10 Video Games That Contradict Their Own Message

Haunting Ground is one of the most masterfully uncomfortable experiences in gaming history, right up there with Pathologic. But while Pathologic made its player uncomfortable by BRUTALLY punishing them at pretty much every turn for the sake of driving up the tension or just because it feels like it, Haunting Ground makes the player as uncomfortable as possible by being VERY specific about what the price of failure is.

Haunting Ground's main protagonist, Fiona, is trapped in a castle with a family of monstrous men and outright monsters. All of whom have one goal: rape her and impregnate her with a demon child. Haunting Ground, at its core, is a story about sexual exploitation, mental illness, unwanted pregnancy, and sexually related trauma.

So it sure would be a shame if completing the game got you skimpy alternate outfits for Fiona for the players to ogle at.

We're not counting the default outfit she wears because that was given to her by the guys who see her only as an object, and there aren't any other clothes for her to wear besides, so it makes fittingly uncomfortable sense. But the alternate outfits have no excuse. Oh, and on harder difficulties, getting by without the skimpy cowgirl outfit - which gives Fiona a GUN - is damn near impossible. So the game is all but browbeating you into using these outfits, destroying all the carefully constructed themes and sense of terror that first playthrough worked so hard to build.