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

I've encountered some challenging choices in gaming. Certain choices I made in Life is Strange series remain on my mind. Ghost of Tsushima's ending section made me set down my controller for around ten minutes while I thought through my choices. I am accountable for countless Krogan demises in Mass Effect that I would love to reverse. Not one of those instances measure up to what now might be the hardest choice I've ever made in gaming — and it has to do with a enormous set of steps.

Baby Steps, the newest release from the makers of Ape Out, is hardly a selection-based adventure. At least not in the conventional way. You only need to navigate a expansive environment as the main character Nate, a adult in a onesie who can barely stand on his unsteady feet. It appears to be one big ragebait joke, but Baby Steps’s power lies in its unexpectedly meaningful plot that will sneak up on you when you’re least expecting it. There’s no situation that showcases that quality like one major choice that I keep reflecting on.

Spoiler Warning

Some scene setting is required here. Baby Steps game starts when Nate is magically whisked away from his parents’ basement and into a magical realm. He soon realizes that walking through it is a challenge, as years spent as a sedentary person have atrophied his limbs. The physical comedy of it all arises from players controlling Nate one step at a time, trying to prevent him from falling over.

Nate requires assistance, but he has problems articulating that to other characters. As he progresses, he meets a group of unusual individuals in the world who each propose to help him out. A composed outdoorsman tries to give Nate a guide, but he uncomfortably rejects in the game’s best laugh-out-loud moment. When he drops into an unavoidable hole and is offered a ladder, he tries to play it off like he doesn’t need the help and truly prefers to be stuck in the hole. Throughout the story, you experience no shortage of frustrating vignettes where Nate complicates his own situation because he’s too self-conscious to accept any assistance.

The Ultimate Choice

This culminates in Baby Steps’s one true moment of decision. As Nate nears the end his quest, he realizes that he must ascend of a frosty elevation. The de facto groundskeeper of the world (who Nate has desperately tried to duck up to this point) appears to let him know that there are two ways up. If he’s prepared for difficulty, he can choose a very lengthy and dangerous hiking trail dubbed The Manbreaker. It is the most formidable barrier Baby Steps game includes; taking it seems inadvisable to any person.

But there’s a second option: He can simply ascend a gigantic spiral staircase as an alternative and reach the summit in just moments. The sole condition? He’ll have to address the guardian “Lord” from now on if he takes the easy route.

A Difficult Selection

I am very serious when I say that this is an difficult selection in context. It’s the totality of Nate's self-consciousness about himself culminating in a particularly bizarre situation. An element of Nate's story is focused on the reality that he’s self-conscious of his body and his masculinity. Whenever he sees that handsome trekker, it’s a difficult memory of all he lacks. Attempting The Challenge could be a moment where he can prove that he’s as competent as his imagined opponent, but that road is bound to be paved with more embarrassing pratfalls. Is it worth struggling just to demonstrate something?

The stairs, on the contrary, offer Nate an additional crucial instance to choose whether to take assistance or not. The player has no choice in about they decline guidance, but they can opt to provide Nate with respite and take the stairs. It should be an straightforward selection, but Baby Steps is devilishly clever about making you feel paranoid each time you find a gift horse. The environment includes design traps that turn a safe route into a obstacle suddenly. Is the staircase yet another trap? Will Nate get at the peak just to be let down by a final joke? And even worse, is he ready to be diminished another time by being compelled to refer to an odd character as Lord?

No Right or Wrong

The excellence of that situation is that there’s no perfect selection. Either one results in a genuine moment of protagonist evolution and therapeutic resolution for Nate. If you decide to take on The Manbreaker, it’s an personal triumph. Nate eventually obtains a opportunity to demonstrate that he’s as competent as everyone else, voluntarily accepting a difficult route rather than suffering through one that he has no option except to pursue. It’s challenging, and maybe ill-advised, but it’s the moment of strength that he craves.

But there’s no disgrace in the stairs as well. To choose that path is to eventually enable Nate to accept help. And when he does, he realizes that there’s no hidden trick in store for him. The staircase is not a trick. They continue for a while, but they’re easy to walk up and he doesn’t slide all the way down if he stumbles. It’s a simple climb after extended challenges. Partway through, he even has a conversation with the trekker who has, unsurprisingly, chosen to take The Challenge. He tries to play it cool, but you can discern that he’s exhausted, subtly ruing the pointless struggle. By the time Nate reaches the summit and has to fulfill his obligation, calling the character Lord, the arrangement scarcely looks so unpleasant. Who has energy for shame by this odd character?

Personal Reflection

In my playthrough, I opted for the stairs. Some part of my reasoning just {wanted to call