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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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Is Baldur's Gate 3 woke or parody of woke?

I am character creation screen - you can choose between body type 1,2,3,4 . After that you can choose between voice 1 and 2 , Your Identity can be Male / Female or Non Binary, then you can hide your clothes (at this point I decided that developers were actually trolling because nudity in D&D BG series was rare to nonexistent) and you can choose your genitals if the default doesn't suit you to Vulva A, Vulva B or Penis A-D ,

So you can make a decent futanari I guess.

Have you noticed that Man and Woman were nowhere to be mentioned and you can't choose your gender? That everything is deconstructed and presented in the most cold, indifferent, clinical way? I don't think that it shows welcoming or acceptance. More like indifference and very subtle contempt while not giving reasons for complaining - the video game equivalent of sliding benches that make impossible for homeless people to sleep on them.

I think this is the best way to keep politics out of gaming - just don't reference anything remotely political and let people do whatever they want.

Also, the game is based on 5th edition DnD, which is a fantasy setting where basically anything is possible. A high level wizard can easily change their gender or species if they so choose simply by casting a spell. A 20th level wizard can cast True Polymorph on himself and become a dragon (permanently if he so chooses). Or he can cast Magic Jar and inhabit someone else's body (permanently if he so chooses). Real-world concepts of gender identity barely even make sense in this sort of setting.

just don't reference anything remotely political

Dunno if you've made it to Act 3 but this is....definitely not what they did.

I can't find anything online, could you elaborate?

There's a refugee crisis outside Baldur's Gate and it is played in a very black-and-white way.

I'm fairly sympathetic to the message and still thought it was too on-the-nose and lacked any nuance.