Baldur's Gate 3 Could Use a Moral Story
Great game, but why is it all so empty?
Very light spoilers.
I’ve spent an ungodly number of hours playing Baldur’s Gate 3 since it came out. I’ve played through three times now. I have been a paragon of honor, a paladin, a loveable rouge (bard), and a power-hungry sorceress, which I think gives me a pretty wide exposure to the game.
But the thing that bothers me about the game: the story is well-paced, the world is great, Shadowheart and Astarion are very good characters, but it all feels so… empty in a way that other great RPG’s did not. I think I finally have figured out why: the game has no morals and does not make your character face any moral costs.
Let me explain what I mean with an example (very minor spoilers): the game goes out of its way to allow you to do some truly heinous activities. Fair enough, that’s part of the fun of an RPG. But you never pay the cost for any of those actions! I literally fucked a demon, my girlfriend caught me, and she was like *shrug, nbd, I don’t own you, but yeah, we’re still in love, etc*. I mean what the hells? Let’s just assume that in game world monogamy isn’t a common thing (despite loads of evidence to the contrary). My character had sex with a demon - like evil from the Hells demon. Nothing about the girlfriend’s character suggests that she is the type of person to be okay with that. The scene clearly just exists because everyone wants to fuck the demon, but they don’t want to lose their partner. It’s bizarre, and… well, silly.
I gave that example because it’s pretty low-risk of spoiling anything serious, but your character basically never pays for any of its sins — are there even sins? And you just start asking yourself: so, what is the point of it? I can do whatever I want without cost. There is no moral story to latch onto. I don’t remember a single serious moral question in the entire thing. Every moral decision is like: “Should I save the puppies from drowning or skin them alive?” People don’t even get that mad at you if you choose to skin them alive.
Let’s look at some other great, fairly modern computer RPG’s. They have obvious main moral questions that your character can plausibly take either side of while still being a normal, well-meaning person:
Dragon Age: is human freedom more important than safety and stability? (Mages vs Templars, Qunari vs Chantry kingdoms both fall into this).
Mass Effect: Should children pay for their father’s sins (Krogan)? Is synthetic life as valuable as organic (Geth)? Is it okay to value the survival of your “own” above the Others (whole series)?
Pillars of Eternity: can lies be justified by their consequences?
That’s what makes the choices meaningful. It’s perfectly reasonable to want some restrictions placed on people who throw fireballs and also perfectly reasonable to not want to be discriminated against just because you can throw fireballs (Dragon Age). It’s perfectly reasonable to not want a race prone to violence that can naturally reproduce very rapidly to be able to do so, and it’s perfectly reasonable to think that Man shouldn’t play God (Mass Effect).
The violent world of Baldur’s Gate 3 just seems pointless without a moral question to latch onto. The choices that get closest to this are of the “do I do a deal with the devil” variety — often literally. But it is not the same. The choice is all about consequences: what is likely to happen if you do the deal. There’s no moral question. Is it right?
I thought I knew early on what the question was going to be. Early on, a mysterious character asks: “What is the worth of a single human life?” I thought they were setting it up to be some kind of “drown the puppy, save the world” type dilemma, but nope. Just a slick world with fun, attractive characters living out an entirely amoral story.
In conclusion: I just can’t find a story interesting where my girlfriend doesn’t mind me fucking a demon. I feel like she should be a bit upset about that. I should at least have to buy her flowers to make up for it.