10 Video Games That Punish You For Making The Ethical Choice

9. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

There are a lot of choices you can make in The Witcher 3 which seem like the right thing to do and then end up being the super wrong thing to do. This happens over and over again but surely the most brutal of these situations concerns the ultimate fate of your ward, Ciri. You spend a huge portion of the game looking for her and then when you do the game is running a set of checks in the background to see how you treat her which actually has life or death consequences.

The kicker here is that in order to keep Ciri alive you actually need to let her go off and do her own thing and not be overprotective by keeping her under Geralt’s wing. Which is pretty hard because you will feel very protective of her.

If you try to solve all her problems for her, protect her from The Emperor by encouraging her not to go, or treating her too much like a child by insisting you’ll accompany her wherever she goes, she actually won’t feel capable during the final battle. These are little decisions you’d be making the whole game, which might feel like the right thing to do because she’s been through so much and you can finally help, but they will actually lead to her death.

And there’s nothing quite like a 150 hour game ending in the death of a beloved character as a punishment for being too nice.