Video Game Cruelty Potential/Video Games/Role-Playing Game

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Examples of Video Game Cruelty Potential in video Role-Playing Games include:

  • Rather mild example...in Kingdom Hearts, you can not only run up and smack the Queen of Hearts (who dies in one hit) with your Keyblade and she falls in the battle with the card guards, but make Captain Hook's day miserable. You can simply light his pants on fire and cause him to run around in mid-air. Or knock him off the ship and watch as he yells "YOU'LL NOT GET ME OTHER HAND!!!" before he almost hits the water. Even more satisfying when you light his pants on fire and he puts it out right over the water.
    • Goofy is also the perfect height for you to throw barrels right into his face.
  • In Kingdom Hearts 3D, should one of your dream eater allies get KO'd, a timer will start ticking down, and if it expires before you revive it, the dream eater will fade away, and leave behind a dream piece. The dream pieces left behind in this fashion can be of a higher quality then what's currently available through other means, meaning you can potentially create some better dream eaters earlier then normal by repeatedly creating and allowing weaker ones to die off (Though it's not exactly efficient).
  • You can be an evil bastard in Planescape: Torment. Especially to Dakkon. "Oh hey, this chick is suffering but can't commit suicide and you're their culture's euthanasist? And you swore a life debt to me? Torture her to death."
    • Or you could always constantly remind him of that debt. In every conversation you have with him, no less.
    • Or to Morte whom you had once pulled from the Pillar of Skulls, and get an in-game opportunity to put him back in exchange for information you can pay for in other (much less evil) ways.
    • The same can be done to other party members. Including your current love interest.
      • In fact, the game actually encourages this kind of personal, soul-crushing malevolence over random violence. If you start just killing at random, the Lady of Pain will show up shortly to inform you that you are not top dog in her city, but there is no major penalty for ruining other's lives with just words. Go right ahead!
      • That is part and parcel of the Clap Your Hands If You Believe nature of the setting. However, Video Game Caring Potential pays far, far better in the game. Kindness to Dakkon, Morte, and company can buff them to Game Breaker status, allow you to use a morphable shape-changing Infinity Plus One weapon, and bolster the status of your allies through hidden mechanics regarding their loyalty.
        • On the other hand, the Entropic Blade isn't that much worse than the Celestial Fire and you obtain it by being a complete monster. Even better example of utter cruelty: Dakkon's people used to be slaves and a huge part of their beliefs center around their escape from that slavery. A certain evil book will empower you with various spells for doing evil acts, including selling a party member into slavery. Hmm. Dakkon, come here a minute, I'd like you to meet someone...
  • Might and Magic:
    • Exploring in the second game, you can stumble across a peaceful goblin village... and choose to attack. It was filled with standard goblins, but as many as the game could handle, and with the right spells you could kill them with ease. That's right, you could commit genocide.
    • When the series went 3-D, it became possible to also annihilate friendly villages as well, including the eventual release of a spell called Armageddon that wiped out everything except your party. For example, in VI; going for Master Dark Magic? Head to Free Haven and cast Armageddon. Instant evil party~! Just make sure you hotfoot it to Paradise Valley before going to a castle...
    • In Might and Magic 7, it's quite easy to bait a pack of monsters into a town and watch them slaughter the helpless peasants. Not only that, but in the tutorial mission you get rewarded for doing this. Normally, you have to buy a lute for 500 gold and you can accept a magic wand in exchange for performing a later favor for the mercenary guild. Get the NPCs who offer these two things killed by monsters and you can loot the items from their corpses.
    • Dark Messiah has the standard "personal" methods of killing things: cutting them up with blades, bludgeoning them with staves, shooting them with arrows, setting them on fire/electrocuting/blowing them up/freezing them solid with spells, stabbing them in the back... and that's before you start exercising the game's specifically designed capacity for creative killings. Almost every single object may be hurled as a weapon (by hand or with the telekinesis spell), that freeze spell can make charging enemies slip and slide... off the cliff, charm spells will make them attack each other, and there are a disturbing number of spiked walls that seem to serve no other purpose aside from being something convenient for kicking enemies into as a change of pace from kicking them off ledges or into bonfires or fireplaces. Of course, since you play the spawn of a demonlord and the game forces you to choose between which of the two love interests you want to kill this is only to be expected.
  • The Neverwinter Nights module Aribeth's Redemption allows the player to continuously needle Aribeth about Fenthick. And, being the lawful good suicidally depressed Elvish former paladin she is, she sits and takes all of your insults as if she deserves it!
    • The evil options for every Optional Sexual Encounter in The Bastard of Kosigan. And the evil options for dealing with the prisoners in the Inquisition's basement in Cologne.
  • As might be expected, Knights of the Old Republic has a number of these if you choose to follow The Dark Side. You can destroy a personal assistance droid on Dantooine in the first game, then tell its distraught owner that it's still out there somewhere. Then there is the whole Sandral-Matale feud, which, depending on how you played it, could have a happy ending. Depending on how you played it.
    • The Sandral-Matale sequence may very well be the funniest The Dark Side sequence ever implemented in a video game.
    • Outside the Sith Academy on Korriban, you will see a student, Mekel, making a bunch of hopefuls stand at attention for days, with the promise that the last one left can enter the Academy. Needless to say, Mekel is just doing this for shits and giggles. Of course, you CAN convince some of them of the truth. But it is SO much fun to convince one of the poor saps that he has, in fact, won, and that his last challenge is to attack the guard by the gate. Goodbye.
    • The ultimate example is near the end of the game if you choose to become evil. You get the opportunity to force Zaalbar to kill Mission.
      • KOTOR was ridiculously, hilariously cruel. On the Sea planet Manaan, you've been asked by a worried father, Shaelas, to find his young daughter. Depending on your actions on the quest, you'll be afforded the option to shake him down for extra credits for his information, before finally telling him "I killed your daughter, Shaelas. And I'll kill you if you tell anyone about this. Now give me those credits!"
      • Hell, let's go crazy. In the sequel, after you defeat Master Atris, you have the option of letting her live. Or killing her. Which, granted, is pretty standard in KOTOR. However, for the sake of sheer cruelty, locking her in a chamber with Sith Holocrons for the rest of her life, letting her go gradually insane is the recommended choice.
      • Her reaction to The Exile leaving is like a lit match to Nightmare Fuel.
      • It was always impossible to resist the opportunity to play the thorough rogue on Korriban. The final test of the academy would leave the player character alone with the academy master, Uthar, and his assistant, Yuthura. If you suck up to Yuthura enough over the course of the academy's initial tests, she asks for your help in betraying her master during the final test. With him dead, the two of you will share power at the academy. You can accept, and then go rat her out to Uthar, who rewards you by advancing you further through the academy tests and gives you poison to plant on Yuthura, so that she will be weakened during the final tests. The fun part is going back to Yuthura, showing her the poison and telling her what happened. She will chide you for endangering the plan, but give you some poison of her own to use on the headmaster. The really fun part is going ahead and using the poison on both of them, leaving them to come to the slow and horrible realization during the final test that they've been triple crossed. Then you kill them.
      • The best part about being an absolute monster of a dark sider is how gleefully HK-47 reacts to your cruelty. Get your dark side score high (low?) enough and he'll come right out gushing over you and the number of new ways that the exile has taught him to be cruel. The dark side conversation option is something to the effect of "Stick with me, and you'll learn a few things," to which he replies "Oh yes, Master, I already have."
    • Never pass up the chance to ensure the untimely yet amusing demise of some thugs on Nar Shaddaa in the sequel, even while Light Side.
  • Jade Empire.....many of the Closed Fist options are downright cruel, especially the final choice of poisoning the Water Dragon's body with blood from your rebelling companions. The scene is actually a Tear Jerker, as the Water Dragon sadly looks on while you pour the blood into the machine. You then cruelly take her power.
  • Especially prevalent in later Ultima games, as complexity increased so can the twistedness of clever players. One example that leaps to mind, in Ultima VII one can bake bread. Stay with me here, one of the ingredients is a bucket of water. For some odd reason the game lets you use buckets of blood as well. More twistedness, the first bucket of blood you can find is at a murder site, and the son of the murdered man can join your party. You can, without the game realizing the implications, feed this son bread baked with the blood of his murdered father.
    • There are entire internet communities devoted to finding out the evil things you can do in Ultima.
    • One of the few good things players had to say about the ninth installment was that little thing involving Lord British and the poisoned bread. Go Google it.
  • Mass Effect lets you be particularly cruel to some people. One option you have: come across an alien commando who was betrayed by the leader she was devoted to, fed to a giant sentient plant, and out of thanks for freeing her, she gives you the critical Plot Coupon you need to keep going? Nope, sorry, she's too dangerous to let live. Bullet to the brainpan.
    • And yet, despite the killing, that was still nowhere near as satisfying as punching out an annoying reporter. On live galactic television.
    • That fanboy who you meet in the Citadel? Wants to help you out. Point a gun at him, so he'll piss his pants and run crying.
      • This is also one of the correct solutions. Not being cruel enough or not being nice enough when dealing with him will end badly.
    • It's probably not considered very cruel, but the game offers you the chance to let Fist live, or murder him as being "too dangerous to be left alive." What probably makes it more cruel is that none of your companions object to his death. Same situation with the warehouse workers who hesitate when you show up.
      • Don't take Wrex along if you want to let Fist live, because Wrex will kill him no matter what you say.
    • The renegade Shepard is generally a pretty terrifying person. Apparently pushing people up against walls/sticking guns in their faces is a normal way to end arguments.
  • Mass Effect 2 picks up right where the first game left off in allowing you to be as much of a renegade/bastard as you want to be.
    • One of your squadmates, Samara, is an Asari justicar who will ask for your help in tracking down a dangerous fugitive who also happens to be her daughter. If you feel that said fugitive doesn't deserve to die for their crimes, no problem! If your paragon or renegade score is high enough, you can choose to kill Samara instead, and the fugitive takes her place on your team.
    • This video shows what can happen if you pick the absolute worst options throughout the first two games (including, but not limited to, screwing around and letting the captured Normandy crew members die, romancing Liara, who eventually becomes the Shadow Broker and cheating on her with Garrus, alienating the entire Krogan species, killing Samara and letting Morinth take her place, letting Garrus [and most of your other specialists] die on the suicide mission, and letting Zaeed die after the SM by killing him during his loyalty mission). The end result is that the only people left to help you save the galaxy are a computer AI, a pilot and an amoral serial killer who has a tenuous loyalty to you. Almost everyone else is dead. Good going.
    • Something that was actually featured in a promotional trailer for the game was the ability to interrupt an uncooperative mercenary by kicking him through a window... on the upper floors of a skyscraper.
    • Downloadable squadmate Zaeed gives you a quest to hunt down a man who double-crossed him. Zaeed sets a fuel refinery on fire in the process, and keeping in mind that dozens of workers are trapped inside, renegade Shepard will reprimand him only by saying, "Hey! The next time you plan on blowing something up, tell me you're going to do it first!"
    • The fanboy from the first game makes a triumphant return in the second. And instead of pointing a gun at his face, you can actually shoot him. In Shepard's defense, he really was asking for it. (If you think shooting him is a bit harsh, you can also knee him in the crotch.)
    • "I've had enough of your disingenuous assertions."
    • Some players take advantage of Anyone Can Die to kill off characters, despite it obviously being detrimental to do so. If you intentionally choose not to upgrade the Normandy or do any of your crew's side-missions, it is possible to kill everyone in the final mission - including Shepherd him/herself.
    • Analysis: Defenceless herbivores are no match for guided missiles.
  • Mass Effect 3 makes cruelty a lot less entertaining. The list of people you can kill - you, personally - can include Mordin, shooting him in the back to stop him from curing the genophage; Wrex, after he finds out you sabotaged it; one of Samara's daughters (and you can let Samara herself commit suicide); Legion, if you let the quarians wipe out the geth, in which case you can shoot him four times; and you're directly responsible for Tali committing suicide if you let the geth wipe out her entire race. Renegade Shepard goes from being an amusing jerk to a Complete Monster.
    • Renegade Shepard? If we accept that the upper right choice on the wheel is paragon and the lower right choice is renegade (like it is for the whole trilogy), then siding with the Geth by allowing the upload is the PARAGON choice. That's the choice that wipes the quarians out and drives Tali to suicide in what is probably the single most gut-wrenching scene in the entire series. Rene Shep gives a slow clap. Bravo, Para Shep. Bravo.
    • Except that only happens if you make a series of choices that do not allow you access to the para or renegade dialogue options, or ignore certain missions before tackling the main one.
  • Arcanum offers lots of cruelty options, especially to the talented mystic. One particularly glorious possibility involves charming a wolf or bear, then walking to the nearest town, entering an occupied house, and releasing your control over the wild animal (but not before leaving the house and Magelocking the doors and windows). Other fun activities include using Force Walls and Walls of Fire to trap and burn the clothes off passersby and tricking NPCs into picking up and equipping armor that deals continual poison damage.
    • If you're really set on playing the game as an evil bastard, one of the required quests becomes to slaughter the entire population of a small, quiet out-of-the-way village. One of the endings you can get even involves you and the Big Bad killing every living thing on the planet.
  • Fallout also contains some amusing possibilities for the vicious Vault Dweller, such as planting timed explosives on random NPCs or - in one scenario I'm simultaneously proud and ashamed of - murdering an unarmed flower child with a single, well-aimed thrown rock to the back of the head. Let's face it: this series really goes out of its way to let the player be one evil, sadistic son of a bitch.
  • Fallout 2 has it even better. The best example would be when you force a conman, at gunpoint, to dig-up a grave where he has buried loot. Half-way through he sheepishly removes a booby-trapped landmine and hands it to you. A popular choice is to wait until he's finished digging, and...

Chosen One: Hey Lloyd! CATCH!

    • In Modoc, you can persuade a guy to cut off his finger as a way of settling a deal. You can, of course, change your mind about taking part in the deal afterwards. "Now, take your finger and saute it in a light garlic sauce. Very tasty dish!" The guy in question doesn't react well to your prank and, after bandaging his hand, attacks you.
    • Broken Hills, leading a midget down a well, and them leaving them down there with the...things.
    • Just helping the anti-mutant guys in Broken Hills condemns their settlement and all its occupants. Turns out the humans can't survive so well on their own...
    • You can sic the Enclave on a peaceful mutant settlement, who send a strike team to slaughter the lot. Then the reactor fails, and poisons the water of a nearby city condemning them all to death too. All with one little phone call!
    • Annoyed by all those kids who pickpocket you? Get revenge by arming the explosives in your inventory, then reverse-stealing them into their inventory.
      • One must be careful with pickpockets and explosives. The pickpocketing children immediately try to fence anything they steal to nearby merchants, and explosive timers don't count down while in merchant inventories. The game, however, does remember the timer's state---buying the explosives back from the merchant will lead to a bit of a surprise.
    • The game specifically gives you the option to aim your weapon at the victim's crotch. In the very first village of Fallout 1, within 5 minutes of starting a new game, you can smash a young child in the nuts with a sledgehammer. Alternately, you could go back to that raider who used to kick your ass, and introduce his groin to your brand new powerfist.
    • Seducing a hillbilly son or daughter results in a shotgun marriage, unless you're a smooth talker. This hillbilly husband/wife will be entirely useless, and cannot be removed from the party. You can get a quickie divorce in New Reno...or you can sell them into slavery instead for a quick buck.
      • Or, you can rent them out to a porn studio as a "fluffer" for three bottlecaps.
      • You can also get back to Grisham and tell him that his son/daughter disappeared if you had a divorce or sold him/her to slavery. A heart attack will kill him.
      • You can feed your spouse into a hacked organ extractor (it can remove bowels) but this isn't quite so cruel.
    • Selling party members to slavers not enough for you? Join the slavers yourself and help enslave tribal savages. The fact that you're a tribal yourself won't bother boss Metzger, though the other tribals will be.... less than happy about your new career.
    • Give Cassidy some Jet. Order him to shoot up. Watch him have a literal heart attack. When he told you his ticker wasn't so good, he wasn't kidding.
    • Murder nearly every living creature in the game, be they man, woman, child, friendly, hostile, or unawares. There is nothing stopping you.
    • There were special ways you could sneakily assassinate the heads of the crime families in New Reno - some rather sadistic. To whit: re-arm Bishop's safe with explosives, then change the combination. BOOM. Give one of the youngest Wright kids a loaded gun, which results in him shooting his own dad. Give Big Jesus Mordino any kind of chem, even a Nuka-Cola, and watch him suffer a heart attack. Steal Mr Salvatore's oxygen tank, then enjoy the floating text as he slowly, so slowly, chokes to death.
      • Not to mention you probably got the combination to Bishop's safe by sleeping with his wife. You can also sleep with his daughter, and if you're a man and don't have a condom in your inventory, she'll get pregnant. Yep, you can literally screw that family over.
        • Though your offspring does do well in New Reno, as one of the ending voiceovers will tell you.
    • Some of the death animations when killing foes were pure Squee as well. How about turning the foe's insides into bloody gibbage with burst fire, blowing a football-sized hole in their gut with a single bullet, slicing them apart with laser, melting them into a puddle of goo with plasma, or crisp them with electricity - turn 'em into a neat pile of ash. And, of course, the flamer... set 'em on fire, watch them run around in flames before collapsing. Lovely.
  • In Fallout 3, you can walk out of the Vault, and arm a nuclear bomb in the middle of a major quest hub within five minutes. And get paid, well, for doing so. Big boom.
    • In a later mission, the leader of a "Matrix"-style simulation of 1950's Americana has gone nuts and begun torturing the other residents. The player is given the choice to help torture them or mercy-kill them.
    • You can't kill children. The game won't stop you from, say, laughing at a kid you just orphaned, or sentencing another kid to certain death, abandoned and the only human in an entire town in the Wasteland.
      • O RLY? You have to be logged in (it's free), but it's the Killable Children mod.
    • In early versions of the game, you could actually, with the help of a perk called "Mr. Sandman," slit the throats of sleeping children. And they'd live, due to being unkillable. This Good Bad Bug even led to a method of gaining infinite XP, until it was (sadly) patched out. Children are now unkillable even with this perk...unless you use the mod above.
      • It can be done in Fallout 1 and 2, and you'll even get a perk for it. The perk makes people hate you. Hooray!
      • Not only can you kill children in the first two games, but they have a full suite of death animations. Shooting a child with a flamethrower will cause the poor mite to run around screaming and burning until collapsing into a pile of ash. This was considered sufficiently gruesome that European versions of the game had to be patched to remove children entirely. Unfortunately, this was accomplished by simply rendering them invisible, breaking several quests and rendering the source of their floating dialogue inexplicable, as well as infuriatingly not stopping them from pickpocketing you. Ironically, these heard-but-not-seen children could still be killed by stray gunfire.
    • You can find, and turn in to be enslaved or destroyed, a synthetic human who intentionally had his mind wiped. If you do things right, he'll even beg. And you get a Perk for doing so.
      • Even better, you can get the perk AND a sweet, unique gun: Tell Harkness that they are an android, then tell him you'll kill Dr. Zimmer yourself, as otherwise you won't get the perk. You'll get his unique gun, as well as Good Karma. Next, tell Dr. Zimmer that Harkness is the android, and you'll get his perk and Bad Karma, neutralizing the Karma gain from earlier. Now laugh evilly as they wipe his memory and take him away. You could also kill Zimmer and his Bodyguard, but that's not nearly as cruel.
    • You can do the tutorial just beating the ever-living crap out of everyone. The funniest bit? After getting the BB gun the Kid keeps shooting daddy, who passes out just when the celebratory picture is taken.
    • There is an achievement for sticking a live grenade in someone's pocket and the game keeps track of how many times you do it with the "Pants Exploded" stat.
    • You can can use the fast travel system for some extreme sadism. Get the Experimental MIRV (a nuclear catapult that fires 8 mini nukes shotgun style), go to the center of Megaton and fire straight up. Fast travel to Megaton and you'll be right outside the town. Wait a few seconds and walk in. The only living thing in that area is you.
    • You can take a perk allowing you to become a cannibal. Enough said.
    • In what may be the most despicable example, you can make a man kill himself. Fans will gladly post videos of them nuking Megaton, but there are very little videos of said suicide occurring.
  • In Fallout: New Vegas, a child will ask you to look for their lost teddy bear, Mr. Cuddles. You can find the toy, sell it to a trader for a few caps, and then go back to the child and tell them that Mr. Cuddles is dead. Evil in its most basic form.
    • For more teddy bear fun times, there's a child slave at the Legion encampment who also asks for help getting her bear back. You can tear Sergeant Teddy in half in front of her.
    • Oh, that's just the tip of the iceberg. You can sell one of your companions into slavery, kill a man and cook him into a meal before feeding his remains to his former colleagues, crucify a man, reprogram HELIOS One resulting in the slaughter of everyone there, blow up the Brotherhood of Steel bunker before Veronica's eyes, and much more.
    • New Vegas is the only one that offers you the chance to sell your companion to cannibals because they were short a main course.
    • You can exact revenge on the Legion for releasing a dirty bomb in an NCR held town by doing the same thing to their encampment nearby, killing everyone there including a family of slaves.
    • For consequence-free cruelty, you can attack Yes Man, whose submissive nature means that all he's able to do in response is to beg for mercy and talk about how much he deserves it. Of course, since he's an A.I., he can freely upload himself to any Securitron. Rinse and repeat.
    • There's one Legion quest that involves blowing up the NCR's monorail into New Vegas, then framing an innocent soldier so the Legion Double Agent can continue to operate in secret. One of the methods of killing the soldier, after planting evidence in his room? - distracting him with talk of a great prank you've cooked up, as you pull the pin out of one of his grenades.
  • Fallout's spiritual predecessor Wasteland allows you to attack some kids who laugh at you. As you kill them, more kids will appear and the atmosphere will get more and more creepy, ending with a puppy crawling into a dead child's arms and the camp suddenly looking as though it had been abandoned for years.
  • There are lots of opportunities for recreational mayhem in The Elder Scrolls:
    • All non-plot-important NPCs in Oblivion can be killed, making it possible to go on killing sprees of hundreds of individual characters. Plot-important characters can only be temporarily knocked unconscious.
    • But why just kill people yourself when you can get them to kill each other? The Frenzy effect causes the target to go berserk and attack the nearest person. Because it doesn't count as an attack, you can use it in the presence of guards without committing a crime. Riots are fun. You can start a Guard vs. Townsperson brawl that can result in every non-essential NPC in the town being ruthlessly slaughtered by the very guards that are supposed to defend them.
      • To add to the hilarity, drop some weapons on the ground (whatever kind you want) then cast the Frenzy spell. All affected NPC's will run over, pick up a weapon (if they don't already have one) and then go bat-shit on the closest person, friend or foe. Made even more hilarious on the PC version where there is actually a spell (added through a mod) that can both give and revoke essential status to ANY NPC. Yes, it is as hilarious as it sounds having a literally unkillable begger armed with with an enchanted Daedric longsword go on a murderous rampage. And the Grey Fox wants to help those little bastards too...
    • Poisoned Apples (which you get in the Assassins Guild quests) are a good source of fun. If you see an NPC sit down and eat, just put one on his plate. Ten seconds after they eat it and their poor, lifeless, limp body will be hanging from the chair.
      • Create a weak, but long-duration Destruction spell, say, 3 HP/Sec fire damage for 120 seconds. To the NPCs, that's a full hour of being on fire. Be sure to call this spell "Hell".
    • In the Shivering Isles expansion to Oblivion, part of the main quest requires you to reactivate a dungeon used to "greet" newcomers to the Isles. After you reactivate it, you see a group of adventurers come into the dungeon and enter 3 rooms. In each of these rooms, you get to hit one of two buttons to decide on the adventurers' fates. One of the buttons will brutally get them killed, while the other drives them insane.
      • Similarly, in the main game, there's one section of the torture caverns in Camoran's Paradise featuring an immortal in a cage hanging over a river of lava. There's a lever on the ground beside him. If you pull it, it dunks the cage and rises up another. Have fun.
    • Let's hack now shall we? Hack Hand-to-hand and adjust it to a disgustingly high level...now taunt someone into attacking us. BLAM!!! Knocked out for three days straight. Three days later....they get up, remember that you insulted their mother and then come after you again. POW! Three days later...BLAM!!!!
    • In a similar way to the hand to hand example above, custom fatigue draining spells can be added to zero weight items, which when reverse pickpocketed into the inventory of essential characters to leave them paralyzed and unable to die.
    • Good fun can be had with demoralize (fear) spells, causing NPC's to run around in panic.
    • Skyrim continues the tradition, adding shouts into the mix. Much fun can be had with Unrelenting Force, which lets you knock others a few feet into the air by yelling at them. You can shout others off a mountain, and spend a few minutes climbing down just to see how far they fell, or shout them into a river and watch them get swept away and into a waterfall.
    • The quest “Hitting the Books” at the College of Winterhorn involves recovering three books of magic stolen by an elf named Orthorn, who then ran off to join a group of summoners at Fellgrove Keep. When you get there, however, it seems these summoners - who are involved in some rather dark magic that involve experimenting on human prisoners - have double-crossed Orthorn and are keeping him as one of said prisoners. If you desire, you can just leave Orthorn to his fate; that alone is kinda evil. However, if you let him out of the cell and go on to confront the Caller, she offers to give you the books in exchange for Orthorn. You can refuse, of course (cue Boss Battle if you do) but if you really feel devious you can agree to that trade.
    • “Taste of Death” is one of the most infamous. The Quest Giver asks you to investigate the disappearance of bodies from a crypt. When you confront the ones responsible - a dark cult of cannibals - you’re offered a chance to join them in a plot to lead that same Quest Giver to his doom. And you can take them up on it! The craziest part is, siding with them actually gets you a better reward, making it something of a temptation.
    • Usually, adopting a poor, orphaned child isn’t considered cruel. Thing is, in this game, you can adopt an orphaned child even if you yourself killed the kids parents. Even if it wasn’t an accident… Even if they didn’t deserve it… See where this is going? Given this technicality, if you take a liking to some child, you could murder his parents in cold-blood and then raise the kid as your own.
    • Most of the Dark Brotherhood contracts aren’t the type Sir Galahad would approve of, but one that stands out is “Mourning Never Comes”, where the client - a young woman named Muri - asks you to kill her ex-lover, Alain Dufont; he’s clearly scum, having used her so he and his bandit allies could break into Clan Shatter-Shield’s HQ and rob the place. Even worse, the Clan blamed poor Muri for it. Muri is angry at them too, and also gives you a second, optional target, Nilsine Shatter-Shield. Now, Nilsine is really only guilty by association; Muri wants you to kill her so the clan will realize what they’ve lost. What makes this extra-cruel is simply put, the Shatter-Shields have already been through hell lately, Nilsine’s younger sister was recently murdered by a Serial Killer, and they’re already in mourning. In fact, if you ‘’do’’ kill Nilsine (which again, is optional) her mother kills herself in grief. You Bastard.
  • Fable allows you to slaughter practically every single person in the game, save for the first city (the laws prevent you from pulling out your weapon, but you can still pound away at innocents with your fists until they're unconscious), and if you're in a city, all you get as punishment is a high fine and a banishment from the area for a couple of in-game hours. In fact, in order to get one of the best weapons in the game, you need to sacrifice an innocent to an evil god at a certain time of night.
    • Best Level-up ever, or worst, uses this very mechanic in the first town. While the town proper does not permit weapons or even the mechanics behind them to work, it also makes the people unkillable. Thus, as soon as you enter the town for the first time, you can gain a huge in-game advantage through something referred to as the "Ike Turner Strategy." Step one: seduce a woman in that town (the men fight back, and can interrupt the chain). Step two: have her follow you to the adjacent area of docks, which is still part of the city so weapons are not permitted, but combat targeting and throwing punches are thanks to the boxing event. Step three: corner your immortal girlfriend in the warehouse via clever placement of crates, target her, and start swinging. Step five: pass the time. Change the TV to a movie, (maybe J-Lo's "Enough" to reduce karmic backlash) while holding the remote and tapping the attack button. In less than the two hours it would take to finish the movie, the physical XP earned (most notably from the CHAIN of successful hits) will be enough to MAX physical stats on a starting character. The only penalty is a similarly-maxxed out evil meter, fixable if you care to do so by killing bandits or just donating money to charity. The countless stories of spousal abuse buy-offs makes this a particularly ghoulish commentary within the game...
    • But why stop at killing? The game also lets you be an evil jerkass with business sense by permitting you to slaughter an entire village, buy up all the newly vacated property, and lease it to new tenants for cash. Murder for profit in the most literal sense.
    • It is indeed possible to kill people in Bowerstone, the city with the weapon prohibition. All you need to do is get the guards shooting at you with their crossbows and wait for some unfortunate collateral damage...
      • Why wait for the guards to do the dirty work when you can hire an armed mercenary who's inside the same city who is more than capable of killing NPCs?
  • Fable 2 takes this kind of thinking mans violence to new heights. The game has a semirealistic economy that functions as a result of how people are feeling. In short? Rampage through town to sink the economy, buy up all the property and jack the rent up to sink it lower AND make money faster, and then buy goods off your abused tenants at a hilariously low price!
    • In Fable 2, there's the Wheel Of Misfortune, which kills the sacrifice in a number of ways. There's one non-fatal fate: the victim is transformed into the opposite gender. (Which is, of course, hilarious.) As well, to get a special weapon that deals damage to "good" creatures, you need to sacrifice a spouse.
    • The best thing about killing your wives for a legendary weapon had to be the good points you got from doing it. Marrying a girl gives you 100 good points, x renown, and x money as dowry. Having a child with said girl gives you 50 good points. Sacrificing your wife for power gives you 100 evil points(-100 good points) and a small amount of corruption points plus money and with enough sacrifices the legendary weapon. You have a net gain of 50 good points for marrying, impregnating and then murdering a random girl.
      • As well, you can also sell people into slavery, rob stores, extort civilians for money, abuse spouses and your dog, carry out assassinations for quick cash and help drive at least one person to commit suicide.
    • Fable 2 also introduced subtargeting to the series. Yes, shooting people in the crotch or BLASTING THEIR HEADS CLEAN OFF THEIR SHOULDERS are perfectly viable tactics.
    • Try killing all the adults in a town, then buying back the children's affections with gifts. They don't care if you murder their parents in cold blood, if you give them toys, they will love you.
  • The underrated tactical superhero RPG Freedom Force practically LIVES by this trope. Every building, vehicle, tree, NPC, etc. is damageable & destroyable. This is somewhat balanced by the fact that you lose experience (or "prestige") if you cause too much damage and certain levels require you to protect specific landmarks, but that doesn't make whittling down an apartment building to near-death, then punching a civillian into it from two blocks away, therefore causing the entire thing to collapse any less hilarious.
  • Contact allows you to kill and attack just about everything you come across, from civilians to hapless livestock. You'll lose karma, though.
  • In Soul Nomad and The World Eaters, the game allows, and sometimes even encourages, you to do things to the various NPCs in towns and villages, such as stealing from them, beating them up, kicking them in the face, or forcibly conscripting them into your army. This is all menu-based, meaning the game is basically suggesting to kick people for no good reason. And let's not get into the Demon path, which basically calls you a wuss for all that.
  • Start a New Game + in Chrono Trigger just to take three hyper-powerful characters into Guardia Forest and unleash hell on some poor unsuspecting imps. Triple Techs, particularly Omega Flare, is a little bit of overkill on a critter with 30 hit points, but it's still somehow very satisfying to drop the equivalent of a magical nuke on some harmless little green thing.
  • In the Paper Mario games, there's the Whacka, an absolutely adorable little guy and a member of an endangered species. If you hit him with your hammer, you get the Whacka's Bump, which is a fantastic healing item. Go back and do it enough times, and you'll eventually have killed the last Whacka, you freak.
    • And then there's that toad in the station that talks about the cute little Whacka and how she wants to protect it or something. Little does she know that you plan on killing it! Once Whacka's dead, she still won't even know what just happened, and comment on how she hasn't seen him in a while, clueless the whole time that his last remains are now part of a delicious meal. Oh, and he'll explode in the first game like a defeated enemy, and even drop a few coins or even flowers (if drop-rate increasing badges are equipped).
    • The game literally asks you: "How do you sleep at night?" However, you need at least two of them to get 100% Completion.
    • In Super Paper Mario, if the player talks to Whacka, he'll remark that he doesn't think anything can ruin the nice day. That's before Mario showed up with his hammer. It's made worse after he dies: his Cragnon friend comes looking for him, and gets pretty depressed when she finds out he's gone. Tippi says the girl's heart is about to burst.
    • Try talking to him after you've hit him a few times. With each whack, he gets steadily more incoherent and confused...So even if you don't outright kill the poor thing, you've probably given him irreversible brain damage. Is 100% Completion really worth the cost of your soul? Especially since you don't actually get anything for it?
      • Well not exactly the LAST one. Only in the Paper Mario series. In Mario Party 6 about a million of them appear on the snowflake board.
    • In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door you can push your partners into water or even spikes; and the best part is that they don't lose any HP from it, unlike when Mario falls into them.
  • In The World Ends With You, equip Holy Light + Visionary Blend + Regen threads. Use Joshua (for extra fun, remove all his threads) on max level in Easy Mode and set the partner AI to Manual. Scan for and fight Jelly Neocoustics. Then pass the puck to Neku and watch in horror (or glee) as Joushua is repeatedly stunlocked by the jellyfish as Neku watches in the bottom screen, never being able to die because of the Regen and the Subconscious. For added fun, put your DS on AC power and the carnage goes on forever. You're welcome.
    • After completing the game, you can go back to Week 2 and use the Rhyme Pin to attack Reaper Beat. It's funny because they're siblings who love each other. It's impractical to do, but still.
  • In Valkyria Chronicles, you can either let your troopers rush towards the enemy for a suicidal (and admittedly, stupid) move, or sock a rocket right in the enemy's face. Your choice.
    • Ramming people with tanks does nothing but punt them around like a rag doll and make them scream in agony. If you want to be outright cruel to a mook? Stock up 20 CP and spend them all to just ram a poor guy into a wall with the Edelweiss. He won't die, and likely will be stuck there for him to die by your gatling gun on his turn. Oddly enough, the "ran-over by tank does zero damage" thing applies to enemy tanks, so if you want to be mean without losing troops... get your redshirts ran over by the Batomys.
  • Trapt, a game which consists of setting a complex series of traps to kill enemies. Said traps are rather cruel, especially 'Dark Illusions', environmental traps which require a bit of set-up, which can, for example send someone through the clockwork of a music box, complete with bone crunching sounds.
    • All of the Deception games, really. Skewering young girls on deadly wall spikes is pretty common... especially since then you can harvest their bodies.
  • You can complete the Bukamatsu (Ninja) Chapter of Live a Live by either doing a Pacifist Run and avoiding unnecessary kills (I.E everyone except the undead creatures and monsters you encounter. Bosses fall into said categories) or becoming death incarnate and murdering every NPC in the level, including women and harmless merchants. Either way will reward you with a powerful weapon for you to use in the final chapter.
  • Avernum. If you register, you can up your army until they are super powerful...and cheerfully wipe out the majority of the towns if you so desire. Even the super powerful guards cannot stop you! You can also set the days far in advance and not bother killing off the plagues of monsters. Townies will DIE if you do this! Having her husband killed by monsters makes the blacksmith lady very sad.
    • This is also doable earlier on with a highly skilled mage/cleric team combo. The mage summons monsters that do chip damage to guards, meanwhile the cleric continually summons higher level shades as meatshields and mobile obstacles. Made even simpler in the sequels due to simulacrum.
  • Final Fantasy Adventure actually allows you to kill citizens when you're strong enough.

Citizen: Hello there! Welcome to Topple!
Boy: This is Topple? Wow, nice. Well where's Wendell?
Citizen: Hello young man, welcome to Topple!
Boy: This isn't Wendell! Where can I find it?
Citizen: Hello young man! Welcome to Topple!
Boy: YEEEAARRRGGGGHHHHH! * Goes Ax Crazy and repeatedly slashes the townsperson until he vanishes and dies*
Citizen's death quote: Hello young man! Welcome to Topple!

  • Final Fantasy VII has one part where you can be a total asshat to Red XIII. When the party reaches the beach town from Junon for the first time, Red XIII sits in the shade and notices how his tail loves to bat the soccer ball the kids are playing with. You can smash the ball to Red XIII and hit him in the face, causing him to growl, but that is it. Best part is you can do this endlessly and Red XIII won't be mad at you later.
    • There is another part in the game where you get to be cruel and it's a part of the storyline! Around disc 3, after Tifa manages to escape from Shinra, Scarlett confronts Tifa and slaps her in the face. You then get to press O and slap Scarlett back over and over again until she gives up. Safe to assume that at least a few people made a separate save file just so they can go back and play the slapping mini game.
    • On Disc 2, when you go to get the submarine, there are two Shinra grunts and their superior inside. These are the guys Cloud met on Disc 1 while posing as a grunt himself, and as such, you can either take them prisoner... or just kill 'em dead.
    • There is a bird's nest in North Corel with a mother cockatrice and her chicks. You can choose to leave it alone or go for a treasure, but are strongly encouraged to leave it alone if either Tifa or Aeris are in your party. If you choose to go for it, the reward is ten Phoenix Downs, but first you have to kill the mother cockatrice. And the girls will make fun of Cloud's hair.
  • In Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers you have the ability to manipulate gravity. You use this power to toss monsters into one another and make impossible jumps. You can also use it to toss random civilians around. Some of them drop money when thrown. Old ladies are the most likely to drop Gil. It's like they want you to abuse your powers.
    • They do: There are achievements for getting an old lady who comes only when you've thrown a lot of them around, and one for throwing guards about and getting sent to prison.
  • Final Fantasy IX
    • One of the Knights of Pluto wants to quit the Alexandrian army to become a writer, and asks Steiner if he can leave the Knights. Steiner can either say that he'll eventually let the knight leave, but first he has to find Princess Garnet, or he can be a Jerkass and yell at the knight, telling him he can't leave before basically telling him to get off his lazy behind and find the princess. Either way, the poor knight runs off in tears.
    • The wonderful Thunder Plains, which are constantly plagued by thunder and lightning. You can take shelter near very tall pillars designed to divert the lightning, jump out of the way of a strike with good timing, or - if you're feeling particularly sadistic - let Tidus get struck by lightning. over and over again. For as long as you want. (Unfortunately, this feature was removed in Final Fantasy X-2.)
  • In the evolution-based RPG E.V.O.: Search for Eden for the SNES, there is a point in the second chapter where you are actually able to kill and devour a pair of helpful amphibians (one of whom is a child whose father sacrificed himself to save his species). Doing so causes a horrified Gaia to ask what you're doing. If you eat the meat the two provide, you're instantly killed. (That's karma for you.)
    • You can avoid dying, though, by eating one and immediately evolving in some way, restoring your HP to full.
  • Pokémon:
    • Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, a random NPC whose house you walk into says your rival scared him into giving away a rare Pokémon. He then gives you another, to keep safe. Go to the PC, and release it from the game. Upon returning to the NPC, when you talk to him he says 'How's my Pokémon?' And later he says 'I think I can have my Pokémon back now'. So it's kind of like "I think my psycho ex-wife might try and kill my cat, can you hold on to it for me for a while?" "Sure, naïve fool. Kitty go for solo plane trip now. Bye-bye forever, beloved companion." Although, if you seriously want to keep it and don't want to feel like a thief, you can max out its Affection before going to return it, and he'll want you to keep it. And speaking of which...
    • The happiness system. There are most of the time only things that increase a Mons happiness, which result in them evolving; on the other hand, you can also decrease their happiness by letting them faint in battle and giving them bitter medicine. Especially seducing with the Revival Herb, it resurrects your fainted Mon with full health. Besides the Max Revive (which only exists in limited quantities), it´s the only item with this power.
    • The move Frustration becomes more effective the more your Mon hates you.
    • Consequences of the (un)happiness stat have no impact on anything, really. The only exceptions are HeartGold and SoulSilver, where you could speak to your Mon and it would display a speech bubble, sometimes with an unhappy face.
    • Use Psychic with your Mewtwo on a level 2 Starly. Mind rape ensues.
    • Poke Park Wii: You can dash Pikachu into smaller mons and send them flying a few feet into the air. Most times out of ten, the victimized Poké will cry its little eyes out if it's one of the adorable ones. However, it's also averted with some. Dash or Shock a Pokémon like Scyther, and they will knock six bells out of Pikachu!
    • The 5th generation of Pokemon introduced Audino, a pseudo-replacement for Chansey. They're these adorable little pink, rabbity critters that can be encountered in nearly every patch of grass in the game under the right conditions. They also have an insanely high experience yield. Perfect for grinding, right? You Monster.
    • In Pokémon Snap, you can use Pester Balls to stun and/or drive Pokemon out of their hiding spots, just so you can take their picture. Taken to an extreme in Rainbow Cloud, where, in order to get a good shot of Mew, you need to nail it with dozens upon dozens of Pester Balls in a row, so that it stays stunned long enough for you to get a nice close-up picture.
    • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet introduces a mechanic called Auto Battling. If you encounter a large group of wild Pokémon that are much lower Level than one of yours, you can send out your lead Pokémon to fight them, which can defeat them quickly, assuming it is able to. (But you cannot capture them this way.) This is good for grinding and "power-leveling", but it does seem kind of... brutal watching your Pokémon mercilessly decimate an entire herd of Com Mons...
  • Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines makes it very possible to have a bloody rampage, slicing hobos to bits with a fire axe, snapping the necks of club kids, and eating hookers for a late night snack, but discourages this in two ways. One, killing innocents (as in, anyone not trying to kill you,) even when feeding reduces your Humanity, the game's Karma Meter. Having a low Humanity makes you more likely to frenzy, where you lose control of your character and try to drain any nearby juicebags dry. Also, any use of obvious supernatural powers or feeding when people are watching results in a Masquerade Violation, which results in Vampire Hunters following you around. Also, if your Humanity drops to zero, or you stack up five Masquerade Violations, it's an instant game over. However, there are limited opportunities to regain both Humanity and redeem your Masquerade Violations, so you can get away with this to a point. Plus there are enough opportunities for plot assisted cruelty as well: sending a hapless TV Show Host to be devoured by a flesh-eating Vampire, enticing a naive thin blood to attempt to assassinate the president, and arranging for a young woman to have her blood slowly drained and sold to local Kindred are just a few of them. All of these do cause your Humanity to drop though, so it's a fine line.
    • It's also worth mentioning a few of the clan-based vampire abilities, such as forcing the target (or targets) to commit suicide, attack their allies, get eaten by a swarm of insects, or have their blood boiled while they are alive. Have fun splattering the walls with blood and organs.
  • .hack//G.U. gives you Chim Chims, whose only purpose of existence is to get kicked by the players and have their cores used to open some doors in the dungeons. It doesn't stop there... Now try to run into those little critters with your steam bike. The game even rewards you for it!
    • And don't forget the Lucky Animals. They can be even cuter than the Chim Chims. And you're rewarded for kicking/running over them by the Lucky Animals themselves giving you special bonuses for being fast enough to kick them, such as item sets, money, temporarily increased stats, and a few saves from game over. Kicking the Unlucky Animals doesn't really give you any bonuses; it just rids you of any negative effects they give you if you don't.
      • It's worth noting however that most of the Lucky Animals are actually happy for you if you can manage to kick them.
      • Hell, there's a sidequest to kick all the lucky and unlucky animals, for which you get even more rewards. Same with kicking as many Chim Chims as possible. Kick the Dog in its most literal sense.
  • In Dragon Age you can do quite some cruel things such as slitting the throat of a kid instead of going into the kids dream and help him to get rid of the demon possesing him.
    • That is not even close to touching how much of a psycho you can act in that game. You can go into the kid's dream like you're supposed to and instead sell his soul to the demon. You can convince werewolves to slaughter a village of elves, desecrate religious artifacts, bait your party members into attacking you (they die of course), toy with the affections of your followers, allow a crazed woman to get her hands on a superweapon, backstab people both literally and figuratively, and generally act like the biggest asshole in all of Ferelden.
      • One particularly nasty possibility is romancing Alistair as a female PC, then sparing Loghain at the Landsmeet and having Alistair executed. Condemning a man who loves you to public, humiliating death? That's a level of soul-crushing personal evil worthy of Planescape: Torment. The Practical Incarnation would be proud.
    • Dragon Age II continues the tradition; the game's Grey and Gray Morality means that there are compelling arguments for and against a lot of the things you can do, but there is no justification for some of them. For example: one of your companions, Fenris, is an escaped slave on the run from his blood mage master. When his master inevitably catches up with him, you can help Fenris fight him off... or you can hand him over, saying you don't need him any more, leaving Fenris so gutted by your betrayal that he leaves with the slaver without a fight.
  • In Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, the player character can set companions characters up for some really brutal party conversations. Viconia's romance also allows the player to take her to bed when it's clear she'd rather not. Thankfully, this ends the romance and avoids Rape Is Love.
  • In the Destroy All Humans! series you can do many horrible things to the citizens such as dropping them from high heights, mind tossing them off into the distance, burn them, drown them, blow them up,etc.
  • In the prologue of Golden Sun, you encounter a guy who's apparently wounded and asks if you think he's going to die. Answer "no", and he realizes he's not actually hurt. Answer "yes", and he dies.
    • The game turns off Random Encounters in Sol Sanctum once everybody in your party reaches Level 3. You can avoid this by getting Jenna killed before she hits the cap; she's not going to be in your party much longer, anyway. Might want to loot her stuff before she goes, too.
    • Ignore those oddly-placed trees in Kolima Junction. Oh, wait, those trees were people, and because of your neglect an innocent girl just got washed away downstream to an unknown fate.
    • You can drop a crate on one of the Kibombo guards in The Lost Age and watch him flail around underneath it. I can't remember if this is necessary to get past him or just to grab an item nearby.
    • Also in The Lost Age, a bit of Fridge Logic turns taking the treasure from Treasure Island into cruelty towards Champa, since they were using that treasure to restore their economy. You just forced them to remain pirates.
    • Dark Dawn brings Slap Psynergy to the table. Its main canon uses are bopping statues on the nose, slapping sleeping things to wake them up, and knocking Djinn and friendly pirates down from high places. Said pirate is understandably peeved with us for doing so.
      • However, the dev team thought of one more: You can ring the emergency gong in Tonfon, sending the city into a panic, and then blame a guard for the false alarm.
    • Dark Dawn also has two locations where you can see seemingly-inaccessible Mercury Djinn. The trick as it turns out is hitting them with Fireballs so they dive in the water to cool off, and then you either drain the water or find a local fisherman to get the Djinni for you (by catching it on a fishhook).
  • Persona 4 allows you to cheat with all six datable girls at the same time. And get away with it. Completely.
  • Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning allows you to toggle friendly fire so you can freely slaughter helpless villagers. One of the loading screen tips even encourages you to do it! And of course there are the obligatory dialogue options that let you blackmail/extort people.
  • In Task Maker, you can kill any NPC with a Neutral alignment and get little more than a few points taken off. This includes shopkeepers, guards, etc. And if you're feeling really cruel, use a Restart Place spell to reset the location and do it again… and again… and again…
  • Undertale + Genocide Run = This Trope. Frankly, it is impossible to achieve that ending by accident, because you'd have to make an effort to hunt down and kill every single mob on every single map, until they stop respawning. Even if you go in "blind" without knowing the game's meta-heavy plot, you'd figure out quickly that something is very wrong with this approach. Most players who achieve this ending did so because they read about it online and wanted to "try it out" and anyone who succeeded is called out on it from the game itself.
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