When Has a Game Made You Feel Absolutely Terrible? *POSSIBLE SPOILERS*

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

[quote "ProfMcStevie]How does any game make you feel bad if it gave you no choice, I just disconnect and do what I gotta do. Evil out of choice with no pressure is when I feel bad, even then I have to be aware that my actions have real consequences in this game, else I feel tricked and manipulated.[/quote]

Look up at my post. Both of those are optional choices that YOU make. The White Phosphorous part everyone is talking about doesn't sound like its optional in the slightest, but for me the parts of a game that make me feel the need to shower are when you make a choice that results in someone's death or torture, particularly a character you like... and there were other options available to you.

 

[hybridial]

Oh easy answer to this question.

After finishing Bioshock Infinite and realising "I paid £30 for THAT shit?"

Oh, right, you mean moments in games where the protagonist is forced to do things that make the player feel terrible?

I'd go with Evil Cole ending in inFamous 2 as well. It was a superb bit of storytelling, both endings in the game were actually good, but the evil one in particular forces you to kill someone that I imagine most players wouldn't want to kill.

 

[Frezzato]

Only one game has made me feel awful, and I mean awful as in physically ill: Aliens vs Predator (PC) (1999). Two hours of crawling SUPER fast along walls and ceilings, all while losing track of which end was up, made me feel nauseous.

 

[Zaeseled]

When I played InFamous 1, the big bad forces you to choose either your girlfriend or a container full of doctors. For the first time in the game I went for the more selfish option and not the common good and saved my girlfriend. BOY THAT KICKED ME IN THE TEETH.

 

[ninja666]

After finishing Bioshock Infinite and realising "I paid £30 for THAT shit?"

I feel you, bro/sis. Fortunately for me, I bought my copy of Bioshock Infinite on a sale for 8 euro, so it didn't hurt that much. Still, one of the worst games I've played.

OT: Dark Souls. It makes you feel like total shit when you read some lore and realize most of the bosses you kill are just there, living their lives, often suffering for one reason or another, and you just waltz in and take their lives away. Notable examples: Quelaag, Sif, Ceaseless Discharge.

 

[Evonisia]

I've thought about playing Spec Ops, but I know I'll just spend the entire game thinking, come on, get to the white phosphorus bit. I know it's coming ... any second now.
But it just won't have the same impact since I know it's coming.

While Spec Ops: The Line is really good, a common theme amongst people who've heard about why it's good will go out of their way to point out foibles because they aren't the target audience. I wouldn't be surprised if you deliberately tried to avoid x, y, or z only to have the game not allow you to do this, when the target audience (players of Modern Military Shooters) would do it as intended and get the intended effect. So many times I've heard "but it doesn't give you a choice" to which I say "because the game's not about choice, and it's not about you! As horrendous as that sounds".

Spec Ops made me feel like shit for all of the post big-bad scene, even though I didn't feel bad during that scene and I didn't know what happened (other than a bad thing will happen). The peripeteia was so deliciously cruel to me.

OT:

The king's crown, however, goes to Silent Hill 2. Oh sure the whole game is a bleak, miserable, morose affair, but I was absorbed by the story of Angela Orosco the most. She's the first character outside of James we meet, and she's the last to get a conclusion before James. That scene just filled me entirely with despair. It's a beautiful ending to a beautiful segment of the story (seeing as the actions and fates of the supporting characters all contribute to James' deteriorating state), and I can't thank the writers of the game enough.

 

[Sanderpower]

When I was playing This War Of Mine, i'd always felt really guilty when I got my scavengers killed. Especially Palve and Katia (who are my two favorite).

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Weirdly, Brothers: A Tale of two sons got to me at various stages. I wasnt expecting much before playing, so each poetically entrancing scene was an emotional nail slowly being tapped into my heart. They were short yet painful. Though maybe there are certain themes that get to me more than others.

Spec ops: The Line is seconded. I was not spoilered, so the experience worked how it was intended.

Also The Walking dead, *Spoiler* specifically episode 2 of 1st season where you get to choose whether to beat the guy to death at the end. I was pissed at what he did to us all so i chose to not let him live. However Clem saw it all, it tells me only after the deed is done. I instantly reloaded so we don't have to ever bring up that mistake again!

 

[Diablo2000]

Killing the Maiden of Whatever in the Ballads Questline in Kingdoms of Amalur.

Spoiler

She's of the Fae, one of the beings who are bound by fate and songs, in her particular song she's the villain. She was suposse to fell in love with the King of Summer\Winter Court(Don't remember which), which allowed him to easily trick her and murder her... And she's was going to have none of this crap, so when the game's villains offered the power of the evil god thing in order to free herself from her song, she took it. She first murders a guy who was suppose to have a massive importance to the story, whose main character replace in order to fix the Ballad. The Maiden interactions are kinda of you would expect from a villain "Join me, together we can rule, blablabla.", it was her final moment who was the final piece of the puzzle and made her whole dillema stick in my mind. If the character decides not to say anything to her at the end of the fight with her (After the king coward bail out and made you king\queen so you deal with this shit) she goes out and yell "No, I will be ignored no longer!". That was the moment where the Saw tunes played in my head and everything made sense.
Ending the fight and everyone was like "YAY! Good job getting rid of that awful person!", but I knew she didn't have a choice and when she finally did the protagonist went there and killed her, she was no innocent but was either break free or die, can't really blame her for her choices.

Of course I reloaded after that and didn't killed her. Instead ruled together like BFF's.

 

[Islandbuffilo]

After doing all that I've done in Black and White 2, Spec ops the line didn't bother me at all. Now The renegade path in Mass effect 3 made feel incredibly bad and I felt it crossed the line between renegade and psychopath. The Owlbear mission in Dragon's crown also made me feel bad. Speaking of black and white 2 I always disliked killing the enemy's creature.

 

[deathbydeath]

Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP made me loathe myself because halfway in I realized I had wasted hours of my life I could never get back on that shitty, shitty game.

 

[BaronVH]

Fable 2: I loved my puppy dog. Also in Baldur's Gate 2: God, I wished I never married that angel thing.

 

[sageoftruth]

The Witcher did this for me twice. The first time I played it, I ended up playing a primary role in racial genocide.

The second time, I ended up playing a primary role in racial genocide for the other side. It hurt every time a character called me out for it.

Since almost every decision in the game had some form of negative consequences, I was often feeling terrible for every decision I made.

 

[laggyteabag]

Spoiler: The Walking Dead Season 2 Episode 5

When I was given the choice to kill Kenny and save Jane, or let Kenny kill Jane. Jane was the voice or reason, but Kenny was like my best friend. In the end, I chose to kill Kenny, and whilst I don't regret my choice, it was certainly one hell of an emotional one. Still sucks that there wasn't a "I still hate you Jane for making me kill Kenny, but I will go along with you anyway" option, because the options that were given were either black ("Fuck of Jane. Im going on my own from now on") or white ("I forgive you Jane.").

RIP Kenny, you daft, crazy, amazing bastard.

 

[The Harkinator]

Choosing who to leave behind in Mass Effect, since I'd used Kaidan and Ashley almost exclusively as my teammates throughout the game. I'd occasionally used Garrus and Wrex, never used Tali because I used to have this thing where I basically always used the first two party members the game gives you. In KOTOR 2 I had the exception of using Atton and Handmaiden because I though Kreia was more of an on-the-ship type of mentor.

So anyways, I send Kaidan with the Salarians (my second-in-command in the field, he'd represent me on the strike team) and did Virmire with Ashley and Wrex (because we'd just done the scene where he makes a point about how important it all is to him) where it was all going fine... until you get back outside after chatting with Sovereign and you get that call where a squadmate activates the bomb. In the end I saved Ashley (Honest Trailers called it right on this one, was doing Ashleys romance which tipped the scales in the end, achievements numb the pain) all while hoping I'd then be able to double back and save Kaidan. But you beat Saren, the cutscene triggers and you're out of time, so you leave the planet as the nuke goes off. Even worse, the game showed me Kaidan's last stand and I felt terrible for ages. I was impressed at how all the squadmates reacted to it though, they all seemed as sad as I was that Kaidan died.

 

[Project_Xii]

NiER spoilers ahoy, this game is beyond amazing and if you haven't played it yet and plan to, don't read this!

Yes! You are the fucking man! I was going to post this one myself but thought I'd look in case someone else had actually played past the first playthrough.

My god that game. Like all games in the Drakengard series, the first playthrough is never considered the "true" experience. Playing NiER a second time was like playing an entirely different game. I've never felt like such a terrible person once they revealed the back stories to those bosses. Beepy... oh god, why!!! And the wolves! And the Pig-Shade actually being super pissed at you because the orbs things you are killing are shade CHILDREN. Holy shit, I couldn't handle it. I was devastated by the end of it. Still went through and played all the rest of the endings though. Such a brilliant and under rated game.

 

[Nixou]

Crusader Kings 2:

I had started with the smallish Duchy of Savoy and ha expanded it to the point when i controlled all of Burgundy, the whole Italian Peninsula, the Balearic archipelago and Tunisia. Then, as the successive Holy Roman Emperors increased centralization and diminished my own dynasty's autonomy, I eventually declared independence. The Emperor couldn't do much since I declared independence right after a bloody succession war which had left the german part of the empire ruined.


BUT

Algiers had also been conquered by me, except the rather byzantine feudal/succession system had put it in the hand of a member of a cadet branch of my dynasty who had become a direct vassal of the Emperor and therefore remained within the HRP when I declared independence.

That was unacceptable: Algiers was to be mine.

Except I couldn't start conquering it immediately: as soon as the newly independent Kingdom of Much Greater Burgundy was established, half my vassals rebelled, and it took years to finally quell this rebellion.
So by the time I was ready to finally attack Algiers, the HRE had regained its lost strength.

The conquest of Algiers was a massacre: I lost over 300.000 soldiers, while the HRE lost over 600.000 trying to defend a rather small coastal area. That's pretty much the casualties of the three punic wars combined...
And the game doesn't try to simulate the amount of non-combatant death, but I must assume that the decade long bloody affair caused innumerable deaths while driving the survivors away. So now I picture the region as being completely empty, abandoned by its surviving inhabitants who fled the battles stirred by some insane european king who wanted to expand his realm by a few thousands square miles. Yeah its only numbers on a risk-style map, but I get the feeling that the way the generals and rulers who sent countless soldiers to their deaths and ruined the life of countless more civilians in order to achieve so petty victory viewed the actual human beings their decisions killed was not that different from the way I viewed my virtual, soulless, abstract troops, and that's avery unpleasant thought.

 

[Dragonbums]

Balder from Bayonetta 1 very quickly became a highly sympathized character in Bayonetta 2. Like damn nothing went right for the guy no matter how hard he tried.
I would add more to this but I really don't want to spoil anything.

 

[jayjaykoolaid]

The last choice of Season 1 of The Walking Dead game. Either choice was horrible, but at least one had the benefit of making Clementine a little more ready to make the hard choices in the world.

 

[The_Waspman]

See also Quelaag. You find out that she was just hunting for enough specks of Humanity to ease her deathly ill sister's pain even just a little bit and you just killed her. If you have the Old Witch's Ring you assume Quelaag's identity so she never even knows her sister is dead and the Humanity she's getting is coming from the guy who murdered her sister trying to take over Quelaag's responsibilities. At least that's what I do. I can't just leave her down there y'know?

While there have been many moments in games where I've felt bad, as a player and as a character, this section of dark souls did make me feel genuinely bad. Having gone to get the Old Witch's Ring so I could talk to Quelaag's sister (is that one Quelaana?) I just feel absolutely terrible when she starts talking about how much pain she's in, and I've just brutally murdered the one who was looking after her. The haunting music doesn't help either.

I took a long break from Dark Souls while I was playing it, and when i came back to it, this was the bonfire I returned to. I was just standing there, trying to remember what the controls were, and I accidentally threw a fireball at her. When she gets hurt, she actually holds herself and starts shivering. Yup, I feel real good about myself...