So, I’ve been spending a lot of time back in Baldur’s Gate 3 lately. You know how it is, you finish it, but then it pulls you back in. This time around, something really got stuck in my head, this whole idea of the worth of a single life in that world.
First Encounters
It started hitting me pretty early on, I think. Right there in the Druid Grove. You’ve got all these tieflings, just regular folks mostly, caught up in some big mess. And you’re faced with choices. Do you help them? Do you side with the druids? Do you just look out for yourself? Each choice felt like it put a price tag on someone’s head, you know? Helping them felt right, but man, it wasn’t easy, and it put my own neck on the line. It made me stop and think – okay, how much trouble am I willing to go through for these strangers?
Then there were the goblins. Easy to just see them as monsters, right? Just obstacles to cut down. And mostly, yeah, that’s what I did. But sometimes, you’d get these little moments. A goblin you could talk to, one that maybe wasn’t totally lost to the Absolute. And you gotta decide – kill ’em anyway? Try to spare them? Does their life have any value, even if they’re on the “wrong” side?
Companions and Tough Calls
It gets even messier with your own crew. Take Gale. Dude’s got a magical nuke in his chest, needs magical items just to keep from blowing up. His life is literally ticking away. You gotta decide how many valuable things you’re willing to feed him. Is his one life worth all those potentially useful items? For me, yeah, he’s my buddy, so I helped him out. But the game really makes you weigh that cost.
Or Astarion. Dealing with his whole vampire spawn thing. He’s done bad stuff. Needs blood. Makes you confront the idea that sometimes survival for one person comes at the direct cost of another. Do you help him control it? Let him indulge? Push him away? His past actions, his future potential – it all gets tangled up in figuring out his worth, and yours for associating with him.
And it wasn’t just the big moments. It was the little things too:
- Deciding whether to save someone from a burning building when it’s risky.
- Choosing sides in petty squabbles where people could die.
- Even just looting bodies – these were people, right? Now they’re just containers for gold and potions. Kinda grim when you think about it.
The Constant Question
Throughout the whole game, I kept running into characters and situations that hammer this home. You meet people who see mortals as playthings, like Raphael, or just pawns, like the Absolute’s chosen. They put a very low price on life. Then you have others, maybe folks just trying to get by, who value their own lives and their families above all else.
Honestly, I didn’t stick to one single rule. Sometimes I went out of my way, took big risks for people I barely knew. Other times, especially when my main crew was in danger, I had to make harder calls. Let someone else fall so my core group could survive. It felt bad sometimes. Like, really bad.
My Takeaway
So, after going through all that, what’s the answer? What’s a single mortal life worth in BG3? I don’t think the game gives you a neat number. That’s the point, I guess. Its worth isn’t fixed. It seems to depend on who’s asking, what the circumstances are, and what choices you make. It’s about connections, actions, consequences. It felt like the game was constantly testing my own values. Sometimes I felt heroic, sometimes like a complete pragmatist, sometimes just trying to survive. It’s messy, just like real life, I suppose. But man, it sure makes you think.
