10 Video Games That Trick You Into Playing The Villain

Now, this will be undeniably divisive, because above all else, Naughty Dog's The Last of Us is a game steeped in muddy moral ambiguity, where it's rarely possible to decide which of the surviving humans is truly good or bad. Everyone's just trying to survive, after all.

But The Last of Us ends with protagonist Joel making a brutal decision, to slaughter a hospital full of Fireflies in order to save his surrogate daughter Ellie from being experimented on, thereby preventing her immune brain from being used to possibly create a cure for the infection.

Joel selfishly decides that he'd rather keep Ellie around than potentially save the human race from annihilation.

It's an understandable decision, given the loss of his daughter and the lack of guarantees that Ellie's brain would even successfully lead to a cure. But from a strictly utilitarian, emotionally detached perspective, it was absolutely the wrong choice to make on the balance of probabilities.

Some may argue that this makes Joel less of a villain and more of a human being, but sometimes the hero is the person who makes the tough logical choice, and the villain is the one who eschews the big picture in favour of their feelings.

Even Joel's voice actor Troy Baker agrees that Joel would more likely consider himself a villain than a hero. There you have it.