Storytelling

BG, BG2 and ID have all made me really, really appreciate the value of good storytelling in games.  In no other games that I've ever played have the storylines been so compelling, or so morally challenging.  Over and over as Digit and I have played through these games, I've found myself thinking really freaking hard about how to respond to a single line of dialogue.

Do I try to get on his good side?  Do I pretend to be mad?  Do I bluff my way through his questions?  Do I come back later?  Do I whip out my trusty ol' bow and shoot his face full of arrows?

In a lot of other games, the dialogue options are black and white, the kind of obvious multiple-choice that you get in really badly-written tests. This is the Good Option. This is the Bad Option. This is the Obligatory Other Option, Which Nevertheless Leads To Either The Good Option Or The Bad Option. I hate being led around by the nose like that, and the Forgotten Realms games never pander to that sort of gameplay - a fact for which I am eternally grateful.

Digit and I have a party composed of good characters - all of mine are neutral good and most of his are lawful good - so it stands to reason that we'd always pick the option that keeps our reputation high (it's currently Heroic, apparently) and helps the good guys. But whilst our end goal is clear-cut, the dialogue options are still, very often, totally ambiguous.

There's a subquest in Baldur's Gate 2 that cropped up recently - you meet a group of young boys in a town, they're all fired up about the idea of the adventuring life, and they ask if you can buy them ale and swords (since they can't buy the items themselves) so that they can feel like they're "real adventurers".

You have the option, when they've finished speaking, to either say: A) I'll get you the ale, but not the swords, B) I'll get you the swords, but not the ale, C) I'll get you both, D) I'll get you neither.  Nowhere in the dialogue tree leading up to that point are you informed as to whether this group of boys is important or relevant to any other quest, so you go into the scenario without knowing what you 'should' do.

In a few FR quests, denying people everything they ask for can lead to hostility, or slam the door on the possibility of further quest trees.  So when we faced the scenario above, we weren't sure what to do.  We sat there and actually talked it over for about ten minutes.

"If we give them the swords, they could hurt themselves, and their parents would probably get mad."
"Yeah, true... I don't know if getting them drunk would be a better option, though?"
"What harm could they possibly come to if they were drunk?  They'd probably just get told off by their parents and that would be that."
"Yeah, but what if their parents get really mad at us and throw us out of the town?"
"True.  But then, should we be encouraging them to be adventurers at all?  It's not like people have had a great opinion of adventurers so far, except when we save their miserable asses from marauding monsters."

It went on like that for a while.  At the end of it, we decided to buy them the ale but not the swords, thinking they'd just drink it, fall asleep, and be woken up later by their parents.  What ACTUALLY happened was that they thanked us, moaned about the swords for a bit, then said, "Okay, let's go and drink this stuff.  I know a great spot." - and then they all ran off and disappeared.

We were like... "Oh, shit."  Considering the town that they lived in had asked for our help in dealing with a series of inexplicable murders, and there'd been reports of ogres in the hills and a roaming pack of wolves, we were convinced we'd just sentenced the idiots to a drunken, unarmed death.

I should point out, here, that that was probably two weeks ago in game-time, and the quest is yet 'unresolved' - we never did find the boys. :(

But it's a perfect example of the kind of effect these storylines have on our moral consciousness.  We began, pretty early on, to feel responsible for our decisions - to actually feel great when we'd done the right thing, and to feel terrible when our actions led to the death of various characters, even if we couldn't help it.  We recently buggered up a quest in the Athkatla Docks district which saw us refusing a quest (technically a good decision, as we're a 'good' party and the quest involved murder for no good reason) and thus being unable to progress in an undercover investigation, so we ended up having to just kill the guy we were investigating.  It solved the problem, but our employer wasn't happy, and neither was I - I didn't want to kill the guy without knowing for sure that he was the sort we ought to have killed.

We didn't have a savegame from before we'd buggered the quest up, so there was nothing we could do.  That was about two days ago (real-time), and I STILL feel bad about it.

Point is - even though games like Baldur's Gate 2 aren't as focused on customising the physical appearance of your character as MMORPGs like Guild Wars or WoW, there's a much greater emotional attachment and investment into what your character does or doesn't do.  I guess what I'm describing is basically the whole "role-playing" thing that these games are all about, but I've not found any other games that do it so well.

So props to Black Isle and the others involved in creating these games, because hot damn, I can't wait to find out what happens.  There's no greater tribute to storytelling - interactive or otherwise - than when a person feels like they should go to real-life confession for stealing an in-game amulet from an in-game priestess for an in-game quest.