But Thou Must! in first-person shooters.
Examples where giving the "wrong" answer makes it impossible to proceed until you give the "right" answer (including giving Non-Standard Game Overs):
- Averted in Far Cry 4. At the start, when Pagan Min tells you to see and eat, you would think the only way to advance would be to disobey him and go exploring on your own. Nope. If you stay in the room for about 13 minutes, he'll return and take you to another, secret ending.
- Far Cry 5 averts it once but frustratingly does not for the rest of the game. As above, at the start of the game you're tasked with capturing Joseph Seed. Wait long enough without doing so and you walk away to the secret ending where everyone lives. However, later you must repeatedly let yourself get caught by the bad guys or the game will spawn infinite enemies. In another case, you're taken to an imaginary Leap of Faith and the game won't proceed until you jump.
- Although it's at the end of the game, and you don't restart at the last checkpoint, Half-Life is arguably one of these. Evidence for this is given at the end of Half-Life 2, where the G-Man's monologue doesn't have any sort of choice and includes a line about how he'll be deciding what you do "rather than offer you the illusion of free choice".
- There's also the time in Half-Life 2 when you must climb into a prisoner pod to get farther into the Citadel. Your sole options at this point are climb into one pod and get killed by an electrical beam a few feet down the track, or climb into the other pod and hope you find a way to get out of the thing farther into the Citadel. Obviously, you do find a way.
- The PC FPS Operation Flashpoint's expansion campaign, Resistance, offers the player a choice to either help the invading troops' army by revealing the location of a member of the titular resistance, or be summarily executed in the second mission. Obviously, given the title of the game, you are expected to escape and join said resistance in fighting off the invading force, but you can actually accept the invitation to help the invasion force. You're even given a unique mission to find the location of the resistance's base of operations, upon which you are again given the choice to join the resistance or carry out the mission. Of course, since the leader of the invading army is not a very rewarding leader, he'll execute you if you carry out your mission anyway, so it's pretty much in your best interests to join the resistance.
- The old FPS/RPG Strife has very limited dialogue options. When someone asks you to do something you basically have two options: "Yes, I'll do it" and "I'll get back to you on that." Sometimes you get three options: "Yes, I'll do it," "I'll get back to you on that," and "No, I won't do it, so please cause dozens of guards to spawn in and shoot me dead so I learn my lesson." Noticeably, one early character named Harris works by this logic, yet talking to him at all can and probably will make the game unwinnable, because he asks you to steal an item which makes another character you have to talk to to progress instantly hostile.
Examples where giving the "wrong" answer has little or no effect:
- In Deus Ex the player is constantly given choices that have some impact on how the game plays out. Despite this, you can't choose your allies or enemies until the game decides that you trust them. Justified barely in that having people shoot you on sight is a lot less about how you feel about them and a lot more about how they feel about you.
- In a particularly egregious example when you are given the mission of killing your own brother, if you try to actually do so he ignores being repeatedly shot and just says "stop kidding around, J.C.".
- And later in that mission, the game makes an invincible enemy and removes your escape chopper, forcing your "death". Though, to be fair, it does give you the option of surrendering.
- It's worth noting exactly how much this looks like it would avert this trope. After sending the rebel's signal and going back to Paul's apartment, you're surrounded by men in black. It is possible to shoot or sneak through all of them, which takes you to the hotel lobby, crammed with soldiers. Once again, you can shoot or sneak through all of them and head outside. Jock will then say that he can't set down the chopper here, so you've got to head to Battery Park instead — while the streets are crawling with patrols. You can then use a code to open the subway gate, and take it back to the park... where you will then meet with Anna Navarre, if she's still alive out for your blood. If you then kill or sneak by Anna, and take the stairs up out of the subway, you will then meet the invincible Gunther. He will offer you the choice to surrender or fight — fighting will make him and his surrounding army shoot you up until you have the Fake Death. Even if you use cheats to get past everyone, you can't get to the chopper or even walk out of the park — the exits and chopper are behind Invisible Walls. So close and yet so far!
- It's even possible to do so without cheating: Gunther and his soldiers are neutral until a second after your conversation with him ends (or you get past their line), so you lure him down while staying out of his "conversation range" and then go back. You're still walled in by big metal boxes and military bots, but you can peacefully get past the boxes with microfibial muscle or speed enhancement, at which point the soldiers will attack you anyway.
- Without even exploiting glitches: By this point, you've been given more than enough thermoptic camo to escape from that area without difficulty - if you brought it along.
- And even later, before going to the Ancient Conspiracy's headquarters, you're given two dialogue options, both of which result in you getting knockout gassed and dragged there unconscious.
- The sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War gives you at least two factions telling you what to do every step of the way. More often than not, they are telling you to do almost the exact same things, and even when they aren't, the most you get from the faction whose goals you ignore is a bit of dressing-down for it and/or claims they won't trust you "next time", before they go right ahead and trust you with another mission. In the end, you are given a choice to tell them all to shove it and leave you alone, but that of course still plays into at least some of their plans.
- ULTRAKILL: When you reach the final gate leading to Act 2's Superboss, you're asked if you're sure you want to open the gate. If you say "no", you get a message saying "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA a s i f y o u h a d a c h o i c e", and the gate opens regardless. The very particular style it's written in implies (going by the related ARG) that this is Hell itself deliberately invoking this on you For the Evulz.
Examples where there is no "wrong" answer available to choose:
- While you are fighting the Final Boss of Atomic Heart, both Sergey and Sechenov repeatedly offer to stop fighting and try to talk things out since neither are really willing to kill the other. Despite that, you can't Sheathe Your Sword, and attempting to do so (by ceasing to move or shoot back) just results in a normal Game Over as the boss beats you to death. Sechenov makes it clear that he only wants Sergey to remove Char-LES and after the boss fight states that Char-LES was pupeteering P-3's body, so Sergey may not have been physically able to take the glove off no matter how much he wanted to.
- BioShock:
- BioShock deconstructs this by revealing that you've been brainwashed so that whenever you are told "would you kindly" by your guide or other characters, you literally must. The deconstruction lies in the subtle commentary on how the player has been following these same orders simply because the game tells them to and that's the only way you can beat the game.
- BioShock Infinite follows suit by placing it in the context of a Pensieve Flashback. When Booker is protesting the fact that he has to give his daughter to Robert Lutece, Elizabeth tells him "You don't leave this room until you do."
- In The Darkness, a variation of this occurs: After finishing the "boss fight" with Uncle Paulie, despite The Darkness repeatedly saying that if Jackie kills Paulie, he'll lose his mind and soul to The Darkness forever, you absolutely have to finish him off. The door is suddenly locked for no obvious reason, and if you delay to try to let him get away, he instead grabs a hidden gun and starts shooting, forcing the issue.
- Far Cry 2 was originally meant to allow the player to choose who to work for and how they went about finding and killing the Jackal. This was dropped in favor of a completely linear storyline where you simply perform missions for both sides without either side deciding "Hey, maybe we shouldn't hire the guy who just completely screwed us over 5 times in a row". No matter which side you do more missions for, everything turns out the same; all that changes is the order in which you kill certain named characters at the halfway point (one on the orders of the opposing faction, then the other as payback for their faction betraying you).
- The game's buddy system, as regardless of your relationship with your friends, you must kill them by the conclusion, as if they don't die trying to save you, then the game forces you to kill them by the end.
- Kind of lampshaded in Half-Life 2, where the G-Man tells the player: "Rather than offer you the illusion of free choice, I will take the liberty of choosing for you..."
- This was also a nod towards the But Thou Must ending of the original Half-Life, where G-Man gives you a choice between working for him, or a certain death. Perhaps he is in fact aware of all the assorted Freemans (Freemen, hah) that did prefer to go up against an army of Alien Grunts armed with nothing more than dead silence.
- In the final level of Mondo Agency, you are told not to push the buttons. There is nothing else to do except maybe walk off the platform and die. Pushing the three buttons causes the President to wake up and face you, start screaming at you, and fall to his death, in that order. Upon returning to your superior, he yells at you and fires you and you are taken to the credits.
