Siege of Dragonspear - Review @ RPS

Richard Cobbett has taken a deep look at Siege of Dragonspear for Rock, Paper, Shotgun and is reasonably positive about the results:

With Siege of Dragonspear, Beamdog has come on a long way. It’s not perfect, either at matching the style or being a great new RPG in its own right, and future games will need some heavy QA loving. But, as the company’s first big attempt to both follow in BioWare’s wake (the presence of former BioWare people notwithstanding), it’s a good start and at least a good first step to one day giving us that Baldur’s Gate 3 we’ve been waiting so long for – another nostalgia trip, but with a slightly more practiced eye on the future.

Obviously, no review can be made without commenting on the chain of events that took place in the last days since its release.

There’s already been a lot of talk online about certain elements of the writing, so let’s address that before moving on to the bigger picture. One of the members of the camp is a transgender woman, Mizhena, who has exactly one short dialogue entry on the subject when asked, followed by the player character going “Okay,” and changing the subject. The controversy around this character isn’t a mountain out of a molehill, but a mountain out of an empty prairie. The rest of the game also includes female characters like Corwin, a single mother who serves as an archer and regrets duty keeping her away from her daughter. It also adds Voghiln, a skirt-chasing skald who cheerfully hits on every female member of the cast.

Like most RPGs, Siege of Dragonspear is a game that celebrates diversity because whatever else it means and whatever the author’s reason for specific inclusions, it means more interesting games. There are no long lectures here, no pointed quests about the subject (unlike, say, Dragon Age Inquisition’s very on-the-nose stuff with Dorian). Siege of Dragonspear makes no more particular fuss about anything than any other RPG that features quests where you do things like, say, try and understand complex issues before acting violently, bring together groups separated by ignorance or mistake, stand up for the weak… y’know, the horrible ‘SJW agenda’ which used to simply be called ‘being a fucking hero’. Oh, and also the kind of thing that’s been a stock part of the RPG genre since Ultima VI took on racism back in 1990.