The Game Baby Steps Features Among the Most Meaningful Decisions I've Ever Faced in Video Games

I've encountered some difficult decisions in interactive entertainment. Certain choices I made in Life is Strange series still haunt me. Ghost of Tsushima's final sequence prompted me to put my controller down for around ten minutes while I considered my choices. I am responsible for numerous Krogan fatalities in the Mass Effect series that I wish I could undo. Not one of those instances compare to what could be the most difficult decision I’ve had to make in a video game — and it concerns a massive stairway.

Baby Steps, the newest release from the developers of Ape Out, is hardly a selection-based adventure. At least not in typical gaming terms. You must walk around a vast game world as the protagonist Nate, a onesie-wearing manchild who can struggle to remain on his shaky limbs. It seems like a setup for annoyance, but Baby Steps game’s power lies in its deceptively impactful story that will sneak up on you when you’re least expecting it. There’s no situation that exemplifies that strength like one major choice that I keep reflecting on.

Spoiler Warning

Some scene setting is required here. Baby Steps starts when Nate is magically whisked away from his parents’ basement and into a fantasy world. He immediately finds that walking through it is a difficulty, as a long time spent as a sedentary person have deteriorated his physical condition. The physical comedy of it all comes from users guiding Nate one step at a time, trying to maintain his balance.

Nate requires assistance, but he has difficulty expressing that to others. As he progresses, he meets a cast of eccentric characters in the world who each propose to give him a hand. A composed outdoorsman attempts to offer Nate a map, but he clumsily declines in the game’s most hilarious scene. When he falls into an unavoidable hole and is offered a ladder, he strives to appear nonchalant like he requires no assistance and actually wants to be trapped in the pit. During the narrative, you experience no shortage of annoying scenarios where Nate makes life harder for himself because he’s too self-conscious to receive help.

The Pivotal Moment

Everything builds up in Baby Steps’s one true moment of selection. As Nate gets close to finishing his quest, he finds that he must ascend of a frosty elevation. The unofficial caretaker of the world (who Nate has consistently evaded up to this point) shows up to tell him that there are two ways up. If he’s ready for a test, he can choose a very lengthy and risky path called The Challenge. It is the most formidable barrier Baby Steps game has to offer; taking it seems inadvisable to any human.

But there’s a second option: He can simply ascend a enormous coiled steps in its place and arrive at the peak in just moments. The sole condition? He’ll have to call the groundskeeper “Master” from now on if he takes the easy route.

A Difficult Selection

I am very serious when I say that this is an painful decision in context. It’s the totality of Nate's self-consciousness about himself reaching a climax in a single ridiculous instant. Part of Nate’s journey is centered around the truth that he’s insecure of his body and his masculinity. Whenever he sees that dashing hiker, it’s a painful recollection of everything he’s not. Taking on The Manbreaker could be a moment where he can show that he’s as able as his unilateral competitor, but that route is sure to be paved with more humiliating failures. Does it merit suffering just to make a statement?

The stairs, on the contrary, offer Nate an additional crucial instance to decide between receiving aid or refusing it. The gamer cannot choose in about they reject navigation help, but they can choose to provide Nate with respite and take the stairs. It should be an easy choice, but Baby Steps game is devilishly clever about making you feel paranoid whenever you encounter an easy option. The environment includes design traps that turn a safe route into a setback suddenly. Is the staircase an additional deception? Could Nate reach to the very summit just to be fooled by some last-second gag? And more troubling, is he willing to be emasculated another time by being made to address an odd character as Lord?

No Correct Answer

The excellence of that situation is that there’s no right or wrong answer. Both options brings about a real situation of character development and emotional release for Nate. If you decide to take on The Manbreaker, it’s an existential win. Nate eventually obtains a opportunity to demonstrate that he’s as able as everyone else, consciously choosing a challenging way rather than struggling through one that he has no choice but to follow. It’s hard, and maybe ill-advised, but it’s the moment of strength that he needs.

But there’s no shame in the staircase too. To select that route is to finally allow Nate to accept help. And when he does so, he finds that there’s no secret drawback waiting for him. The stairs aren’t a prank. They continue for a while, but they’re simple to climb and he doesn’t slide completely down if he falls. It’s a straightforward ascent after extended challenges. Midway through, he even has a chat with the trekker who has, of course, chosen to take The Manbreaker. He attempts to act casual, but you can see that he’s exhausted, subtly ruing the needless difficulty. By the time Nate arrives at the peak and has to fulfill his obligation, calling the character Lord, the arrangement scarcely looks so bad. Who has time to be embarrassed by this odd character?

My Choice

In my playthrough, I chose the staircase. Part of me just {wanted to call