Saturday Morning Gaming: More Musings on Moral Choices
Baldur’s Gate III is good. Like, it’s really good.
IGN is even putting out clickbait talking about how the game is causing competitors to “panic”.
While Baldur's Gate 3 is being widely celebrated by fans and developers alike, some are panicking that this could set new expectations from fans. https://t.co/prTzNh6nMN pic.twitter.com/PR89Qy3kCs
— IGN (@IGN) August 11, 2023
For what it’s worth, my buddy texted me a couple hours after playing it and said “Blizzard needs to be having multiple meetings about this game.”
Oh yeah, it’s awesome.
I’ve started over from the beginning four times, though.
Part of the problem is that part of me is min-maxxing everything. My first character was a Dwarven Cleric. Good, solid. Of course, the first companion you get is a cleric. So I restarted and made a Halfling Thief. I mean, “Rogue”. Of course, the second companion you get is a thief. So I restarted again and made a Sorcerer. Of course, the third companion you get is a Wizard.
So I threw up my hands and yelled “OKAY FINE!” and made a Ranger. I wanted those extra hit points anyway.
Something finally sunk in on the fourth character… I don’t pick my alignment. When I was a cleric, I picked my deity. I could have picked Bahamut, I could have picked Tiamat… but it didn’t ask me if I were good or evil. I could have picked Tyr, I could have picked Talos… but it didn’t ask me about Law or Chaos.
No more alignment.
Now, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t *CHOICES* in the game. There’s a surprise “hidden” companion that you can pick up but you only get the option of picking them up if you do some fairly evil stuff.
Which, honestly, strikes me as kind of aberrant. “You get extra game content if you’re evil!” strikes me as giving vaguely anti-social rewards.
Remember back in the days of Bioware? John Ebenger famously shared that 92% of players played as “the good guy”:
Yup. Something like 92% of Mass Effect players were Paragon.
And we put a lot of work in to the Renegade content too 🙁 https://t.co/lywwx7n4Hy— John Ebenger (@EbengerJohn) February 19, 2020
I understand the “we put a lot of work into Renegade content” complaint. But I would say that even if someone only played through once, the fact that there was a Renegade option made the Paragon choices that much more meaningful. It’s not a visual novel anymore. This is *YOUR* character. And you, yes, you are CHOOSING to be good when you could, instead, be bad. (Or a Renegade, anyway.)
And I look at that number of Paragons and I think “Everything’s going to be okay.”
But now I look at Steam’s announcement for the statistics of player choices for Baldur’s Gate 3 (warning, that link will have some mild spoilers for Act I) and I despair that the number of “paragon” choices is down to about 2/3rds. I sure hope that 9/10ths of those 1/3rd were motivated by getting the secret companion…
Call me old-fashioned, but I think that the only rewards for being evil should be more gold, more experience points, and different storyline resolutions. NOT extra content. Different content? Sure. Not extra.
But now I have to get back to the game and see if the fifth companion you pick up is a Ranger…
So… what are you playing?
(Featured image is the Baldur’s Gate 3 menu screen. Screenshot taken by the author.)
I like to play either good or selfish characters. I never go for the evil options unless it’s motivated by revenge or maybe the “greater good” which are choices games tend to give you.
Your post made me think of Cyberpunk 2077, which lets you do some morally dubious stuff (consistent with the lore and setting) but if you’re evil, you lose a lot of content and options for the ending. Fuck over Panam and you lose access to a romance, an ending and a huge chunk on content. The game doesn’t give you the option, for example, of siding with the Wraiths. I think that’s a good game design choice but on the other hand it would be nice to have more complex interactions with some gangs beyond kill on sight.
Some extra content for being evil doesn’t bother me too much as long it’s small, not game-breaking, and being good comes with something equivalent. There should be trade offs.
I haven’t played BG3 yet and am not sure I will given the time commitment and with Starfield (a game I’m more excited about) just around the corner. Although I’m tempted because my memories of BG2 are very fond and have stuck with me.
As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve become less enamored of the isometric tactical party combat play style. I never finished Pillars of Eternity, for example, because it just became too tedious.Report
From what I understand, BG3 is one of those games that has a level cap around 12. So it’s not going to *REQUIRE* a 100 hour investment.
But if you’re looking for 200 hours of gameplay, you’ll find it.Report
One of the things I really liked about Dishonored is that the good choices were hard at first, but made the game easier as it went on….
… and vice versa. It was a lot easier to be bad at first but it makes it a lot harder to beat.Report
Eh, I didn’t like the loading screens giving away the game. They should *NOT* have told you “dead bodies increase rats”. They should have just told you stuff like “man, killing stuff is fun, right?” and kept ladling on the awesome weapons.
And then, at the end of the game, given you the bad ending and then told you “dead bodies increase rats”.Report
… man, it’s like you’ve never played “The Magic Candle.” It got serious complaints from people who looked at their candle in the inventory once. And then played the whole “open world” concept until the candle destroyed the world.
People tend to complain if they’re forced to play 100 hours before discovering the objective.Report
What BG3 does so well and what people are responding to is there’s major narrative consequences to your actions, not just the ones you’ve been conditioned to expect matter by previous RPGs (dialogue choices), but also stuff like combat mechanics or how you interact with the world.
This really came to a head for me at a particular point in Act 2, when whether you succeed or fail on a really difficult combat objective can completely upend your campaign, and there’s no hand holding from the game about this.
I’m on Act 3, and its easy to see how much replayablility there is to explore other paths on this game, although nothing is as exhilarating as the first completely blind play through.
Oh, and there isn’t another ranger for you to worry about, so you’re good.Report
On thing that already has me tensing up is that I understand that there are some narrative events that are on a timer. Like, someone came up to a big fight and said “let’s take a rest” and then, when they got out of the rest, the big fight had concluded.
AAAAAA I AM NEVER GOING TO CAST A SPELL EVER AGAINReport
If it helps, the timers seem to only start when you’re made aware of a crisis, so you’re free to rest as much as you want otherwise. Just treat the prospect that somebody will die if you don’t save them right away seriously.
I presently have two separate people outstanding that probably are going to get killed because I haven’t figured out where they are yet.Report
I’ll get back to you right after I figure out this whole forge thing…
Guys? guys where are you?
I got mouthy with an apparition of the Queen… how bad could it be? It’s an apparition.
Oh, that bad.
Worst part? I hadn’t saved… so had to do the who battle over again. Then, a little less mouthy.
I downloaded a mod that basically jacks you to Level 6 — I’d slogged through 1-5 in Beta too many times to keep doing it. Also, D&D isn’t really fun in a video game setting until at least level 5.Report
Also, D&D isn’t really fun in a video game setting until at least level 5.
It’s not fun at the table until at least level 5.
You’re there for the comradery, the joy of rolling a 20, the agony of rolling a 3, and the “your momma’s so fat, they created a size category above colossal” jokes.Report
Heh, yeah but it’s been a while since I’ve done any in-person tabletop… so didn’t want to assume.Report
“One thing that already has me tensing up is that I understand that there are some narrative events that are on a timer.”
This is addressing the issue that has dogged RPG for a long time, where it’s vital that you get to the castle right away to rescue the princess!…but before you do that you can spend a couple months exterminating slimes and getting everybody to Level 99 so the fight is a walk-over.Report
Still playing Baldur’s Gate 1. However, my wife and I might delve into BG3 co-op in the future. She is intrigued by the game, which is all over her TikToks. In BG1 I have finished the bandit camp and am getting ready to head to the Cloakwood. I am having a better time with the game than I thought.
I always felt like evil choices in games were weird. For evil choices to make sense, they should have some selfish appeal to them, with moral reasons not to do them. However, in a lot of games, evil choices are often “be a jerk for no reason” and ultimately less rewarding, so it would make more sense for a selfish character to do the good options (for selfish motives). I am not trying to equate selfish with evil here, but trying to rationalize an intelligent evil character, not somebody who just wants to cause havoc for the sake of it. I haven’t played Dishonored, but it sounds like that might be a little more like what I have wanted from evil choices.Report
In Dishonored, “evil” == “easy/shortcuts”.
You wanna play stealth? Your ammo is low. Your timing needs to be perfect.
You wanna play lethal? Here’s a box that kills anybody who walks near it! Here’s a crossbow that can kill someone when you’re still outside of their detection radius!Report
Evil choices work best in a game like Fate/Stay Night, where they are the /immature/ and /selfish/ choices.
… yes, I’m actually saying that an X rated game does a better job of describing morality than … any American game. At least I’m not defending “Nice Boat.”Report
The Dishonored system is interesting because it’s not really good v evil but stability vs chaos. The more people you kill, the more chaos there is in the world, and the less stability in the society, which has all kinds of effects, including on the nature of the ending. I think the game incentivized you to kill bosses but avoid killing others, like guards, although there are non-lethal or non-murderous options to deal with the bosses.
It was and is a really good game.Report
I’m currently rethinking my balancing. Right now my party is paladin (me); fighter; cleric; rogue, and I’ve been pretty happy with it, but I’m seeing instances where having someone who can throw magic around might be useful–especially when you’re up against critters that do annoying things like “stay out of melee range.” I’ve got a wizard and a warlock sitting back in camp, so I’ll probably sit down tonight and mix it up a bit.
I’m loving the game, though. It feels like I’m playing D&D.Report
Yeah, there are a lot of set-pieces that really benefit from strong AoE… mostly I’ve been cheesing them by saving, then changing the party when the first battle goes awry.
My inner roleplayer dies a little each time, but my achiever just qq and off we go.
I also really like how you can re-spec and add hirelings for almost nothing. Which I tend to abuse.
On the one hand, you have to live with Macro choices no matter the party, but I appreciate how my Micro party/character choices are practically unlimited. Of course, DMs everywhere cringe at the very thought.Report
Update: I love warlocks.Report