What choice should I make at the end of Baldur's Gate 3's second act?

The article isn't about the specific choice of BG3 act2, but rather the notion of how our internet-enabled society makes finding the consequences for each branch of the decisions readily and easily available. The author, like most of us, I think, chose to search for the outcome of each option, rather than just living in the moment and making a choice with the information available from the game.

Here is a relevant, non-spoilery article excerpt:

So I Googled it, and I got told the facts. X happens if you say yes, Y happens if you say no. And then I knew that stuff, and made my decision based on which one sounded like “a better game.”

What a colossally stupid thing to have done. Because here’s the question I should have asked, and the question I wish those search results had suggested to me:

What decision would your character make?

I’ve played live D&D. I know what it is to get into character, and make decisions that I’d personally never choose. Hell, ever since that last article, I’ve been making decisions much more on what I think my character, Ranger Tiefling Amaranth, would do. And yet, in this situation that felt so much more momentous, I abandoned all that and just tried to game it. Gah.

Personally, I can understand why people would want to spoil themselves over major or even minor plot points. Baldur's Gate 3 is a long game. An average playthrough of the story is going to take about 60-80 hours. If playing BG3 was your full time job, that's a full two weeks of your life. If you've only got 2-3 hours per night, then you'll be spending over a month of your life completing the game. That's an epic time commitment, and I don't judge people who want to avoid closing off satisfactory avenues because of a binary choice that perhaps isn't as intuitive as the game's writers had hoped it might be.

In my personal opinion, and I realize I'm a bit of a neckbeard here given that I work for a narrative RPG company, the main story of BG3 isn't all that great. BG3 shines as a D&D 5e sandbox and really shines due to the interaction of its companions and other NPCs with the player. The combat is pretty great and the various ways to solve quest problems via interactions with both the environments and mechanics is very appealing. The main illithid story could be replaced with any other plot motivation and the game would be as amazing as it is now. So, spoiling yourself on the story is not a bad thing.

I find that I rarely look up "what are the consequences of X decision" when playing shorter indie games. When a full playthrough of a story is 5-10 hours, then I don't mind just barging through and exploring it on my own. But when a full playthrough is a huge chunk of my year, then I'm going to want to avoid accidentally handicapping myself by making an otherwise random choice.

I'm guilty of googling, but only after I make a choice that I'm questioning. I typically ride my choices out having made the best choice for my character as I role play them. If they're good, they do good things, if they're bad, they do bad things, no question. Bg3 has done a decent job at making each choice compelling though and there was one choice in particular that had me second guessing myself due to the magnitude of the consequences and how it affected my love interest. I googled the alternate to the choice and, lucky for me, if somehow would have been worse. So I stuck with the choice I made.

I guess games like this stimulate anxiety in some people and to avoid it they Google everything ahead of time. In tears of the kingdom, which is loosely a stressful survival, resource management, game, a friend of mine cheated day 1 by exploiting a duplication glitch until he was rich and has the best gear. To me that would have taken the entire joy of the game away because all the intended tension would be gone. He had a blast though.

Skyrim, a friend of mine spent the first three days exploiting a blacksmith flaw that allowed him to get end game armor at level 1 by using cheap daggers over and over. He was decked out before he hit his first dungeon.

Why?

It's kinda like watching scary movies with the lights on. Or bowling with the guide rails.

As a result, I’ve decided I’m going to blame someone other than myself. I’m going to blame All Other Games, which have spent the last three decades training me to make choices this way.

I'm glad I read this article before ever playing the game, because I'm absolutely the kind of person who would have googled that question.

I think it really started with Mass Effect for me. The only choice I make in games these days is "what ending do I want?" If you want the best ending, it's impossible to just rely on the choices that you make. Oops, you picked up Legion too early, someone dies later. You either replay the series 100 times, or you look up the list of decisions your character has to make to get the ending you want.

I understand that this is a me problem. The whole point is that your choices have consequences, Shepard doesn't know what the result will be, and neither should you. But at the same time, if the consequences of your decision are just X dies or X lives, and you don't know that picking up Legion too early causes X to die, that's boring.

I want New Vegas style consequences. A branching storyline where I can clearly see what branch I'm on, and make informed decisions instead of being punished for doing something that seemed totally innocuous at the time.

Knowing now that Baldur's Gate apparently doesn't play into that nonsense makes me want it even more. Can't wait for it to come out on Xbox.

I've definitely been guilty of looking up outcomes to major decisions like this before, but especially in the last few years I try to play games as blind as possible. The choices are supposed to feel impactful because of how you see the results of your choice ripple out. And especially for BG3, I've been enjoying that experience in a way I haven't in a while.

Spoilers for end of act 2

My character actually tried to resist the transformation but could not beat his check. Used 4 inspiration but dice said no. Instead of reloading I decided to embrace it and just roll with it. I've even changed his class and personality in dialogue to reflect more partial illithid appropriate inclinations. It's been a really fun dynamic story shift for my character, and it's all because I failed a roll. Looking forward to seeing how everything plays out. Still working my way through Act 3.