Hello again!

Imagine there was a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story with visuals, music, voice actors, locations to explore, people to meet, and important choices to make.

That is the experience of playing a modern role-playing game (RPG). Since it came out just over a week ago, I have been playing one of the best of its kind: Baldur's Gate 3.

Playing it has made me rethink something I believed for a long time about the nature of storytelling. You see, I used to believe this firmly: Games cannot truly be stories.

But maybe they can ...

Sometimes.

Usually, I hate the storytelling parts of video games. They often rely far too much on annoying little movies that you have to sit through when all you want to do is PLAY. Imagine sitting down to play poker with your friends, except the dealer keeps stopping everything to show everyone a 5 minute video about the mysterious past of the players. No fun.

Another problem is that too often, the choices you get to make in games are false choices, or superficial ones.

Baldur's Gate 3 has some movies and cut scenes, but for some reason, in this game I actually care enough to watch them. A big part of it is that they're not really movies - most of them are chances for you to make a choice.

When a game pretends it's giving you choices, but it's not really, it doesn't feel like you matter as a player. When a game relies almost purely on mini-movies to tell its story, it is not engaging at all. But, the problem is, it is very, very difficult to make a game that gives you real choices while still telling a proper story. Think about it - instead of writing a few scenes and putting them in order, you need to write four or five different outcomes for every single scene! And they all need to make sense together!

Do you know the secret I believe they used to get Baldur's Gate 3 to work to well?

They picked a theme and stuck to it.

That theme is: What is the true cost of power?

I don't want to give away too much in case you'd rather play it for yourself, but it works like this:

Almost every major choice you get to make in the game involves some offer of power. Almost all of them are very tempting 'deals with the devil.' You can make yourself powerful, at others' expense. You can let innocents die to save yourself. You can become as powerful as you like - but, possibly, lose your humanity.

This works very well because power as a theme has a moral and philosophical side to it, so it works like a traditional story in that way. At the same time, the power you are offered makes a big difference in the actual battles you play through in the game. It's more fun when you're more powerful! But then, this is balanced by the fact that you'll hurt others in your quest for power. The game makes you ask: Is it worth it?

What is the true cost of power?

So those are the reasons I am starting to rethink my stance that games are games, and stories are stories. Role-playing games of all kinds are, perhaps, a new or different kind of story than the myths and legends of the past. The people who made the game set the stage and wrote the script, but the player is simultaneously the actor playing out the fiction and the audience enjoying it.

It is certainly something worth thinking about.

Elixir of Power Book 2 Progress

Video games and other distractions notwithstanding, I've still made it a little further in the draft, which now stands at 45% complete.

The first half is always an uphill climb. Let's hope I get into the second half soon and coast nicely back down—without going off a cliff!

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Thanks for reading

Until next time!