Video Game Cruelty Potential/Video Games/Visual Novel

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Examples of Video Game Cruelty Potential in Visual Novels include:

  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney may not seem like this at first. But consider: in his quest to clear various clients, Phoenix drives several witnesses to tears. Including an eight-year-old boy.
    • In case 2-3 Acro turns out to have killed Berry accidentally while trying to kill Regina because she accidentally killed his brother Aero. At the end of the case, Regina asks is Acro is going to come after her. The "correct" answer is to say "No," and to show her some evidence, but's there's no real reason you can't say "Of course he is!" and send her off in tears.
      • Halfway throughout the case, you'll run into Franziska during the second investigation phase. For every irrelevant piece of evidence you present to her, she whips Maya. You can do this for as many times as you like without any repercussion.
    • In case 2-4, the game forces you to accuse Adrian Andrews, an innocent woman who has just solidified herself as The Woobie of murder in order to stall for time. For a client that you know is guilty as sin.
    • In Investigations Case 5, you run into the Steel Samurai, who reveals himself to be Larry Butz. If you present the wrong evidence to him during the one invesigation phase that lets you talk to him, Larry refuses to look at your evidence because he's too busy staring at Franziska. Franziska promptly offers to "sear her image into his mind for eternity" by sending him on a "Whippity-Whip-Trip" into unconsciousness. This is probably the one time in which presenting wrong evidence in an investigation phase can be pretty satisfying...and hilarious.
    • Case 1-4 had two examples of this with the buttmonkeys of choice being Lotta and/or Butz. At some point Gumshoe will offer you either a dog (Missile), a fishing rod or a metal detector to fish for Gourdy to find key evidence for your case. The correct choice would be the metal detector, but the two other options can lead to this. For Lotta the player can take the fishing pole which Maya will use in the lake to fish for Gourdy, only to trip and fall, causing Lotta's cameras to react and waste more (very expensive) rolls of film than you already wasted earlier in the case. For Larry the player can take Missile who will react automatically to the aroma of Larry's Samurai dogs the minute you get into the park, let alone the crime scene, causing the aptly-named poochy to run like a missile and chow down on all of Larry's hotdogs, making him lose his (at this point, already doomed) business. For added butthurt, you can also show Missile to Larry after the puppy ate his entire revenue.
      • Lotta's the Butt Monkey even if you don't get the fishing rod. If you don't Maya sneezes setting off the camera anyways.
  • Half of the fun of playing Winter Shard is the freedom it gives the player to be the evilest, sickest bastard imaginable if they want to play Frederone like that. It won't get you anywhere near the True ending, though.