"Heroics" that left a bad taste in your mouth

[Iwata]

Batman in Arkham City once again refuses to kill the Joker, because apparently his life more valuable then all the people he's killed

In the comics, Batman has once admitted to having a fantasy of killing the Joker, but it's a line he will absolutely not cross, for ANY reason. It's a part of the character, and a vital one at that. They did the whole "killer Batman" thing before (when Jean Paul Valley took the mantle) and it's really not the same.

It may sound illogical to you, me, and everyone else, but Batman is nothing if not obstinate.

 

[deserteagleeye]

Well, in Persona 3 there's a moment that kinda made me question Junpei for a little bit. During one of full moons Ken disappears and Junpei is asked to look for him. After not finding him he says "That little shit is more problems than he's worth". That line totally threw me off! Junpei is supposed to be kind and easy going good guy, and to hear him say something so harsh...

That also threw me off, but even more so when it took Mitsuru and Akihiko took so long to realize that having Ken and Shinji on the same team was a very bad idea especially when they both go missing.

 

[sumanoskae]

Batman in Arkham City once again refuses to kill the Joker, because apparently his life more valuable then all the people he's killed

In the comics, Batman has once admitted to having a fantasy of killing the Joker, but it's a line he will absolutely not cross, for ANY reason. It's a part of the character, and a vital one at that. They did the whole "killer Batman" thing before (when Jean Paul Valley took the mantle) and it's really not the same.

It may sound illogical to you, me, and everyone else, but Batman is nothing if not obstinate.

The question wasn't "Why does character X behave unheroically" I'm aware of why Batman does what he does, but just because he has reason doesn't make his actions heroic, it's a fundamentally selfish way to behave.

Batmans desire to remain vigilant has cost the lives of hundreds of innocents. Batman has even SAVED the Joker on occasion. Joker knows Batman will never cross the line and kill him, and feeds into the dynamic; he gets away with more and more because Batman is always there to make sure he gets marched off to Arkham so he can escape and continue his reign of terror.

Batman is not only unwilling to stop Joker, he's the reason he's still alive.

I don't give a damn how Batman feels about killing, there are more important things than his sense of self righteousness.

 

[The Youth Counselor]

When the guy in Far Cry 3 dumps his girlfriend. I thought she was his rock, the person meant to represent the side of him which was remaining sane? You can't just forget about her for the second half of the game or you're missing out a vital aspect of his story arc, him not knowing what to do about it and keeping himself on the fence.
He says it in such a bland voice, and then when he leaves he's like 'that wasn't as hard as I thought' Well obviously fekkin not if you didn't even feel a thing about it -.-

It's worth noting that he actually said that it was HARDER than he expected.

OT: The non-lethal target eliminations in Dishonored. They're significantly more cruel than just killing your targets, which is intentional and makes sense from a revenge point of view, but when you're doing a pacifist run and your only way of dealing with them is EXTRA cruelty, it does seem a little odd.

For sure, I mean:

Spoiler

Knocking a woman unconscious and delivering her to be the prisoner of her stalker? Cutting off the tongues of two brothers and forcing them into slavery? Branding a man on the face and marking him forver a pariah? How are those options good or evil non-chaotic?

I've got some more:

Spoiler: Half-Life 2

Gordon murders police that only moments ago he found out were made up of desperate people who joined up just to get a decent meal, and are alluded to also be conscripts. He goes on a killing spree that eventually leads the Combine right into the hidden headquarters of the resistance (Okay, okay it turned out Judith Mossman was a spy all along.) but was that smart? Gordon then inspires an uprising that leaves City 17 in ruins and thousands dead before he explodes a nuclear reactor (even worse Dark Energy reactor) in the middle of a densely populated urban area.

In Episode 1 we find out that the destruction of the Citadel's Core, stopped the Antlion defenses unleashing swarms of the creatures to the poor inhabitants of City 17. We also witness the meager amounts of citizens and resistance members Gordon helps escape the city in the minutes before a thermonuclear explosion as if that exempts him from the blame of the thousands that surely perished in that blast.

Gordon Freeman was the one who pushed the crystal into the anti-mass spectrometer and opened the doorway the alien invaders entered in the first place. The Combine defeated all the military forces of Earth in 7 Hours, and are the only stability Earth still has. Why would anyone even trust him or think they have a chance against the Combine? Yahtzee is right, he just has a really good PR team.]

Spoiler: Infamous 2

The final decision. Granted that it was presented as a hard and morally ambiguous decision, but the fact that there was a definitive "Good" option with heroic music took the grey out. It wasn't just some heroic sacrifice, it wasn't just Cole's choice to make. The good option involves an action that would kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people of a minority to save millions. That's the justification that every genocide started with. Also could Cole simply not talked with John White considering that he's his friend?

Also to make it worse that the so called "evil" option involved protecting the minority, curing the plague, and possibly evolving the remaining human species at the possible cost of lives, and the whole moral spectrum of the endings seemed skewed.]

A lot of people mentioned Starcraft, other Blizzard games, and the Call of Duty series. I think that those games are meant to subvert heroics and present many options as morally questionable.

As for God of War, Kratos is not the hero but the villain. Albeit a tragic villain but a villain nonetheless.

 

[MrGalactus]

In Fallout whenever your Karma gets a positive boost for murdering Fiends. I absolutely cannot stand it, but I've never heard of anyone mention it before. Surely I can't be the only one who hates that?

 

[SmilesX-23]

Astraea in Demons Souls. She just wants to be left alone with Garl (her protector) and the wretched monsters who worship her.
Even worse when you kill Garl first and she kills herself.

Same thing with Priscilla in Dark Souls but damn i wanted that soul....

...... I hate you Souls games you make me feel bad.

 

[themilo504]

In dishonored I dislike how killing weepers raises chaos I prefer to mercy kill them instead of letting them live and spread the infection why does the game think that that?s evil.

God do I hate the main character of touhou the games would be a lot shorter and easier if the supposed heroine wasn?t such a enormous *****.

in doctor who the doctor helping dalek sec despite the fact that he kidnapped and basically killed who knows how many people in Evolution Of The Daleks also the doctor deposing Prime Minister Harriet Jones in The Christmas Invasion also the doctor abandoning jack harkness yeah the doctor can be a real asshole sometimes.

 

[Karma168]

in doctor who the doctor helping dalek sec despite the fact that he kidnapped and basically killed who knows how many people in Evolution Of The Daleks also the doctor deposing Prime Minister Harriet Jones in The Christmas Invasion also the doctor abandoning jack harkness yeah the doctor can be a real asshole sometimes.

Wasn't Dalek Sec going to bring peace to the galaxy? Iirc his human side gave him a concious and he wanted to stop the daleks from killing everything that moved. Makes sense the doctor would want to help him rather than kill him, much as he hates them he could never bring himself to wipe out the Daleks, he'd much rather broker lasting peace than destroy them.

As far as I know the doctor didn't know Jack was alive, pretty sure he heard him die so probably just wrote him off. Also didn't help he was regenerating and in no state to go find him.

Tbf she did murder a ship full of hundreds of aliens 'just in case' even though the Doctor had scared them off. He could have hauled her off to a prison world in the year 5 billion but instead she just got the sack, i'd say he let her off lightly.

 

[WolfenD]

Oh and the main character in Persona 3 is at least of questionable friendliness. No matter how much of a blank slate he is meant to be. I keep meaning to go through P3 again to refresh myself over why I hated that guy so much but then I remember the dreadful party AI and that singlehandedly ruins it. The rest of the story is amazing but I can't stand that guy.

He basically never does any genuine friendly stuff in a game about friendship for the whole 60 hours. The loner archtype can't stand that unchanged in that kind of game

Except for those dozens of social links which he (read: the player, read: you) genuinely felt, regardless of how unfazed he may have seemed. What problem did you have with it?

Also, if the party AI bothered you, you should get Persona 3: FES. It has much better AI and some extra content.

I guess that's the point. Sure I might have liked the Social Links but I am 100% sure that my player character couldn't be more bored. There's sort of a a disconnect there, I might be playing as him but i'm not actually him if you get the idea. I just always got the impression that he was a complete dick no matter how nice I tried to make him be.

Oh and I did get FES, if that AI is "better" then god how bad could it have been in the first place? The Answer is a load of wank anyway. I'm sure I would find the story ok if I wasn't getting fucked by the unchangeable difficulty and bad AI working in tandem to make everything as frustrating as possible.

The MC if he truly hated the people around and everything else he would have just left at the beginning as at the beginning he had no reason to stay unlike everyone else. The reason he does stay is due to the start of the freindship and respect for the people at SEES. It is only later on in the game that he has a real reason that would affect him and that is that Nyx is coming to end the world. While if he did hate everyone he would have just ignored the problem as all the shadows were doing were putting into comas and therefore didn't affect him.

The reason why he puts on the facade of a loner is that he doesn't want to be hurt as I imagine being 8 to 10 years old seeing your parents die in front of you would traumatize anyone. As for the social links you don't have to do them. But by doing them it shows that the Main Character is no longer a loner as he now seeks out freindship.

As for "the Answer" I didn't find it too hard as you just have to grind to be able to compete with some of the harder bosses. And I don't ever remember struggling with the AI

 

[J Tyran]

I'm using a film example but still... Anyone remember that film from about 3 years ago called "Harry Brown"? The things he does in that film to the "chavs" (The almost racial epithet ascribed to this group of lower-class teens) repulsed me. He tortures people and mocks them as he kills them... Granted these people are presented as some of the most repugnant people the human race ever produced but seeing as the film acts like it's almost a social commentary the commentary seems to be saying "You see those teenagers loitering out there? Well go get a big knife and gun and just go to town! They deserve it anyway... They're probably rapists and murderers" I'd also like to point out that similar/worse scenes of violence as seen in films like "A Clockwork Orange" or any Tarantino Film do not bother me. As the violence isn't presented positively it's either ironic/over-the-top/cartoon-like or to show how horrible the villain is. Harry Brown doesn't use the violence as comedy/ironic statement it seems to be supporting violence against "chavs".

Considering the class "difficulties" and the kind of "ghetto" and "sub-people" attitude many British people seem to have adopted to teenagers and especially council-house dwellers, this film comes off as basically immoral because it glorifies this de-humanization. I'd like to point out that this is literally the only film/book/anything I have ever regarded as such that (at least in my experience) no-one really questioned. I can't help but think that if a similar film was made about slaughtering "black" thugs, or "gay" thugs with such reckless "they're all the same" abandon people would be calling for the filmmakers heads.

I had a lot of difficulty taking Harry Brown difficult at all, most depictions of the criminal side of Britain in fiction are far from the truth. Layer Cake was closer to the mark than most but still a ways off, back to Harry Brown though it was implied by the way he acted that he was suffering psychological trauma and possibly undiagnosed PTSD after some of the things than happened to him in Northern Ireland but even that was way off the mark. Most vets with undiagnosed PTSD are not volatile killers waiting to be set off like a firework.

 

[FFHAuthor]

I had a lot of difficulty taking Harry Brown difficult at all, most depictions of the criminal side of Britain in fiction are far from the truth. Layer Cake was closer to the mark than most but still a ways off, back to Harry Brown though it was implied by the way he acted that he was suffering psychological trauma and possibly undiagnosed PTSD after some of the things than happened to him in Northern Ireland but even that was way off the mark. Most vets with undiagnosed PTSD are not volatile killers waiting to be set off like a firework.

Just my two cents on this;

But I think it's more about British films picking up on the cultural cues that defined US cinema in the late 70's, early 80's, out of control violent crime and social degradation that spawned all those 'bloody revenge' movies and violent cop films back then. Same social issues are coming up in Britain in regards to the crime rates and policing. Harry Brown is just one movie of that genera that I've seen made.

At least you guys are using Michael Cain and not Charles Bronson for them...

 

[Tallim]

In dishonored I dislike how killing weepers raises chaos I prefer to mercy kill them instead of letting them live and spread the infection why does the game think that that?s evil.

In Dishonored your Chaos rating is not a judgement of how "evil" you are. So killing weepers isn't an evil action, it's just added violence in an unstable city.

 

[tmande2nd]

Basically Asshole Shepard.

I mean honestly this person is such a Jerk that they could obliterate Sheldon, House, and Rodney McKay with pure jerkiness just by glancing in their direction.

I played a consistently asinine Shepard and felt disgusted. Racism, Greed, Ego, Cruelty, Sadism, and Genocide for the whole family! The amount of BS like the Renegade ending of Project Overlord...just got to be to much.

Holy shit its like Shepard is being possessed with Bullseye from Punisher Max or something.
Yet still the game goes on and on like they are this great thing.

How can someone who guns down people with almost no reason be a hero?

 

[J Tyran]

I had a lot of difficulty taking Harry Brown difficult at all, most depictions of the criminal side of Britain in fiction are far from the truth. Layer Cake was closer to the mark than most but still a ways off, back to Harry Brown though it was implied by the way he acted that he was suffering psychological trauma and possibly undiagnosed PTSD after some of the things than happened to him in Northern Ireland but even that was way off the mark. Most vets with undiagnosed PTSD are not volatile killers waiting to be set off like a firework.

Just my two cents on this;

But I think it's more about British films picking up on the cultural cues that defined US cinema in the late 70's, early 80's, out of control violent crime and social degradation that spawned all those 'bloody revenge' movies and violent cop films back then. Same social issues are coming up in Britain in regards to the crime rates and policing. Harry Brown is just one movie of that genera that I've seen made.

At least you guys are using Michael Cain and not Charles Bronson for them...

We had it even back then in TV shows to, but like you say they took their cues from US cinema and TV of the time. In some cases the 70s cop shows in Britain actually came true in the 1980s during the heights of the Greater London robbery epidemic. The flying squad really had an armed division roaming in high performance cars and carrying out daring undercover operations, it was mostly sound and fury though and didn't achieve all that much from creating a few spectacular super grass events. The advent of modern policing, CCTV and better bank security finally solved the problem. But as the criminals evolved into the robbery MO after organised racketeering became too risky the bank robbers evolved into drug smuggling and distribution.

 

[StarStruckStrumpets]

The DmC: Devil May Cry ending deserves an amazingly special mention here.

Spoiler: Ending Spoilers

So, Dante and Vergil have to destroy the hellgate to defeat Mundus. They do so, and slay him. Little do they know however, that by destroying the Hellgate, they bring the worlds of Earth and Limbo together. Demons now inhabit our dimension and start killing humans all across the globe. Vergil, the deluded fuck, actually thinks this is a good thing because the populace can now "see the reality". Fuck that shit.

 

[Starke]

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.

That option would make more sense if you were playing as an apostate mage in the first game... since they have a pretty serious beef with the Templars and by extension, Androste... but, you can't. I guess if you're already a Blood Mage by that point in the game, siding with the Cultists might make sense... no, "make sense" is too strong a term, but in the general vicinity of maybe eventually having some kind of logic.

The closest I've got is the whole "we will induct you in our evil mystical blood warrior ways", but, you can just save scum that crap, or wait and pick it up in a book in Awakenings... which you can also save scum to get your 10g back...

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

The entirety of the Orzammar plot in Dragon Age: Origins. The Grey Warden is presented with this big long quest to find a Broodmother and kill her, when the much simpler answer would have been 'enter Bhelen/Harrowmont's residence, lop their head off, a new king is crowned.'

To be fair, that probably would have resulted in even more civil war rather than a decisive resolution. The only king the dwarves would instantly leap at would be a Paragon.

 

[Starke]

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.

With Just Cause 2, I've pretty much always assumed it should be read straight. It's really not a subtle critique. Or subtle in any way, for that matter.

Were the Defias Brotherhood more evil pre-Cataclysm, or was it always kinda vague there?

Same goes for Jason Brody actually, when is he portrayed as anything other than a guy trying to save his friends?

Protagonist =/= Hero

*spoilers

In the first 10 mins of the game jason breaks out of Vaas's compound. He is then found by a local named Dennis. He then gets Jason to help get rid of the pirates that live on the island. You know, the ones that are required to "Shoot ANY local on sight". Sure Jason gets to rescue his friends as part of it, but he instead of leaving with them he sticks around to finish what he started.

The man almost singlehandedly liberated an island. Jason may not think he is a hero, but if I was a local I wouldn't see him as anything else.

Not if you ask the writer. According to him the natives worshiping him falls under the header of: Jason being narcissistic and borderline delusional. And while I don't put too much stock in what the guy says, simply because the writing never nods to Jason actually being an unreliable narrator, unlike, say, the guy feeding you info on your phone... this bit does make some sense.

The "Tenpenny Towers" quest from Fallout 3. To pursuade some of the bigets living there, I tried using the Mezmo gun in an attempt to hypnotize them. At first I blew someone's head off, after reloading the save I thought it was a fluke and tryed it on another guy on a higher floor and he flew into a murderus rage and killed his wife while another resident had to put him down. I got the ghouls in and I didn't get any bad karma, but I still felt bad. And if that wasn't bad enough, I hear that the ghouls killed everyone else in the building, it's a good thing I died from radiation poisoning, otherwise I might have done the same to them.

But... Radiation heals them...

 

[DataSnake]

Example from a movie: Taken

Spoiler

Leaving the juice on after torturing a guy. That's not self-defense, it doesn't get you any more information, it's just pure dickishness. Also, shooting a guy's wife to make a guy talk. SHE didn't do a damn thing, and SHE'S the one he shot!