. Avowed will have all the usual conversation around it, just as Veilguard did. And I haven't seen a single person suggest that shouldn't be the case for either game.
 
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Zathalus

Member
I'm still trying to figure out what was DEI about BG3. None of the characters talk that tranny bullshit. All companions are traditionally attractive even if being a different species. None of them are fat as fuck. None of the women spout a bunch of feminist propaganda.
- You can select your pronouns
- You can create a trans character
- Gay and lesbian romance options
- One of the major NPCs is lesbian
- Some other lore related bits about diversity.

You might not think that counts, but the snowflakes at rpgcodex certainly think so. There are even mods that use AI to alter characters voices (along with replaced models and art) just so they won’t have to face an icky lesbian romance.
 

Buggy Loop

Member
Then how does this have anything to do with warriors or being Xbox exclusive?

It's tit for tat around this place. I hope I do not have to spell it out how an average xbox thread goes around here?

I don't even believe Concord was cancelled or had shit sales solely on wokism. The game plain sucks and brings nothing to the already saturated genre if not downright late to the party. Not even hundreds and hundreds of peoples within Sony's hierarchy played the damn game because it would have assuredly cumulated to bigger numbers than the CCU we saw.

There's plenty of gaas games releasing without the wokism and still fall flat on their face. Forever Winter being the next one unless somehow the devs save its ass with a game changer because now it avg to <600 players daily and falling down. The game is the definition of anti-woke. So why the failure? Gaas. Peoples gravitate to one massive success gaas game, very hard for anything else to sneak by and become popular.

But you might be right, Dragon age veilguard basically stirred the beehive and now a bunch drama youtubers will "react" to it with twitch chat brain rot in the background LOL'ing over this ant hill made into a mountain. I don't believe this Avowed pronoun thing would even have made a spash a year ago. Let alone being retweeted by Musk, I'll give you that 100%.
 

FunkMiller

Gold Member
I’m neither sad nor weird enough to let a choice on a character creation screen stop me from playing a game. But I will await reviews, to see if the game has a compelling story and good characters or not. Then I will decide whether I want to buy it or not.

I know this sounds far too sensible for this conversation, so please do scream into the void for a few moments if it will make you feel better.
 

FunkMiller

Gold Member
I'm still trying to figure out what was DEI about BG3. None of the characters talk that tranny bullshit. All companions are traditionally attractive even if being a different species. None of them are fat as fuck. None of the women spout a bunch of feminist propaganda.

Just because they can act like assholes, doesn’t mean you have to be a cunt as well. That’s a really nasty slur and shows either your ignorance or your bigotry.
 
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EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
I won't be buying it. It looks mediocre, and the last Obsidian game I played, The Outer Worlds, was poorly written and ideological to the point of absurdity. Pronouns aren't inherently a dealbreaker, but in this case the pronouns are a signal that the poor writing and ideological slant will persist.

I say that as someone who has his likeness in a previous Obsidian game and used to be their single biggest champion on the internet.
 

Kacho

Gold Member
Kacho Kacho is right. It isn't comparable. Forbidding mentioning the game's name or any discussion of it in any way, that's cancelling. Folks saying they are not buying the game because of pronouns is a matter of individual choice. Avowed will have all the usual conversation around it, just as Veilguard did. And I haven't seen a single person suggest that shouldn't be the case for either game.
They had several media outlets refusing to cover the game as well. It was an orchestrated effort to ensure the game failed.

Here we’re just pointing out that the game has identity politics, which it does, and some people are saying they won’t buy it because of that.

“We’re the baddies now guyz!!!!”

Give me a fucking break.
 
Obsidian is just Bioware with lower budgets and both studios are the same in the sense that all the people who made the good games we remember from the past left or retired decades ago now
 

FunkMiller

Gold Member
I won't be buying it. It looks mediocre, and the last Obsidian game I played, The Outer Worlds, was poorly written and ideological to the point of absurdity. Pronouns aren't inherently a dealbreaker, but in this case the pronouns are a signal that the poor writing and ideological slant will persist.

I say that as someone who has his likeness in a previous Obsidian game and used to be their single biggest champion on the internet.

In the recent past, pronoun inclusion certainly hasn’t been a sign that a game is going be good 🙄
 

Topher

Identifies as young
It's tit for tat around this place. I hope I do not have to spell it out how an average xbox thread goes around here?

I don't even believe Concord was cancelled or had shit sales solely on wokism. The game plain sucks and brings nothing to the already saturated genre if not downright late to the party. Not even hundreds and hundreds of peoples within Sony's hierarchy played the damn game because it would have assuredly cumulated to bigger numbers than the CCU we saw.

There's plenty of gaas games releasing without the wokism and still fall flat on their face. Forever Winter being the next one unless somehow the devs save its ass with a game changer because now it avg to <600 players daily and falling down. The game is the definition of anti-woke. So why the failure? Gaas. Peoples gravitate to one massive success gaas game, very hard for anything else to sneak by and become popular.

But you might be right, Dragon age veilguard basically stirred the beehive and now a bunch drama youtubers will "react" to it with twitch chat brain rot in the background LOL'ing over this ant hill made into a mountain. I don't believe this Avowed pronoun thing would even have made a spash a year ago. Let alone being retweeted by Musk, I'll give you that 100%.

I see how both Xbox and PlayStation threads go around here. The only difference is scale, imo. Concord was damn near universally panned here. Part of that was due to being heavily influenced by wokeism. I can't look at the character designs and see it any other way. No, that wasn't its only issue, but it played a part. The generic gaas aspects were certainly a factor as well.

Don't disagree with the rest of your points. I'd rather games forego any mention of identity politics at all, frankly. I've talked more about politics in games the past year than I have many years prior. I'm ready to get back to just having fun.
 
Why should that matter? A good game is a good game, a bad game is a bad one.
Imagine you find out that Rockstar literally fed on human babies while playing GTA6. Would you still buy it? What if Larian announces they are nazis, put a swastika on their homepage. Would you still buy their games?

Extreme examples, but my point is that not all consumers blindly buy products without considering the morality of those involved.
 

FireFly

Member
I get that but why does the whole world need to adapt to use a gender label when no confusion exist?

If a man feel like a woman he will likely do some work to look like a woman and change the name etc. There is no scenario where a bulky brute of a man called Arnold with a big ass beard need a label over his photo that says he’s identifying himself as a man. It is already known.

So why not just let those who happen to sometimes but not always pass as a woman use that extra label if they’re fed up about being mislabeled all the time?

But again why bring that into games? Why would anybody want to create a character that often gets mislabeled as the wrong gender? If you’re a man who feel like a woman, wouldn’t the ultimate role playing fantasy be to play as a real woman?
I think there are three different things:

1.) How a person appears to others in society
2.) How a person actually feels about themselves (self-identifies)
3.) Whether society accepts that person's self-identification

If gender labels were only needed to avoid confusion about how a person identified, then yes, they would only be invoked in situations where such confusion arose due to differences in physical appearance (point 1). However, I don't think the complaint people have is about overuse of language. I mean we have entire threads spawned over a couple of lines of text in a character creator. I don't think the real issue here is the space wasted by those extra lines. And even those advocating for gender labels presumably are only going to invoke them when they introduce themselves to new people. (You might reasonably object if *everyone* had to introduce themselves in such a way, however I think that would be an unreasonably strong position to hold in the first place).

Rather I think the issue is that those identifying as a different gender aren't simply asking for others simply to permit them to wear different clothes or use a different name. They want to be accepted as belonging to that gender, at least in some sense. That's precisely what those who believe that gender purely depends on observed biological characteristics reject. For those holding this position, people self-identifying as a different gender must at least be "confused", if not mentally ill. So it's a debate about whether there is social space (point 3.) to recognise how a person self-identifies (point 2).

And role playing games generally intend to provide a space for such self-identification. I would assume that people don't generally want to play characters that get "mislabelled" unless they are trying to work through some trauma. Rather I think the point of the option is to allow the creation of characters that do not fit "traditional" gender conceptions. Again, if there was an extra slider for face shape, or the option to specify a past career or even a horoscope sign, no one would care. People care about this issue, not because having an extra option involves wasted development work, but because the recognition of such concepts as gender identity is an inherently political issue.
 
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I've talked more about politics in games the past year than I have many years prior. I'm ready to get back to just having fun.
Come join us:


 
Jesus H Christ does the 0.001% of the human race reeeeeeeeally have to be fucking catered too in every fucking game??? Everyone thinks... Sure it's only He/Him whats the problem? The problem is this is the fucking start, give the cunts this and what's next, I'm running a dungeon and new loot drops for my Conan McWhite dude Muscles character and it's a fucking dress with the stats I need to win the next fight and now I'm Conan the dude looks like a lady fighting orcs in a medieval fantasy game, oh please fuck off into the sea with this shit
This is not that hard to imagine. I haven't found any gear that makes Diablo IV male sorcerer look masculine. Always looks like a drag queen.
 
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