In light of the release, and fallout, of Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, I thought I would write about this. I’ve been planning it for a while but never got around to it, being my Wordpress account started acting up around the time I originally wanted to put it to publication.

For those readers who are unaware, a morality play is a form of Medieval drama which persisted through the Renaissance. The short of it, is that morality plays involved characters which represented the audience engaged in a series of dialogues with, or were monologued to by, other characters with were personifications of virtue, sin, or more abstract concepts such as wealth or beauty. By the end of the play, the central character learns a moral lesson (hence the name “morality play”) and vows to live a virtuous life, or dies in a state of grace. Of the various morality plays, Everyman is the best-known and most-performed in the world today.

So, in case you’ve missed the point thus far, morality plays were Church propaganda. “But Eacaraxe!” I can hear you saying, “what the shit does this have to do with games like Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear?”.

Siege of Dragonspear, and other games with heavily social justice-oriented themes, like for example Mass Effect 3, have a distinct phenomenon in common: the player engages in dialogues with “minority” characters, who explain their origins and identity generally apropos of nothing, how their identity has affected their ability to live their lives in peace or relative equity, and with the clear intent for the player to empathize with their suffering and learn a moral lesson about identity and systems of oppression. These characters are generally at best tritagonists, often stand alone in their identity or identity expression (that is to say, they are tokens), and their identity generally has little to no relevance to the game, its overarching plot, or general themes.

Since Siege of Dragonspear has just been released to no small amount of controversy, it should be clear I am referring to the transgendered character Mizhena, and when I mention Mass Effect 3 I refer chiefly to Steve Cortez. Cortez is a key example, since the character may die near the end of the game depending on the player’s willingness to help the character resolve his grief over losing his husband to the Reapers’ attack (in a way that actually has zero relevance to actually having resolved this minor plot thread); in a game series which generally places great weight on the death of companions and secondary characters, Cortez’s death is treated…questionably, to say the least:

Cortez’s death has zero narrative or thematic impact on the remainder of the game, and he is given no further mention (unless romanced, or the player has the Extended Cut DLC installed, in which case his name will be on the Normandy’s memorial wall in the epilogue).

Returning to the original point, given these characters’ often limited prominence, coupled with their identities’ irrelevance to the main plot, we can conclude these conversations were simply added to the game to teach the player a moral lesson. Not unlike that of characters in morality plays.

Make of that comparison what you will.