10 Video Games That Punish You For Taking Shortcuts

The most important choice you'll ever make in Fallout: New Vegas is not who you'll support in the war for Hoover Dam or what kind of moral path your character will follow. It's actually the road you will use to leave the starting location of Goodsprings.

There are two distinct paths in Goodsprings: the long way around the entire Mojave area and a direct shortcut to New Vegas. When you start the game, you might feel tempted to pick the latter to get to the main part of the game faster, but the thing is, judging the two roads by their distance from your destination is a grave mistake.

Your choice of exit is literally a matter of life or death, as the shortcut to New Vegas is filled with swarms of poisonous Cazadors and angry Deathclaws. It might seem like the fastest path forward, but in reality, you'll have to reload the game so many times that walking around half of the map feels genuinely more efficient.

The developers clearly wanted you to take the scenic route to get acquainted with their world better. Those who try to skip the attractions pay for their mistake with their sanity.