The Game Baby Steps Features One of the Most Impactful Decisions I Have Ever Experienced in Video Games

I've faced some challenging choices in interactive entertainment. Several of my selections in Life is Strange continue to trouble me. Ghost of Tsushima's ending section made me put my controller down for a good 10 minutes while I weighed my options. I am accountable for countless Krogan deaths in Mass Effect that I regret deeply. Not a single one of those situations compare to what could be the hardest choice I've faced in a video game — and it has to do with a enormous set of steps.

Baby Steps, the latest game from the developers of Ape Out game, is hardly a decision-focused experience. Certainly not in the conventional way. You simply have to walk around a sprawling open world as the main character Nate, a adult in a onesie who can barely stand on his shaky limbs. It seems like an exercise in frustration, but Baby Steps game’s power lies in its deceptively impactful story that will catch you off guard when you least anticipate it. There’s no moment that showcases that quality like one major choice that I keep reflecting on.

Spoiler Warning

A bit of context is necessary here. Baby Steps begins as Nate is magically whisked away from his parents’ basement and into a fantasy world. He quickly discovers that moving around in it is a struggle, as a lifetime spent as a inactive individual have deteriorated his physical condition. The slapstick elements of it all comes from gamers directing Nate one step at a time, trying to maintain his balance.

Nate needs help, but he has trouble voicing that to others. Throughout his hero’s journey, he meets a cast of eccentric characters in the world who everyone tries to help him out. A self-assured trekker seeks to provide Nate a navigation aid, but he clumsily declines in the game’s funniest instant. When he drops into an unavoidable hole and is offered a ladder, he tries to play it off like he can manage alone and actually wants to be stuck in the hole. As the plot unfolds, you encounter plenty of annoying scenarios where Nate creates additional difficulties because he’s too insecure to receive help.

The Defining Decision

Everything builds up in Baby Steps game’s key situation of selection. As Nate gets close to finishing his journey, he finds that he must ascend of a frosty elevation. The default guardian of the world (who Nate has consistently evaded up to this point) comes to tell him that there are two ways up. If he’s up for a challenge, he can opt for a particularly extended and hazardous route named The Challenge. It is the most daunting obstacle Baby Steps game includes; taking it seems inadvisable to any person.

But there’s a other possibility: He can just walk up a gigantic spiral staircase instead and get to the top in a few minutes. The sole condition? He’ll have to call the groundskeeper “Lord” from now on if he takes the easy route.

A Painful Choice

I am absolutely sincere when I say that this is an agonizing choice in the game's narrative. It’s the totality of Nate's self-consciousness about himself coming to a head in a particularly bizarre situation. An element of Nate's story is revolves around the reality that he’s unconfident of his body and his masculinity. Whenever he sees that impressive outdoorsman, it’s a difficult memory of all he lacks. Attempting The Challenge could be a time where he can show that he’s as competent as his imagined opponent, but that road is bound to be filled with more humiliating failures. Is it worth struggling just to demonstrate something?

The staircase, on the contrary, offer Nate an additional crucial instance to either accept or reject help. The player has no choice in if they turn away a map, but they can opt to allow Nate some relief and opt for the steps. It ought to be an straightforward selection, but Baby Steps is exceptionally cunning about creating doubt whenever you see a simple solution. The game world contains design traps that turn a safe route into a setback suddenly. Is the staircase one more trick? Will Nate get at the peak just to be disappointed by some last-second gag? And even worse, is he willing to be emasculated once again by being forced to call an odd character as Lord?

No Right or Wrong

The brilliance of that instant is that there’s no right or wrong answer. Both options leads to a genuine moment of protagonist evolution and therapeutic resolution for Nate. If you opt to attempt The Challenge, it’s an personal triumph. Nate at last receives a moment to show that he’s as competent as everyone else, voluntarily accepting a tough path rather than enduring one that he has no choice but to follow. It’s hard, and maybe ill-advised, but it’s the bit of empowerment that he craves.

But there’s no embarrassment in the staircase either. To opt for that way is to finally allow Nate to take support. And when he does so, he discovers that there’s no real catch waiting for him. The steps are not a joke. They extend for some distance, but they’re straightforward to ascend and he does not fall completely down if he falls. It’s a straightforward ascent after extended challenges. Partway through, he even has a chat with the hiker who has, of course, selected The Manbreaker. He attempts to act casual, but you can see that he’s fatigued, subtly ruing the needless difficulty. By the time Nate gets to the top and has to fulfill his obligation, calling the character Lord, the deal hardly seems so nasty. Who has time to be embarrassed by this strange individual?

My Choice

When I played, I selected the steps. A portion of my thinking just {wanted to call