Avernum 5 - The Morality of Cheating

Rachel Presser asks herself the question about the morality of cheating when she felt it was the only thing left to do when she went through Avernum 5.

And it made me think. In a majority of video game worlds, you truly get ahead based on merit. You can grind your stats until you’re strong enough to get past a certain area or fight that boss battle, as well as do enough looting and questing to afford the supplies and training you need for these battles. That’s honestly how a lot of Spiderweb games are: you don’t need to cheat but it’s a lot harder if you don’t do it. In previous Avernum games, it was difficult to beat them but not totally undoable.

This time? This shit was straight up impossible. How was I supposed to both find the right route as well as clobber all these Darkside Loyalists plus all their warped wolves then eventually their wizard and worse yet, dervish, when I had but one potion left?!

There was no way I was going to get past this part of the game, let alone beat it, unless I typed in cheat commands to replenish my health and spell points and get 1337 powerups before battles, plus send me back to Blackchasm Outpost if I really got in a jam I where I couldn’t leave the workshop the way I came (barely doable in the sentinel workshop based on the layout, but literally impossible by design to do in the Anama Lands once the Darkside Loyalists invade.)

I could finally stop cheating when I made it to the Azure Gallery and was able to find potions plus go back and forth to town to heal between battles, but warily kept my fingers on Shift-D in case I needed it again just because I wanted to move forward with the story and not spend hours fighting when I have two businesses and a social life to get back to in the real world. While I did comment to myself numerous times that there were no way I could’ve won these battles without cheating, it didn’t diminish my enjoyment of Avernum 5.

But it begs the question: is it wrong to cheat when life gets hard? Or flat out impossible?