10 Video Games That Punish You For Making The Ethical Choice

Friend crying out for help? RUN AWAY.

Not too long ago you might have spotted a list on WhatCulture hosted by the lovely Jules that focused on video games that punished you for being a bad dude. Well, sometimes video games punish you for being a good guy, too. They sure do keep us guessing.

In this list we’re tucking into the video games that let you choose what seemed to be a no-brainer good moral choice only to pull the rug out from under you and punish you for it.

Whether the game offered you a choice and it turned out the unethical option was less damaging, or you were pushed into a corner where the ethical choice was clear but would cause you a crazy amount of trauma, there was nothing easy about these dilemmas.

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Note: Spoilers for A Plague Tale: Requiem in final entry.

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10. Vampyr

Vampyr game
Dontnod Entertainment

Don’t Nod released action role-playing game Vampyr in 2018 where, and this should come as no surprise, you play as a vampire.

Of course, being a vampire, you’re met with an ethical conundrum right off the bat, and Vampyr lets you choose if you want to be a bad guy or a good guy. You don’t have to kill innocents but not doing so leaves you pretty much incapable of levelling up.

If you aren’t consuming human blood and killing civilians you’ll miss out on vital experience points, vampiric powers, and both active and passive skills, making combat much more difficult. It’s also a hell of a lot of fun to become an uber-powerful vampire via the means of being unethical, so that’s another punishment in and of itself.

On the upside, you’ll have an easier time maintaining Reid’s cover as a doctor if you aren’t running around town doing murders, but on the downside... pretty much everything else.

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Jess has been a journalist and content creator in the games industry for over 15 years and has been WhatCulture's resident Australian import and sorry cop since 2020, upping the quotient of swearing and apologising in WhatCulture Gaming's annual blooper videos considerably. She previously worked at GameSpot for 10 years, most notably hosting GameSpot News in addition to E3 live shows, and PAX panels. She regularly livestreams a variety of games on her 'jessmcdonell' YouTube and Twitch channels and hosts the 'Do It On The Day' podcast. She has won awards for her news and feature work in gaming as well as an accolade for her comedic writing (likely an admin error). She can be found on X at @jessmcdonell and Instagram at @jessicamcdonell sharing her current videogame fixations, industry insights, and videos of her cat, Karma.