Have you ever had player's remorse?

[ElectroJosh]

So many, but the first that really stood out is from King's Quest (the first one). I decided to see if you could use the dagger on the goat. It turns out you can and by "use" the game assumes you mean "kill". I was seven years old and quite shocked that I had killed the loyal goat you need to get past the troll.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Skyrim. The mad preacher in Whiterun, Heimskr who constantly goes on about Talos and yadda yadda. He is so annoying, I made up my mind at one point that he had to go. Being a DB assassin it was even in character. So I try a variety of ways to "retire" him while he's in the middle of his sermons, including changing to werewolf so I can change back and avoid the bounty, same with Vampire Lord (had to kill so many guards and half the town), timing a backstab till everyone was out of sight, leaving poison in his inventory and so on. Each time however, I got caught.

Eventually one method worked. It took a few attempts but eventually I managed to find a remote spot in the town, with an eye line to the preacher (he was a speck on the screen, even zoomned in) from where I could launch an arrow that found its mark and left no witnesses.

I had one of those Golum/Smeagol moments (from The Two Towers) where he has to do a double take, unbelieving that it worked. I tear through the town to see the fruits of my frustrating labours. An old man in monk robes lay silent in death, a single arrow protruding from his torso. A nearby guard stood over the corpse and commented "Such a shame", or something to that effect. The guilt was crushing...I reloaded and fast travelled out of there.

PS. Heimskr went missing inexplicably about 10 (real time) days later. Townsfolk speculate that a shadow entered and left his modest home late in the night, and suggest that he may have drank a ludicrously powerful poison without scent, taste or trace (equal parts Deathbell and Nightshade) and sadly never woke up.

 

[redisforever]

I was genuinely saddened when on my SC:Chaos Theory play-through I accidently killed a guard in a mission (He stumbled into the room as I was hacking something and was stood next to the alarm) Wrong time, wrong place Mr. Guard

After I kind of wondered if I could have used some equipment such as the flash to give me those extra couple of seconds to disable him instead as I had decided that I wasn't going to kill anyone that wasn't genuinely "evil". - Mainly as if you listen to the dialog in the game, most of the AI seem to hate working for their bosses and some don't even know about the corruption of the organisation.

I did consider restarting my save point, but I decided that it should be a lesson to my player for not checking the other damn door to start with.


Yes, I genuinely am that sad when playing games

Well, Sam Fisher himself seems to hate killing people who aren't evil. I tend to knock people out far more than killing them. I only killed a few people, and those are the ones I thought deserved it. Guh, that sentence made me sound evil...

 

[Seanchaidh]

I once had remorse for winning a game of Starcraft II. I barely defended a Terran one base play (a marine/marauder attack with concussive shell) on Antiga Shipyard off my own one gate expand into three warp gates (and when I say barely, I mean I would have lost the game if this guy had decided to go up the ramp and kill the pylons supporting my warp gates instead of trying to destroy the nexus in my natural), then the follow-up attack that came awhile later with a few Collector's Edition Thors and some marines seemed just so cute that I felt horrible about killing it. :/

It felt like some kid was playing with toys, and I had just waltzed into the room and threw them against the wall until they broke... figuratively. My feelings made no sense at all, really.

 

[Scrythe]

-snip-

I had a very similar experience when I encountered the thin bloods hanging out at the beach. There was a really aloof guy who asks who the "head vampire" is, under the assumption that killing the head vampire would revert all vampires under his line back to human form.

The first play through, I jokingly told him that the only cure for vampirism was ingesting unicorn blood. Got a good chuckled out of his reaction.

The next play through, I informed him that his salvation can only be attained by slaying Sebastian LaCroix, to which he proceeded to pull out a stake and run screaming off into the night. At first I laughed, until the game informed me that I had just taken a humanity point hit. I realized that I just sent the guy off to get brutally slaughtered, possibly by LaCroix's terrifying bodyguard.

I also had another one of those moments on my first play through when I picked the "fuck everyone" ending. I genuinely felt bad when my character flipped off Nines. He was just trying to help, and I blew him off.

Troika made a very immersible experience with that game, and it's a shame that it turned out to be their downfall. I'd love to see a modern restyling of that series, like what they did with Deus Ex.

 

[AsurasEyes]

In Mass Effect 2, starting a romance with Jack and then ending it at the climax.

Her entire life, everyone has been viciously using her. For her powers, her body, or both. Her childhood was nothing but torture, and she has been tormented to the point where she considers being gang raped by more then six guys to be not a big deal and death to be nothing but a "fucking on-off switch".

Romancing her involves showing enough respect and genuine caring that she lets down her defenses, refusing sex when she uses it to distance herself from you, convincing her that people are worth believing in and working with, convincing her that love might be worth a shot and there may be more to life then drugs sex and violence.

Until you have reached the point where she has worked through her issues enough that she is ready to admit she has feelings for you, that she can feel genuine love for anyone.

At that point, you can straight up tell her she isn't worth all this crap and to fuck off.

Man, the look in her eyes. A thousand dying puppies cannot compare. It makes things like Megaton just seem like a child smashing a lego set.

Frankly, if I had the patience for her, I'd do just that and then abandon her at the end so I could laugh and masturbate to her emotional pain. I hate Jack with a burning passion, and when she died while we were coming in, it was the highlight of the game for me. Which is sad, frankly.

OT: Megaton getting asploded. I immediately threw myself over the edge of the balcony after killing Rourke and Tenpenny, then ended the game and started a new one because I was so distraught.

 

[tangoprime]

After the pivotal point in Spec Ops: The Line everything I did was laced with regret and remorse.

And yet I kept on playing.

Pretty much this. As soon as I saw this thread, I only thought of this game. Spec Ops: The Line could basically be titled "Player Remorse: The Video Game" with how that thing makes you feel.

 

[Reincarnatedwolfgod]

i was playing an evil character in fallout new Vegas and got a guy to commit suicide. he did it right in front of me after the conversion. i felt terrible for doing that.
i got over the feeling pretty fast and continued playing. nothing else i did during that play thought gave me any remorse.

for example i destroyed the brotherhood of steel that got no effect out of me. but to be fair i did not talked to veronica after doing that. if i did i just might have regretted it.
then again the brotherhood of steel are assholes who put a explosive collar me.

 

[tangoprime]

When my first recruit died in ACB. Dear God, that was depressing.

Recquiescat in pace, Vitellozzo Vitelli...

Oh man... had totally forgotten about that. After the little bits where you recruit them and then help them grow into a full fledged assassin, the couples times I'd lose one were kind of crushing, and genuinely made me feel pretty bad.

 

[Smeggs]

-Snip-

I'll double for Jack's Romance. I romanced her before I found out you could romance Tali. After the game ended I was just sort of screwing around and was like, "MANWHORE SHEPARD GONNA LAY ERRYBODY UP IN THIS SHIP!" This only a mere two hours or so after her tearful acceptance of Shepard's affection for her.

I felt like the biggest heel ever.

Also, got Thane killed on my first suicide mission.
"Hmm, they said that the tube is hot and humid, and we need someone whose good with tech to open that door...THANE likes hot, humid environments and is a master assassin, I'm sur he must be good at hacking stuff then, he's the perfect option!"
"Temperature is...somewhat pleasant."
"AWW YEAH, I CHOSE RIGHT!"
*Thane shot in face*

I'm sure there are plenty more I'll remember and then be all, "OH RIGHT, THAT TIME..."

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

Miranda (my honey-pie from ME2) was asking if there was still a future for us. I, being the emotionally confused Shepard as Ashley has now come back, said that I wasn't sure. I didn't realize that what Shepard was going to say was "Fuck that sugar-tits, I'm outtie. Keep the kid." (probably not exactly what he said...). When Miranda turned around, stating that it was OK but you could see the tears in her eyes...

Yup, another reload.

Yeah I had to go back and edit saves with gibbed because I felt bad about that. I expected her to have a larger role in the last game so I had chosen her as my romance option. When it turned out she had practically no role I was going to ditch her but it just felt awful. So praise Allah for save editors being able to retcon my romance option.

In Mass Effect 3, I thought I was just being nice to Jack (don't remember romancing her in ME2) and ended up alienating Liara. Her reaction made me feel like a cheating bastard.

Yeah Jack is pretty much impossible to say no to. You can literally say you're not interested in her romantically multiple times. I don't want to have sex with you, we will never be together. But she will just go ahead and continue with the romance dialogue anyways. At some point in the conversations you literally have to just stop going and talking to her instead of finishing all the dialogue chances. It's pretty obvious that Bioware just messed up the code, but I prefer to think that Jack is just pathologically obsessed with Shepard in ME2 and can't get it through her thick skull that he isn't interested.

 

[afroebob]

Spec Ops: The Line. There are a LOT of choices that I made that I shouldn't have on reflection, but in the heat of the moment they seemed like the right call. Even the one point in the game where you DON'T have a choice and you do something bad on accident (if you don't remember it rhymes with phite wosphorus) makes you feel like shit. I mean you have no clue and you still feel guilty about it.

 

[370999]

A couple

In Tales of Symphonia

Spoiler

Doing the Kratos route, meaning that Zelos dies. You spend so much with your group, you get a feel for the relations between them. Zelos is a perveryt but he's your pervert, he can be really fuuny and smart. And it ends with him betraying the party and getting cut down. And he knows that is going to happen, his actions being suicidal due to his self-loathing.

Fallout: New Vegas

Spoiler

Selling Arcade into slavery. That is just awful. And destroying the doll of that girl in the Legion camp. It's just pointless dickishness. You don't get any material reward (you do get Legion rep) so it's just pure maloevolence

 

[Frezzato]

The only regret I ever had that was part of the story, as opposed to an upgrade choice.

Mass Effect 2:

you aren't the only one who couldn't sleep the night after... hell, the only reason i picked that option was because I was with my friend, playing her character, and that character was a ponce.

Actually, on reflection, quite a few of the decisions in mass effect trilogy were (and are) unthinkable for me. were it not for that friend forcing me to be mean (often times pushing the buttons instead of me), i wouldn't have experienced half the game!

god, that sounds so sad, now that i say that out loud.

It's funny how you mention the unthinkable. I remember talking to a friend at work about KOTOR years ago, and he was like, "Yeah man, force lightning is awesome!"

Me: Lightning? Like force lightning? [imitating emperor's lisp, hands outstretched] Yeeeeoouuuung Jediiiiii lightning?

I played KOTOR twice, never occurred to me to go dark side, not once. I still got time, backwards compatible and all.

 

[JayDig]

Fallout 3 spoilers.

Even worse is when you do what you think is the right thing, and end up regretting it.

In Fallout 3 I convinced the safe and rich residents of Tenpenny Tower to allow a group of ghouls to immigrate from their nearby squalid subway station instead of killing them.

Sure, ghouls are nasty radiation victims slowing going mad over their extended lifetimes, but they're currently still reasoning humans, so I took the peaceful route and brought them to live in the safety of the tower.

I thought I had struck a blow against post-apocalyptic poverty and bigotry, but when I returned to the tower a few days later, the ghouls had killed everyone, tossed the cadavers in the basement and were now nonchalantly going about their business in their new home.

So.. I killed them all in regret feuled rage.

 

[kyogen]

I felt bad about massacring gnomes in Risen. I wiped them out entirely. Then, in Risen 2, I ended up with one from another island in my party. Awkward.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Having NPC characters you genuinely like calling you stupid and a disgusting person in game always feels horrible to me. I do feel gamer's remorse sometimes. Then I get a really cool gun and shoot the person making me feel bad, quickloading repeatedly until I'm better.

...

I'm not psychotic... <.<

 

[General Vagueness]

There's this RPG for the SNES, Illusion of Gaia, that has collectible stuff it calls red jewels-- as you get more you can trade them for items, or to level up abilities, or get new ones, and if you get all of them there's a secret end-game area you can get to. Most of them are hidden and some you get from different people, and it's all benign... except that for a certain one, you have to explore a town, find an escaped slave, and tell a slave trader (in a back alley no less) where he's hiding. If you go there afterwards, you see that the slave and the guy that was hiding him are gone, and the house is a mess, like there was a struggle. So, in short, yes.

 

[Norrdicus]

Player's remorse? Witcher series, most definitely

"But don't you need to choose a moment?"

No, I don't. If you have played Witcher 1, or especially 2, you understand. The game makes you feel horrible and indirectly responsible for multiple massacres, but you'll love it