10 Video Games That Punish You For Showing Mercy
These games gave everybody major trust issues.
Morality systems sure are popular in video games, whereby a player's "good" or "bad" actions will have consequences that reverberate throughout the rest of the story.
Generally speaking, most video games have relatively simplistic morality choices: good behaviour gets rewarded, and being naughty will get you punished with a "bad" ending.
But not all games are created equal, and sometimes developers have found ways to cruelly toy with the notion that good deeds reap rewards.
In fact, many of these games seemed to actively laugh at the very idea, that you should expect a positive, fortuitous result from granting mercy to an NPC.
Instead, these acts of grace, pity, and forgiveness all blew up in the player's face. A feat of generosity resulted in an unforeseen explosion of violence, volunteering your time to help another almost got you killed, and your well-intended acts basically just made the world around you a worse place.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say, and while you can't really blame people for trying to do the right thing, these games provided a twisted reminder that you can't always control the wider outcome...
10. Buy A Prostitute's Freedom, She Gets Murdered A Few Days Later - Red Dead Redemption
This one really stings, and it won't be the only time we see a Rockstar game on this list.
In Red Dead Redemption's Stranger side mission "Eva in Peril," you'll see a pimp by the name of Mario savagely beating the prostitute he "owns," Eva.
While you can simply kill Mario to end Eva's suffering - though she'll run away from you in terror - there is a seemingly more peaceful, diplomatic route. If you walk up to Mario, he'll offer you the opportunity to buy Eva's freedom for $200.
If you accept, that'll seemingly be the end of the matter - Mario gets his money, and a grateful Eva thanks you as she prepares to get a fresh start as a free woman.
You'll be prompted to check back in on Eva a few days later, however, and find that Mario has killed and buried her in a shallow grave.
Upon confronting Mario, he'll be unrepentant about her death, leading to a draw in which the player must kill him - as naturally proves quite satisfying.
Still, the cruel dramatic irony here is significant - in attempting to save two lives by paying Mario off, two people ended up dead. It's far from the only Stranger story in the game that dares to troll players like this, but it's probably the most heart-rending.