Preemptive Retaliation

So… I haven’t written anything in a while. Since November finished I have let myself fall into a cushioned haze of films and videogames. I have literally spent days languishing on the couch, setting up the next film before the first one closed is curtains. Admittedly this was because I was knocked for six by a cold and spent three days in a feverish haze, but that’s hardly an excuse.

I’ve been playing a good few games too, one of which being The Banner Saga. Mike has been putting me onto this game for months now, ever since I ran into him after he just finished it. He had a vacant look in his eyes, and his usual charisma faltered as he stammered out his disarrayed thoughts. The only comments he could muster were ones urging me to play it and compare it with him. So I did.

The game is turn-based strategy which is fun enough in its own right but doesn’t really give a full idea of a game. In fact, the battle sections seem added on in order to qualify it as a “game” in the traditional sense. The main aspect of the game is experiencing the story; fleeing a merciless army over snowy landscapes, deciding whether to get involved in a bloody civil war, or trusting some needy refugees. These were the parts of the game I was most interested in with the battles being a playful distraction.

The problem though, or maybe the main draw of it, was how stressful each decision was. The game was good at convincing me that I had real people to care for, real survivors that were depending on me. Every decision I made would change their attitude to me as a leader, would affect how quickly we reached safety and whether we had enough food to last the journey. All of this was counter-balanced by the needs of the story, and my drive to “do the right thing”. A group of people come up to us, asking to join the caravan. Despite the grumbling of the people following me, I let them in. Two days later they’re missing along with a cart full of supplies. Two soldiers and four villagers died of starvation because of that.

It’s heavy stuff.

So I spent the entire game battling with myself, over my ingrained want to be a nice guy and the overbearing worry that I’m dooming the people I do have to help strangers. At times I allowed myself to be wooed by the rational pleads of people in need only to have them stab me in the back. Other times I would decline their help and leave them stranded on the road, and I would spend the next few days travelling, knowing that I had enough food to take them on and save them.

The choices also had a more personal aspect to them, too. Certain decisions could lead to characters that were part of my main group – characters that I had levelled up and grown close to in the journey – were unceremoniously killed off in gut-wrenching ways. All the decisions carried a great weight to them, that made me weigh up my decision. It wasn’t like Mass Effect, where outcomes are based arbitrarily on resource management and how much time you spend mashing A to speak to someone; these were moral decisions with consequences that I couldn’t fathom, and that was what was stressful. A good stressful. An invested stressful.

In comparison, I’m currently playing The Witcher 3 which, apart from being an incredible game in its own right, has its own moral decisions. They’re more linear than The Banner Saga, and instead of affecting the story they do more to build on the world and show what a shitty place it is to live in. One of my first quests was a Dwarf whose smithy had been set alight in a racist arson. I set out to find the culprit, who was a dirty racist but was drunk at the time and sorrowful for his actions. That wasn’t enough for my sense of justice though, and I marched him to the Dwarf, ready to see this man get his comeuppance.

The Dwarf demanded the man’s life, and sent him off to be hung from the nearest tree. This was a bit much in my opinion, but he was a racist! To hell with him. Well, it turns out that even though the smithy had been set alight, the Dwarf was going to demolish it and get a whole new set of tools anyway, all paid for by the local army. He had lost nothing in the process, and sent a man to his death out of pure spite. I had just helped him murder a man. A racist man, sure, but really one that deserved to die?

The game is full of little choices like this. Quests where you are trying to be a good guy, but end up letting a murderer walk free, or having to kill two aggressive, unarmed men. Again, all the decisions are weighted with negative consequences that beat me into submission, until I realised that the best way to get through this is just to accept myself. Accept that I have a moral code and people are going to be hurt by that code. Just like The Banner Saga reminded me that I’m a welcoming person, and helpful, but everyone has their limits.

Goddamn. I love videogames.