"Heroics" that left a bad taste in your mouth

[wintercoat]

Yeah, that made sense. It would be like discovering the Shroud of Turin was real, finding out that it healed anyone who touched it, then wiping your bottom with it.

But what if you had hemorrhoids? What if the person BEFORE you had hemorrhoids? Would you still let them heal you with it?

Capatcha: wisdom teeth

Would you use the shroud on your wisdom teeth after someone used it on their hemorrhoids?

"You have hemorrhoids? Get out of line. We're busy with the inoperable tumors, patients with severe sepsis, folks with severe genetic diseases, and untreatable infections. We can take care of hemorrhoids fairly easily."

Jokes aside, that had to be one of Bioware's least sensible "moral" choices. It seemed to be included to have some sort of binary system...one where every major plot point could be solved one of two ways...hmm.

For a Dwarf Commoner who has a very bleak view of the world, finds kinship in Sten and Morrigan, and finds the idea of acquiring immense power for what he views as a trivial task, desecrating the ashes was very much a sensible move. He didn't give two shits about Andraste's ashes. It's not evil, it's just business. The ashes were more use to him desecrated than pure.

 

[stupenderifous]

can we pick movies too?

Spoiler: django unchained

the hero, django shoots a woman because she wanted to make him suffer by letting him work in a stone quarry instead of be killed instantly.

the reason she wanted this was because he and his partner could not resist shooting her brother and other people dead even when they already reached their goal and could had gotten away.
her death was pointless.

Yeah, but Django was not all that heroic anyway. He made some far more questionable decisions elsewhere and was more of an anti-hero. Besides, she seemed pretty complacent, if not supportive, of all of the stuff that was happening at Candieland so I get why Django would be pissed.

 

[Ix Rebound]

I had a weird moment playing Battlefield 3 multiplayer once. I've spent countless of hours on a lot of FPSs so I should be quite desentized. However I was playing this match and manage to flank about 4 enemy guys, I thought "awesome, they haven't even noticed me", and started firing my G3 at the poor bastards standing 3 meters away. They fell quickly, got all four with my 20 magazine. I should feel awesome for breaking their after my team started rushing forward, but I actually felt bad. The poor bastards didn't have a chance I slaughtered them, didn't even give them a chance to surrender.

believe me dude, don't feel bad, they would've cut you down and gang tea-bagged you without a second thought

 

[Ix Rebound]

The Exile in KOTOR 2 and his/her relationship with Kreia, you start the game out having had the Force removed from you then getting it back, Kreia is more or less a tutor for you regardless of your morality, if she likes you she teaches you all kinds of neat Force stuff, but she only likes you if you shit on the less fortunate, basically all the things that that make her like you more are evil things, which is even worse because she's supposed to be this Grey Area super Jedi, she was once a Jedi Master and a Sith Lord, but she wants you to do all kinds of shitty dark side things.

i guess once you go black, you can never really go back

 

[LarenzoAOG]

The Exile in KOTOR 2 and his/her relationship with Kreia, you start the game out having had the Force removed from you then getting it back, Kreia is more or less a tutor for you regardless of your morality, if she likes you she teaches you all kinds of neat Force stuff, but she only likes you if you shit on the less fortunate, basically all the things that that make her like you more are evil things, which is even worse because she's supposed to be this Grey Area super Jedi, she was once a Jedi Master and a Sith Lord, but she wants you to do all kinds of shitty dark side things.

i guess once you go black, you can never really go back

I respect you.

 

[Abomination]

Yeah, that made sense. It would be like discovering the Shroud of Turin was real, finding out that it healed anyone who touched it, then wiping your bottom with it.

But what if you had hemorrhoids? What if the person BEFORE you had hemorrhoids? Would you still let them heal you with it?

Capatcha: wisdom teeth

Would you use the shroud on your wisdom teeth after someone used it on their hemorrhoids?

"You have hemorrhoids? Get out of line. We're busy with the inoperable tumors, patients with severe sepsis, folks with severe genetic diseases, and untreatable infections. We can take care of hemorrhoids fairly easily."

Jokes aside, that had to be one of Bioware's least sensible "moral" choices. It seemed to be included to have some sort of binary system...one where every major plot point could be solved one of two ways...hmm.

Their moral choices were always pretty terribly slanted though. If you were to be 'evil' you were evil for the sake of it, not for any substansial gain.

Deals with demons were the only real 'evil' options and then they weren't universally evil unless you identify demons as having to always be evil because they're demons... which is subjective in itself. Sacrificing someone for personal power is evil but you hardly ever got those options. You just got "Be a hero" and "Be a dick".

 

[Yoshemo]

Killing Saint Astraea in Demon's Souls.
Killing Sif (especially after seeing the cutscene if you play the dlc first), Ceaseless Discharge, Gwyndolin, various hollow npcs (especially Solaire and Laurentius) and Quelaag from Dark Souls.

Sadly Sif is honorbound to protect Artorias' grave from any and all intruders, including his good friend. Saddest fight ever ;-;
Killing Quelaag is self defense. Killing her sister though? That makes you a monster

 

[Yoshemo]

The Exile in KOTOR 2 and his/her relationship with Kreia, you start the game out having had the Force removed from you then getting it back, Kreia is more or less a tutor for you regardless of your morality, if she likes you she teaches you all kinds of neat Force stuff, but she only likes you if you shit on the less fortunate, basically all the things that that make her like you more are evil things, which is even worse because she's supposed to be this Grey Area super Jedi, she was once a Jedi Master and a Sith Lord, but she wants you to do all kinds of shitty dark side things.

There were plenty of times I killed an innocent or did some other sadistic thing and Kreia scolded me for it. Shes fine with cruelty to your own advantage but senseless cruelty is wrong

 

[MrFarmerJoe9]

Some of you seem to be missing the point with Dishonored. The game never says the pacifist ending is the "good" ending. Merely a non-lethal way to deal with your targets.
The game tells you right from the start that the less people you kill, the less chaotic the world will become, so naturally if you murder everyone you possibly can, people will panic and Dunwall will become more chaotic.
However if these people just go missing mysteriously then people wont panic, they'll worry, but they wont start rioting or anything.
The pacifist ending is portrayed as "good" because you did what was best for Dunwall and it's people, not because of the way you handled your revenge

 

[Weealzabob]

Doing the Clan Wars mission in Borderlands 2, as things were escalating between the two clans who seemingly had a truce going on before you got involved, I was ready to run over Ellie and call it quits.

I'm sure that two clans had done some messed up shit off screen, but still you're doing some messed up shit on screen.

 

[Smallells]

Contaminating the Sacred Ashes in Dragon Age: Origins. Let me set the stage; imagine you found the mortal remains of someone who was half Mohammed, half Joan d'Arc. Imagine you had seen significant magical proof you really were in a sacred place. Imagine those ashes were a great quest to heal a leader, similar to the Grail quest of Arthurian myth. You can go ahead and despoil them. Really. Because that makes sense. Even if you didn't believe in the Maker before, you'd just seen a great deal that would make it likely for you to accept the story as true. And even if you still doubted it, it's the dominant faith in the world. And you're just going to contaminate the remains because a crazy cult out of Innsmouth Haven tells you to.

Yeah, that made sense. It would be like discovering the Shroud of Turin was real, finding out that it healed anyone who touched it, then wiping your bottom with it.

It's been a while so forgive me if I get the names wrong!

Was it Ograhm? That dwarf beserker you could get? He noted that it was could've been due to that material (lyrium?) that caused the effects that the ashes entailed because there was such a massive concentration of it. So there's one reason why you'd might not believe the story.
Also? Role-Playing Elements. Imagine your role-playing a dwarf, or the dragon age equivalent for an athiest. If you came across indisputable proof that the Maker exists, wouldn't you be tempted to destroy that proof so that no-one else would believe in it?
Not to say it isn't a terrible thing to do, but I think there are justifiable reasons for the evil route.

Not to mention that I use only the finest in Spiritual Relics as toiletries! Shroud of Turin as toilet roll, ashes of the holy cross as shaving foam, you know how it is...

 

[LarenzoAOG]

The Exile in KOTOR 2 and his/her relationship with Kreia, you start the game out having had the Force removed from you then getting it back, Kreia is more or less a tutor for you regardless of your morality, if she likes you she teaches you all kinds of neat Force stuff, but she only likes you if you shit on the less fortunate, basically all the things that that make her like you more are evil things, which is even worse because she's supposed to be this Grey Area super Jedi, she was once a Jedi Master and a Sith Lord, but she wants you to do all kinds of shitty dark side things.

There were plenty of times I killed an innocent or did some other sadistic thing and Kreia scolded me for it. Shes fine with cruelty to your own advantage but senseless cruelty is wrong

Yeah but there isn't anything to do light side wise that gives you favor with her. At least not that I know, but I play KOTOR almost exclusively light side.

 

[Unia]

Alpha Protocol has you do a lot of shady things but what stuck with me was framing a guy as a convicted pedophile to get ahead. This wasn't even optional far as I could tell. Sure the man was working for The Evil PMC but for all we know he was some ignorant lackey.

That part is optional. If I remember correctly, you have to hack the hotel security computer to post his identity on the watch list. I never felt too bad about that since I figured the police would sooner or later figure out the database was hacked.

EDIT: I checked youtube and that is optional. Framing the Halbech employee gets rid of 2 of the 4 men who are guarding the elevator that you have to take, making it much easier to sneak by. However, it is still possible to take out all 4 guards without raising an alarm.

Good to know, this time I'll propably dump subtlety and just go in gun-ho. Especially after the game spawned a guard right in front of me, immediately raising alarm ):.

 

[Unia]

I tend to fly close air support in planetside 2 and I feel bad when I kill someone who is battle rank 1... well I feel bad when I kill a br 1 no matter what since its usually after they drop pod in and that is how the game starts, it just drop pods you into a big battle with no instruction, so killing a br 1 who just dropped in means your probably killing someone who just started playing and I don't like doing that.

Hehe yeah, started playing yesterday and my first life was literally get dropped in, wonder whether I got control yet, get shot. Some form of tutorial would have been nice.

captcha: I love deadlines. You're the only one Capctha.

 

[ExileNZ]

Sometimes the protagonist of a game does something you find distasteful or morally suspect and then just passes it off with a oneliner we're apparently supposed to laugh at.

In Uncharted 2 there's a bit where Nathan goes off with a buddy to get something from a Turkish museum. Drake objects to using guns, to which I thought "Oh, he doesn't want to shoot guards for doing their job. Maybe this guy's alright after all." Nope. Few minutes later he throws a guard to his death, and his buddy even jokes about it.

Drake doesn't kill the guard, if you look down after you pull him off the roof, you can quite clearly see him swimming away. I know this to be true, I checked it out the last time I played through the game.

I wouldn't say it left too sour a taste in my mouth (it's even an important part of his character arc), but I just finished Ys Origin with Hugo and man is he a prick.

That said, it does make an interesting (and often amusing) contrast to Yunica, who's so pure-hearted and naive that at least one boss has to spell out "I'm a bad guy and I'm going to kill you!" (paraphrased, but not far off).

He's smart, arrogant and has a comeback for everything. But the only really hateable stuff stuff he does is supposed to be, so it's not really soured heroism either.
Just Toal to go...

 

[A.A.K]

Hmm. I'm really not sure what to say.
Judging by some of the entries my tastes are skewed. I agreed with most of the shit the Saints Row Prot. does. I hated Jason Brody because he's a self-entitled cowardly douchebag who has to man up and....take cocaine.....
fuck that guy...and all of his friends.

 

[Sixcess]

Going around Panau in Just Cause 2, blowing up water towers and electric transformers in the civilian towns and cities. I guess it's to stir up resentment for the regime, but to be honest..

Just Cause 2 is a weird case in that, if it was played straight, it could easily be taken as a very politicised commentary/satire on US imperialism and morally dubious 'regime change.'

For me, the most distasteful 'heroics' I've ever experienced were in World of Warcraft. One of the early alliance zones revolves around the resurgence of the Defias Brotherhood. Now the Defias are supposed to be bad guys - they're the enemy group of the first dungeon in the game, the Deadmines - but throughout the zone you don't actually see the Defias doing anything wrong. The zone is a catacylsm-ravaged dustbowl and the Stormwind authorities are doing absolutely nothing to alleviate the suffering, while Defias agents are doing evil things like... um.... distributing food to refugees.

I have rarely if ever felt more that I was on the wrong side, and by the time the storyline forced me to go and warn the King about the return of the Brotherhood I wanted to join them, or at least kick Varian's backside and tell him that he wouldn't have this problem if he'd only get off his lazy warmongering arse and do something to stop his own damn people from starving to death.

 

[Zeles]

For me, the most distasteful 'heroics' I've ever experienced were in World of Warcraft. One of the early alliance zones revolves around the resurgence of the Defias Brotherhood. Now the Defias are supposed to be bad guys - they're the enemy group of the first dungeon in the game, the Deadmines - but throughout the zone you don't actually see the Defias doing anything wrong. The zone is a catacylsm-ravaged dustbowl and the Stormwind authorities are doing absolutely nothing to alleviate the suffering, while Defias agents are doing evil things like... um.... distributing food to refugees.

Yeah, there are quite a few morally questionable acts that you can do as a protagonist in WoW. I remember I was playing a blood elf character, and the Taurens asked me to go kill a bunch of centaur. The thing is though, that the centaurs are clearly sentient. They have their own culture, they clearly are smart enough to use tools and build tents and such, and they all have families. It didn't feel right killing them.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

Actually, yes, if we were to go by the Ancient Greek usage of the term Hero.

A hero, in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion. A demigod is the son or daughter from one immortal and one mortal parent, an example would be Heracles, son of the mortal queen Alcmene and the god Zeus.

The protagonist of Saints Row had a parent who was an immortal deity? I must have missed the part where that's explained.