10 Times Video Games Made You Feel Bad (For No Good Reason)
4. Not Feeding Your Fish - Mass Effect 2
The point of most of your actions in Mass Effect is supposed to be that they have consequences - that's all well and good. However, generally, these actions have consequences because they either relate to your crew, or to the pic space battles the series revolve around.
This is why the decision to guilt trip you for not continuously feeding your fish in the game - by having them die if you don't for long enough.
On one hand, it's a very simple way to show you that the things you do are important.
On the other hand, it also comes with the very strong suggestion that, despite the fact that Mass Effect 2 is set in an age where space travel is the norm, somehow the technology for automated fish feeding isn't available for public use.
As a teaching moment as to how easy it is to lose characters, having the fish die is kind of a smart idea. However, it's also the weirdest guilt trip of all time, firstly because they're fish, and secondly because you likely forgot to feed them because you were slightly busy trying to save countless lives.