10 Most Intense Moral Choices In Video Game History

3. Drink The Poison? (Heavy Rain)

Heavy Rain was a game built from the ground up to challenge the player with thought-provoking choices. With a wealth of branching pathways, this psychological thriller had a penchant for subverting player decisions at every step, creating a thoroughly unpredictable and intense gaming atmosphere.

And the entire philosophy of Heavy Rain culminates in a single decision the player is forced to make in the The Rat, a mission which has one of the playable characters, Ethan, desperately hunting down clues to uncover the whereabouts of his son, all the while being tormented by a manipulating antagonist.

Lured into a room with a vial on the table, Ethan is forced to choose between drinking the contents of the bottle, a slow-acting poison which will have fatal effects after 60 minutes, in order to gain the last detail of his son's whereabouts, or refuse in the hopes of saving his own life.

If the player opts to drink the poison they're given the final piece of information as to the child's location as well as a timer, counting down to when Ethan's poison will take effect. However, once the 60 minutes is up, it's revealed that the poison was nothing but a ruse to test if the player valued someone else's life over their own.