10 Video Games That Punish You For Taking Shortcuts

Taking a shortcut in a video game is supposed to be a rewarding experience, making the player feel smart for discovering an easy and efficient way to skip through a part of the game.

However, sometimes the developers don’t like it when people try to skip through their creation (after all, they worked really hard on it), and instead of praising you for being clever and curious, they decide to punish you for looking for an easy way out of a situation.

Whether it’s a physical shortcut filled with monsters and dangers or a questline that’s designed to make you miserable every time you try to speed things up, the shortcuts you come across in some video games aren’t designed for easy access. The developers clearly don’t want you to use them, and if you do, they won’t hesitate to punish you for it.

Winners don’t take shortcuts, or so the following titles would have you believe. Although they might feature some way of skipping through a section or two, taking these shortcuts will almost certainly take more of your time and a little bit of your sanity.

The chaos system exists in Dishonored in order to give your actions more meaning. Depending on how violently or quietly you're playing, the world around you adjusts accordingly, and it can even determine which ending you're going to get.

In the game's DLC, the Knife of Dunwall, Chaos serves another purpose, however. It punishes you for taking the easy way out of situations.

In the DLC, you play as Daud, the assassin who murdered the empress, so killing your enemies proves way easier than pacifying them. However, because Knife of Dunwall's story wants Daud to show a change of heart, the game doesn't want you to go straight for the kill.

If you choose the shortcut approach and kill your targets instead of taking the time to dispose of them peacefully, in the final act, Daud is punished by his assassins, who turn on him for his actions.

Worst of all, even when you manage to defeat your old companions, Daud gets assassinated by Corvo Attano in the epilogue cutscene anyway, as he no longer has anyone to watch his back.

Well, you totally had it coming.