Not every game is a straightforward heroic adventure, and in a lot of cases, the player actually proves to be more of a detriment to the world than an actual benefit. They don't always have to be a straight-up villain, but they can cause just as many problems by making poor choices, unintentionally harming characters, and affecting the world through collateral damage, even when they are actually on the side of good.
The best examples of these disaster scenarios are where players are either given a choice about how kind or evil they want to be, or when the decisions themselves lead to negative consequences, regardless of how well-intentioned they may be. These games treat goodness as a scarcity, forcing players into situations that require sacrifices and tradeoffs, or outright say that the path forward can never be one of greatness.
Pathologic 2
Every Choice Creates A New Disaster
Details:
- Sacrifices are a necessity
- The entire town can die if decisions are poor
Pathologic 2 is built around the idea that saving one thing means sacrificing another. The story never allows clean victories, as every choice prioritizes one group, district, or ideology at the expense of others, often leading to permanent consequences that almost always come in the form of death.
NPCs remember neglect, and the narrative adapts to reflect the player's failures rather than hiding them, which is made worse by the lack of information given on how to fix them. Even well-meaning decisions can quickly accelerate collapses elsewhere, making a lot of the playthrough feel like a hopeless struggle to manage and keep track of an endless list of things, which proves to be virtually impossible.
Disco Elysium
Failure Is Inevitable
Details:
- Words dictate the fate of many
- Large canonical impacts from single dialogue options
Disco Elysium is a great example of a game that falls apart at the hands of the player through the decisions they make and the relationships they burn. Individual conversations can shape political movements as well as personal relationships, and poor judgment can permanently damage both at the same time, leading to entire paths being derailed along with the destruction of long-term alliances.
The game treats the player's pitfalls as canonical outcomes rather than errors to correct, as everything from emotional breakdowns to addiction can reshape how the story unfolds and how others see them. Rather than stopping the narrative in its tracks, failure becomes its defining feature, forcing players to stumble forward and attempt to fix things, but basically always being unable to do so.
Shadow of the Colossus
Heroism Disguising A Darker Truth
Details:
- Victories make the world quieter and bleaker
- Irreversible damage
At first glance, Shadow of the Colossus presents a simple quest to the player of slaying giants in order to save someone they love. Yet with each victory, the world grows quieter, darker, and more unsettling, as the landscape appears emptier and the Wander's body begins to deteriorate, showing the consequences of violence in real time.
The game never explicitly tells players they are making things worse, but its atmosphere communicates it relentlessly. As they delve deeper, the enemies feel less like monsters and more like guardians, protecting something unknown, and in the end, the narrative power lies in how it allows players to realize too late that their success has irreversibly damaged the world.
Tyranny
Committing Atrocities On A Large Scale
Details:
- Trade-offs for every decision
- Pursuing selfish ambitions
Tyranny places players in a position of authority within an already broken world, but every attempt to stabilize it only deepens the damage. Choosing sides empowers factions that commit atrocities, while acts of mercy often weaken the player's control and lead to even greater suffering later, creating an interesting dynamic where virtually every choice comes with pain.
The narrative is built around compromise and complicity, as there is no path where the world becomes truly better, only versions where it becomes worse in different ways. The story reacts sharply to the player's decisions, with regions reshaping and entire ideologies coming undone at the seams, purely due to how evil they decide to be.
Spec Ops: The Line
Obdedience Is The Real Crime
Details:
- Constant escalating violence
- No victors in war
Spec Ops: The Line frames progression itself as the problem, as, unlike other shooters,s where the main goal is just to eliminate every enemy in sight, the missions here feel far more ominous as the player progresses. Despite the objective being to restore order, the violence in each section only seems to escalate more and more, and every success seems to worsen the humanitarian disaster unfolding before the player.
The game strips away the idea of a fearless hero, instead forcing players to confront the consequences of following orders without question. In order to achieve this, the narrative directly implicates the player in every one of their actions, blurring the lines between good and bad from start to finish. Attempts to do the right thing only deepen the catastrophe, and by the end of the game, the story makes it clear that the greatest harm came not from villainy, but from blind compliance.
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This article originally appeared on GameRant and is republished here with permission.
