10 Video Games That FORCED You To Be Cruel

The only way forward is leaving morality behind.

By Jules Gill /

It's fair to say that when it comes to video games, as a medium, they're based around escapism. You can leave behind the doldrums of your day to day and instead engage in unadulterated fighting and fantasy.

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They're also platforms that allow you to let go of the moral anchor and set sail on the high seas of being a sour souled bastard, killing innocents and making kids cry just for the fun of it, made all the better when some video games actively reward being an absolute rotter.

What's not so fun, however, is when video games FORCE you to be a true and blue bad boy, stripping the player of their agency or just dictating events through the needs of the plot that come across as cruel and in many cases unnecessary.

These moments create a bit of a brick wall for some players, as suddenly they find themselves acting like a total dick without even wanting to!

The games on this list dove especially hard into this gimmick, forcing you to commit actions that even Dick Dastardly would shy away from, so let's take a look at video games that FORCED you to be cruel.

10. Shaming An Uruk-Hai - Middle Earth: Shadow Of War

The beasts and baddies of the Lord Of The Rings universe may indeed be a horrible lot, threatening to either kill you or eat you at any given moment (or indeed both when the meat's back on the menu), however, it still feels pretty horrible each and every time you're given the option to "shame" one of these rampaging rotters in the fantastic Shadow Of War title.

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"Shaming" in this sense sees our pair of heroes dominate the mind of one of their defeated Uruk-Hai enemies in such a manner that it quite literally obliterates their brain and lowers their rank by five, or by ten with some naughty nifty upgrades.

However, when the other options available to you involve turning the former enemy into an ally, it becomes very questionable as to why you'd even perform such a horrible action, especially seeing as it leaves the victim in an almost catatonic or deranged state.

Hell, if you do it enough you can quite literally ZOMBIFY an enemy. So why commit such a cruel act?

Well mainly because in the first instance, the game FORCES you to use this power. Unable to proceed by any other means you have to literally break the will of an Uruk captain known as Bruz, and the game even notes this as being a fate worse than death. Horrifying and unavoidably cruel.

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