Situations where YOU are the monster!

[FalloutJack]

This comes up in a number of games - video or not - where you can be worse than the actual bad guys, either by the game's design, or because of choices that you make, or even by random circumstances.

So, when's that ever happened to you, and what happened?

I'll just post one that happened today, since I thought of it. There's a tabletop game called Betrayal at House on the Hill which has you exploring a tile-set of rooms for a spooky mansion. You are essentially a Scooby Gang, or the Mystery Skulls, or what-have-you. You explore this place, looking for bad omens that will start the haunt, and there's a ton of different ones to get.

So, we're lasting a long time, getting our characters strengthened up against whatever happens. My character managed to obtain a gratuitous amount of things. It started with a bloody dagger that attached itself to my veins via some creepy tubing, and then I got a card that actually cause me to get an Evil Dead hand. AND GET THIS! I actually drew a chainsaw to replace it with when I lopped it off!

So, there's this little elementary boy walking around with a knife attached to one hand, and a chainsaw replacing the other now. All I need is a Boomstick now. Well, somebody else got it. Yes, the game actually had a Boomstick. Instead, I got a revolver in my mouth, a med-kit hanging off one shoulder, a magic feather in my cap, a strange device under one arm, a camcorder under the other, and my pockets full of omens.

Meanwhile, the tough-as-nails jock's been hitting every room with stat bonuses and finds a suit of armor while the only lady currently on the team gets maximum speed. When the haunt begins and the old man teammate gets killed by a mad man and zummons a bunch of zombies, we're MORE than prepared them. Oh, and let's not forget the Evil Dead stuff going on, and now we get zombies.

I effectively turned into Ash today. How are you?

 

[Aerosteam]

In Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, there's two main endings the community has titled: "Peace" and "Anarchy". The Japanese community called them "Bonds" and "Massacre". Try to guess what the massacre route entails.

Spoiler: If you don't mind spoilers for this game

You murder ALL your friends and ascend into godhood. You create a new universe while making sure no one is left to oppose you.

And no, this isn't an "ends justify the means" thing, you literally do it to benefit yourself.

 

[sXeth]

I mean, thats prettmuch the standard third option for all the dozens or hundreds of games that use Bioware morality system (Good guy, wants to get paid guy, guy who's psychotic and should be shunned from all around him, but for plot reasons is just kind of bloodthirsty in all important interactions).

PRototype comes to mind though, Despite making some pretenses of a dual morality system like its counterpart in inFamous. It really doesn't work out that you're anything but an inhuman monster devouring people and as much a threat as the other infected monsters/hybrids. To the point Alex literally is a villain in the 2nd.

 

[Lufia Erim]

Silent hill 3. Claire Tells vincent that she sees and kills monsters. Vincent replies " Those people look like monsters to you". Clair looks horrified at the thought that she killed people instead of monsters. Vincent goes "lol jk".

i still to thos day believe vincent.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Mass Effect Andromeda: Letting my teammates glitch into combat before me so they take the brunt of weapons fire. (Also unnecessarily killing all planet life merely defending its' territory).

SOMA: I let Simon 2 live

Undertale: I turned it off and refused to play, choosing instead to pet and feed my cat while abusing class A narcotics.

Life: I continue to survive, wasting vital resources.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Undertale: I turned it off and refused to play, choosing instead to pet and feed my cat while abusing class A narcotics.

But... You can play as a very good person though.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

But... You can play as a very good person though.

Thus the source of thine monsterhood

 

[Imre Csete]

One day I'll check out Soul Nomad's Demon Path and kill all my friends for the lulz. My PS2 controller is busted though, not on my priority list at the moment.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

But... You can play as a very good person though.

Thus the source of thine monsterhood

das deep man

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Risk of Rain's many possible characters.

The monsters on the planet are all just reflexively responding to a threat to their eco-system, and the main villain is hinted at having been provoked too.

Spoiler

There's one of the teleporters from the planet up on your ship, hinting that someone may have stolen it from the planet, and bringing it back close to it might have triggered the villain to come onto your ship and wreck it in the first place

It's the epilogue text that really sells how bad the experience was for your chosen hero, though, what with all the nonstop violence and jamming unknown rando artifacts and mad science experiments into their body.

Here's a few.

Spoiler

The Commando: ..and so he left, with everything but his humanity.

The Mercenary: ..and so he left, never to become human again.

The Huntress: ..and so she left, her soul still remaining on the planet.

Acrid (basically a Xenonomorph): ..and so it left, with a new hunger: to be left alone

The Sniper: ..and so they left, the sound still ringing in deaf ears.

 

[TrulyBritish]

Do you feel like a hero yet?

 

[FalloutJack]

Do you feel like a hero yet?

*Does not know the reference, so instead...*

 

[TrulyBritish]

Do you feel like a hero yet?

*Does not know the reference, so instead...*

It's from Spec Ops: The Line, referring to the main character/player.
Though thanks for that link, think I've found another band to look into.

 

[Yoshi178]

Splatoon 2. the Salmon did nothing wrong.

 

[BarkBarker]

In assassins creed games you convince yourself you are still doing this for revenge as you throw guards off roofs for fun, smack strangers with brooms and stab indiscriminately......though just enough not to desync and lose a mission of course.

 

[Marik2]

God of War, Demons Souls, and Bloodborne.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

But... You can play as a very good person though.

Thus the source of thine monsterhood

das deep man

Lol.
To be fair, I intend to turn it on again at some point. I just needed to pet and feed my cat and consume class A narcotics.

 

[TilMorrow]

I think the recent Wolfensteins are pretty good at conveying this whilst still dressing you up as a hero. Now we know in Wolfenstein the nazis are a bunch of unethical, immoral, irredeemable creatures who appear to have no value for human life for anyone who isn't them... or at least that is how their leaders are and the foot soldiers are just going along with it. I mean what most people forget is that the foot soldiers are people too with families and everything and going by the conversations, collectibles and random snippets you can gather that quite a number of them don't bite into the whole ubermensch and Germany is supreme and true leader of the world and that most characters who interact and start with "Hey isn't Germany doing great? We have [blank] now." usually ends with an awkward silence and the characters quickly separating. So BJ is fighting and killing nazis for the greater good and essentially fighting back against fascism but there's no denying that he's also quite a monster in principle and to the nazis. He relishes in brutally killing and taking down singular soldiers whilst mowing down throngs of others with an assortment of weapons and it's pretty clear as you play the game that his whole mentality and behavior is only slightly removed from the guy who takes pleasure in removing the scalps of nazi soldiers in IB.

Oh and in Abe's Oddysee you have the opinion of killing off all the mudokons you're meant to save and get rewarded in kind for callousness at the end.

 

[gsilver]

Lisa - Your character starts bad and gets worse, to put it mildly.

 

[Pseudonym]

The whole genre of open world crime games, I think. GTA, Saints Row, etc. I mean, sometimes there is a pretense that the people you kill and hurt also suck but you are basically a crime lord in those games. Strategy games, mostly. I once murdered my twin sons in Crusader Kings II because I was old and wanted to make sure my lands where all inherited by my eldest son. (gavelkind, man) Most actions you take in EUIV are immoral. I mean the casu belli is literally called 'imperialism'. Casu belli means 'reason for war'. How is imperialism a reason? It's just what you do. Those times in civIV when I nuked half the world, reducing the earth population by 30% and making a similar amount of land unlivable and useless. Also the times when I wiped out the natives of half of indonesia, preventively in EUIV. And then there are the mindgrinder kind of ways that you can use your units in strategy games. The amount of hoplites that were killed to get Arkantos into troy weren't worth it. Evil runs of RPG's. You can advice Jack that 'she is a killer' in ME2, after you've talked her into killing somebody, during her loyalty mission, which is fucked up. You can do a legion run in fallout new vegas. The genre of pikmin-alikes, pikmin (especially part 2), overlord, little kings story, all have you play as a somehow corrupt ruler charactar with varying degrees of subtlety about it. While I don't play horror I do hear a common common trope is to have the main charactar be blamed for the situation in some way. I know this was the case in Amnesia. You are still not as bad as the actual bad guys but pretty bad.

Also, I don't know precisely where this rebellion in FTL came from, but I feel like I'm pretty harsh. I mostly blow up my enemies for the scrap. I'll probably have killed about a hundred people that way once (well, if, to be fair) I reach the ending. I'm also pretty sure that in hotline miami you are mostly just insane. Those who have played XCOM: Enemy Unknown will also remember that Vahlen made a point of rubbing it in that her experimenting was cruel and lethal. Part 2 even has her successor Tygan complain about her brutish research methods at some point. You are still pretty much the good guy, but it is worth mentioning.

Somebody already mentioned spec ops: the line.