Top 10 Dumbest Moral Choices in Video Games

This ancient longsword is one of the two most powerful weapons in the game, and you have to be on your worst behavior in order to get it. At “Fable’s” climax, the Hero must murder their own sister to bring the sword up to full power because she’s part of the Archon’s powerful bloodline. However, there’s just one problem: you’re not presented with this choice until after Jack of Blades, the final boss, has already been defeated, so you don’t even need such a powerful weapon. And then if you destroy the Sword of Aeons instead, you’re granted the equally powerful Avo’s Tear, so what exactly do you gain by killing your sister?

The Little Sisters are unsettling at best when you first encounter them, but they’re the real victims at the heart of “BioShock.” The result of genetic experiments, they travel through Rapture gathering ADAM, the city’s most valuable substance, and you can choose whether to rescue them or harvest them, taking all their ADAM for yourself. But this choice has very little gameplay repercussion, since if you rescue the Sisters, they’ll leave you a gift of ADAM outside a Gatherer’s Garden, meaning you end up with basically the same amount regardless. If that wasn’t bad enough, the game’s evil ending isn’t remotely satisfying and is not considered canon. You’re better off rescuing them all.

Maybe this choice would be harder if it wasn’t so easy to accumulate money in “Red Dead 2”, but by the time you get to the end of Chapter Six you’ve probably bought everything you could ever need – so why would Arthur return to the camp alone, to try and rescue the gang’s savings instead of helping John get to safety? While we know John will survive no matter what since he has to go on to star in the original game, Arthur is in the late stages of tuberculosis by this point, so why would he need the money anymore if he’s going to die anyway? Of course we’re going to help John. You don’t even get to keep the money if you choose the latter, since Arthur dies at the end of this mission no matter what outcome you pick.

When a deadly plague begins to ravage the village of Kausos on Kephallonia, Kassandra or Alexios is roped in to decide what to do about a particular family. They don’t have any symptoms of illness, but the priests insist on killing them to contain the outbreak, and you have to choose whether to side with the priests or the pleading family. But with modern knowledge of how diseases are spread at your fingertips, it becomes clear that even without symptoms, the family could still spread the plague if they’re allowed to live. And, true to science, if you let their pleading get the better of you the Blood Fever spreads to the entire island – so why would you ever choose that?

While “InFamous” might pride itself on complex moral decisions, some of the options are a little too black and white, including the first one Cole ever faces. When a food cache is airdropped into the city and gets stuck on a monument, it’s down to Cole to get the supplies to the people – or shoot the crowd and take all the food for him and Zeke. It’s more of a choice between blue lightning or red lightning, because aside from that, there are no in-game consequences for this action. Cole won’t be weaker if he lets the people take their food, and he won’t be stronger if he has it all for himself. He gets in Trish’s bad books, but that’s about it.

Rather than become the android messiah Markus is destined to be, if you fail all of his missions – either by accident or on purpose – Markus will be exiled from Jericho in favor of North taking over. Though he can choose whether to return to the ship and save his fellow androids when the humans attack, or cut and run to save himself. If you choose to save only Markus, you’re treated to a brief cutscene making it clear that the android revolution never happened, before getting booted back to the title screen. While there, Chloe the menu android tells you your choice was a “malfunction”. It seems this choice was so dumb, Quantic Dream didn’t even want to go through with it.

After playing through dozens of hours with “GTA V’s” three protagonists, the final mission thread is given to Franklin: he either has to kill Michael, kill Trevor, or team up with them to take down the FIB once and for all. There’s no real incentive for Franklin to betray his closest allies, especially not when the option to side with both of them for an epic shootout is readily available. The only reason not to do The Third Way is if you simply want to see all the endings, but even then, betraying Michael and/or Trevor still isn’t consistent with Franklin’s character.

Catwoman may not be the best moral compass, but she draws the line at leaving Batman to die – even if it does mean she gets away with all her loot. But this didn’t stop Rocksteady from presenting this choice to the player like leaving Batman to his doom actually makes sense. If Catwoman doesn’t help the Dark Knight, Joker is able to take over Gotham and wreak havoc, causing untold horror and destruction as related by Oracle over. But the worst part is that even if you do choose this, the game just rewinds until you make the “right” choice and rescue the Bat.

The entire game is spent battling for control of Project Purity and the right to distribute safe, clean water to the Capital Wasteland. But if you’re feeling particularly dastardly, you can go along with President Eden’s plan to install the modified Forced Evolutionary Virus into the purifier and poison everybody instead. Eden’s reasoning is that the Wasteland needs a “clean slate”, but the option comes way too late in the game to be compelling. It’s not a choice with any nuance, since all you’re really choosing is whether you want to have good or bad karma rather than grappling with what the best future for the Wasteland is. And then “Broken Steel” came along and it didn’t even matter.

Jason Brody spends all of “Far Cry 3” desperately trying to rescue his friends and escape the island to return to America. But when you get to the end you can choose to just forget all that, kill your friends, and go along with what Citra wants you to do. While it does show just how far into violence Jason has descended, it’s still odd to be given the choice of murdering your own girlfriend or completing the story you thought you were playing the whole time. Even if you do pick Citra though, it turns out that Jason was never the hero he thought: Citra stabs him in front of the tribe. He should really have quit while he was ahead.