Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear

Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear
Developer(s)	Beamdog
Publisher(s)	Beamdog
Series	Baldur's Gate
Engine	Infinity Enhanced Engine
Platforms	Microsoft Windows, iOS, OS X, Android, Linux
Release date(s)	Windows, OS X & Linux 31 March 2016
Genre(s)	Role-playing video game
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear is an expansion pack for the role-playing video game Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition developed and published by Beamdog.

Gameplay

It has been stated that the expansion pack will provide at least 25 hours of gameplay across 70 new areas, that it will introduce a new monster summoning class called the shaman, and will add 4 new companions to complement the original roster of characters that can be imported from Baldur's Gate. In addition Beamdog have stated that there will be several improvements to the UI including the addition of health bars and journal pop-up entries.

Plot

The game takes place shortly after the conclusion of Baldur's Gate and will center on a mysterious crusade to the north of Baldur's Gate city, led by a warrior known as the Shining Lady.

Development

Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear has been developed by Beamdog for PC, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android. The expansion was announced on 10 July 2015 during a live event hosted by Beamdog as a bridge between the events of Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II and was released on 31 March 2016,

Reception

Baldur's Gate Siege of Dragonspear
Aggregate score Aggregator Score Metacritic 77/100 Review score Publication Score PC World

Siege of Dragonspear was released on 31 March 2016 to generally favorable reviews.

Hayden Dingman of PC World wrote, "Will it please every purist? Of course not. As with any beloved series, passions run high and nostalgia’s a hell of a drug. There are bound to be those who wish Beamdog had stuck to a purely conservationist role. But Siege of Dragonspear won me over, and I’d like to see what the team does next."

Controversy

The game's writing attracted controversy, with Eurogamer's Robert Purchese reporting that criticism focused on two scenes perceived as pushing a political agenda. The first is the character Minsc's quip, "Really, it's about ethics in heroic adventuring", a reference to the Gamergate controversy. The second is an optional dialogue tree in which the cleric Mizhena mentions that she was raised as a boy, indicating that she is a trans woman. Colin Campbell of Polygon reported that writer Amber Scott faced online harassment and insults, and that the game's Steam and GOG pages were bombarded with complaints that the transgender reference constituted "political correctness," "LGBT tokenism" and "SJW pandering." Scott had previously commented about her writing: "I get to make decisions about who I write about and why. I don't like writing about straight/white/cis people all the time. It's not reflective of the real world, it sets up s/w/c as the 'normal' baseline from which 'other' characters must be added, and it's boring."

Five days after the expansion's release, Jeff Grubb of VentureBeat reported that 142 people had posted negative user reviews on Metacritic, the vast majority giving a score of "zero", and suggested that a mob of gamers were attempting to punish the expansion for adding diversity. Ed Greenwood, creator of the Forgotten Realms game world in which the Baldur's Gate series takes place, defended the inclusion of a transgender character, writing, "If it's not for you, that's fine. I hate wearing certain shades of yellow. But I don't scream and yell at someone I see wearing those shades of yellow, and call them names, and threaten things. My right to dislike yellow applies to me; it doesn't extend to others."

Beamdog, in a 6 April post discussing both technical and content issues, announced they would be removing the Gamergate joke and expanding Mizhena's story, saying in part, "In retrospect, it would have been better served if we had introduced a transgender character with more development."