The Game Baby Steps Presents One of the Most Significant Choices I've Ever Faced in Video Games

I've dealt with some hard choices in video games. Certain choices I made in Life is Strange continue to trouble me. Ghost of Tsushima concluding moments prompted me to set down my controller for a good 10 minutes while I weighed my choices. I am the cause of numerous Krogan demises in the Mass Effect series that I regret deeply. Not a single one of those situations hold a candle to what now might be the hardest choice I’ve had to make in a video game — and it has to do with a enormous set of steps.

The Game Baby Steps, the newest release from the developers of Ape Out game, is hardly a selection-based adventure. Definitely not in typical gaming terms. You only need to navigate a sprawling open world as the protagonist Nate, a onesie-wearing manchild who can hardly stay upright on his unsteady feet. It looks like an exercise in frustration, but Baby Steps game’s strength comes from its unexpectedly meaningful plot that will catch you off guard when you least anticipate it. There’s not a single instance that demonstrates that power like a key selection that remains on my mind.

Note: Spoilers Ahead

Some scene setting is needed at this point. Baby Steps starts when Nate is magically whisked away from his family's basement and into a magical realm. He soon realizes that navigating this world is a challenge, as a lifetime spent as a sedentary person have atrophied his limbs. The humorous physicality of it all arises from gamers directing Nate step by step, trying to maintain his balance.

Nate needs help, but he has trouble voicing that to other characters. During his adventure, he meets a collection of quirky personalities in the world who all offer to help him out. A composed outdoorsman seeks to provide Nate a guide, but he uncomfortably rejects in the game’s funniest instant. When he drops into an trapping cavity and is offered a ladder, he tries to play it off like he doesn’t need the help and genuinely desires to be trapped in the pit. During the narrative, you experience no shortage of annoying scenarios where Nate complicates his own situation because he’s too insecure to accept any assistance.

The Defining Decision

This culminates in Baby Steps’s one true moment of selection. As Nate approaches the conclusion his adventure, he finds that he must reach the summit of a snowy mountain. The de facto groundskeeper of the world (who Nate has desperately tried to duck up to this point) appears to tell him that there are two ways up. If he’s up for a challenge, he can choose a very lengthy and risky path dubbed The Obstacle. It is the most daunting obstacle Baby Steps game provides; taking it seems inadvisable to anyone.

But there’s a other possibility: He can simply ascend a massive winding stairs instead and reach the summit in a few minutes. The sole condition? He’ll have to call the groundskeeper “Master” from now on if he opts for the effortless way.

A Difficult Selection

I am very serious when I say that this is an difficult selection in this situation. It’s the totality of Nate's self-consciousness about himself reaching a climax in a single ridiculous instant. An element of Nate's story is revolves around the reality that he’s self-conscious of his physical appearance and manhood. Whenever he sees that dashing hiker, it’s a hard reminder of what he fails to be. Undertaking The Obstacle could be a instance where he can show that he’s as capable as his imagined opponent, but that road is bound to be laden with more humiliating failures. Does it merit struggling just to make a statement?

The stairs, on the flip side, provide Nate with another significant opportunity to choose whether to take assistance or not. The user doesn't get to decide in about they decline guidance, but they can decide to give Nate a break and choose the staircase. It ought to be an straightforward selection, but Baby Steps is remarkably shrewd about making you feel paranoid whenever you see a simple solution. The world is filled with design traps that turn a safe route into a obstacle on a dime. Could the steps yet another trap? Might Nate arrive all the way to the top just to be disappointed by a final joke? And more concerning, is he prepared to be humiliated another time by being forced to call some weirdo Lord?

No Perfect Choice

The brilliance of that instant is that there’s no perfect selection. Either one brings about a genuine moment of protagonist evolution and emotional release for Nate. If you decide to take on The Challenge, it’s an philosophical victory. Nate at last receives a chance to prove that he’s as able as others, voluntarily accepting a difficult route rather than enduring one that he has no option except to pursue. It’s hard, and possibly risky, but it’s the bit of empowerment that he requires.

But there’s no shame in the staircase as well. To choose that path is to finally allow Nate to receive assistance. And when he accomplishes that, he realizes that there’s no hidden trick in store for him. The staircase is not a trick. They extend for some distance, but they’re simple to climb and he won't slip all the way down if he falls. It’s a easy journey after extended challenges. Partway through, he even has a conversation with the outdoorsman who has, of course, selected The Obstacle. He attempts to act casual, but you can tell that he’s worn out, subtly ruing the needless difficulty. By the time Nate gets to the top and has to fulfill his obligation, calling the character Lord, the arrangement scarcely looks so bad. Who has concern for humiliation by this strange individual?

Personal Reflection

When I played, I chose the staircase. Some part of my reasoning just {wanted to call