9 Video Games That Reward Charity

9. Keep Shadowheart In Your Party - Baldur's Gate 3

Many RPGs, including this one, give you seemingly endless NPCs and their medium-sized problems for which you appear to be the only person in the world equipped to solve them.

This isn’t so terrible though as you always get some experience for your trouble, but as I mentioned, we’re not here for basic experience, we’re here for a genuine reward (and being charitable... as long as the charity leads to something we want). Often when you hand in a quest in Baldur’s Gate 3 and refuse payment, the NPC in question says, “Oh that’s so generous, here, let me pay you with a priceless family heirloom,” but the reward we’re paying off is even better.

You’ll come across multiple characters who are after something called the Nightsong. It turns out Nightsong is not a thing but a person so handing her over is a bit unkind on your part.

Now, one particular character called Balthazar wants you to kidnap her and give her to him. You can do this and save yourself a big fight but doing the nice thing and not giving the woman over to a bloody-faced mage and his undead horde is the better call. This isn’t just because it makes you less crap, it actually is the only way to avoid Shadowheart leaving your party altogether. This is because Shadow’s storyline is tightly woven with Nightsong and whether or not she chooses to kill Nightsong. Once the encounter concludes, Shadowheart will permanently leave the party with some stinging parting words about how you robbed her of her moment.

So yeah, better to be nice at this juncture. And plenty of others, in fact, as you can certainly piss your companions off enough to make them leave at multiple points before or after.