Informed Wrongness / Video Games

• In the Ar Tonelico series, we're repeatedly given examples of Reyvateils being treated like trash...but we're supposed to assume the fault lies with them for "not trusting in others" enough, thus requiring the main characters to fix what's wrong with their heads. For the most egregious example that comes to mind, Misha didn't want to be locked up in a room all her life singing, and for this the game wants us to assume she's a whiny brat (and we're also supposed to assume The Hero was in the wrong for telling his father off for this, since it was his father's idea).
• Assassin's Creed: Odyssey:
  • The end of the Fate of Atlantis DLC tries to paint Layla skewering Otso Berg as proof of her being corrupted by the artefact she's holding. Except he's the leader of a black ops team who's just revealed he's been following Layla since the game began, has tried to kill her teammates as recently as a few days ago, actually did kill Layla's best friend, and violently refused an attempt at a truce just two minutes prior, hence the skewering. Layla fighting back and badly injuring the guy is more like basic common sense.
  • Before that, there's Victoria taking the staff, demanding that Layla is being corrupted and needs to make a choice between the staff or her. Yes, the staff's effects on Layla are clearly concerning, and Layla taking the staff back does result in Victoria's death, but the staff is also an item that may well be vital in the saving of the planet, while Layla's actions are in the name of attempting to master its power - rather than just rip Layla out of her Animus session that is providing the teaching for this mastering attempt and demand she make a choice, one would think Victoria would pick a better moment to discuss this. Instead, though, this is played as Layla falling prey to the corruption of the staff, instead of a horrific accident caused by one person pressing an issue at a really bad moment.
• BlazBlue: Chronophantasma has Kokonoe wanting to sacrifice Celica to activate the Lynchpin needed to defeat the Imperator near the end of the story. Ignoring the fact that Celica is a clone and will die in six months regardless of what Kokonoe does, the only option other than doing what Kokonoe suggested would be to unleash an arsenal of nukes and render Ibukido uninhabitable that may solve the problem that everyone is trying to solve, the protagonists' plan is "hopefully we'll think of something" despite the fact that if they waited so much as half an hour, Ikaruga would be destroyed and the rest of the world would be next.
• During Detroit: Become Human, robot-protagonist Connor is given the option to shoot a hostile, errant stripperbot involved in a murder, who turns around to charge at him after a vicious brawl. This is, all things considered, textbook self-defense, but Connor never describes it as such and his partner Hank will chew him out for an unjustified application of lethal force, along with a major decrease in their relationship.
• If the protagonist of 80 Days considers helping the Black Rose with a robbery but doesn't go through with it, he will feel guilty for some reason when the Rose confronts him about it. And his "betrayal" is so shocking that it convinces her to never trust anyone ever again.
• The ending of Fallout 3 is widely disliked due to the game railroading you into a Heroic Sacrifice. The player has to enter a room filled with lethal amounts of radiation to input a code to activate a purifier that will explode and kill everyone if not activated soon. You are given three primary choices: going into the room yourself, not doing anything, or sending a companion into the room. The game treats you going into the room, killing yourself, as the "right" choice, but you'll have a number of companions at this point immune to radiation that you can also send into the room instead. At launch, these companions would outright refuse to do so if asked to do it, even the one which was previously established to always obey you. A later DLC update allowed you to do so, but doing this will have the narrator berate you as a coward, despite the fact entering the code yourself would be an incredibly Stupid Sacrifice.
• Final Fantasy IV: When the party first meets Prince Edward he's in tears, having being the sole survivor of a massacre that killed his family and his girlfriend. Their response to this? Shaming him, slapping him and ordering him to stop crying. That's right, he's treated as a spineless weakling for daring to grieve after having just witnessed all his loved ones getting slaughtered.
• Many players feel that a lot of the "evil" player choices in the The Force Unleashed series just veer too far into this territory instead. The first game's Light Side ending paints Starkiller as He Who Fights Monsters if he kills Palpatine... Never mind that (A) Starkiller has repeatedly used Dark Side methods and powers for good purposes before (including in this very battle) anyway, (B) he clearly just wants to finally be rid of this complete Sociopath rather than outright replace him, (C) Palpatine has frequently proven throughout the Star Wars franchise that his continued survival is only an overwhelming negative for the Galaxy, and (D) Palpatine is not above feigning defenselessness to throw the good guys off guard, which means he remains an active threat so long as he's alive, and he proves this less than ten seconds later in this very scene, forcing Starkiller to make a Heroic Sacrifice that would have been unnecessary if he had just killed him without distraction when he had the chance. Likewise, the respective Dark Side ending paints Starkiller's decision to kill Darth Vader as a Moral Event Horizon deserving of a Fate Worse than Death... even though (A) Starkiller has already suffered plenty in advance because of the guy; (B) Vader here retains little-to-none of his famous Noble Demon qualities from other parts of the franchise; and (C) Starkiller still tries to help the good guys afterward, thus being more of an Anti-Hero instead of actually invoking Face–Heel Turn. And the sequel's Dark Side ending doesn't even give the main Starkiller clone the chance to act on anything remotely consequence-worthy, simply giving him a Diabolus ex Machina death right then and there (in the form of another Starkiller clone, the Dark Apprentice — who, mind you, makes absolutely no appearance in the respective Light Side ending — suddenly appearing and stabbing you from behind with his lightsaber)... In addition to this, the Dark Side ending also somehow results in the death of Juno; instead of merely being unconscious like she was during the Light Side ending, she's inexplicably dead.
• At the end of Grand Theft Auto IV, Niko is offered a chance to work with Dimitri Rascalov for a butt-load of money. If Niko decides to put aside his grudge against him and do the deal, Kate gives him shit for abandoning his principles for money when all he really did was abandon common sense for money. You can even argue that he shows something akin to moral fiber by making an earnest attempt to let bygones be bygones so they can both benefit.
• Harvest Moon: Back to Nature: If you build a fence out of Gold Lumber, the entire town will hate you. Everyone, including the kids, will berate you at your home because they feel insulted. Harris threatens to arrest you, Carter claims the gods will punish you, and the Harvest Goddess herself gets angry. The only thing the protagonist has done "wrong" is flaunt their wealth.
• In Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Master Eraqus is painted as a narrow-minded Knight Templar who's too biased toward Light and against Darkness. However, while he definitely suffers from Poor Communication Kills, his beliefs themselves keep being reinforced by the franchise's very mythos — which always paints Darkness as the dangerous force and Light as the protective force, respectively — with the exception of one single character (Riku) who eventually learns to use Darkness without corrupting himself (but even then, he still cuts it close more than once, and he ultimately favors Light anyway). Additionally, it's that same Light Is Good mindset that enables Eraqus's Heart to ultimately reinforce Terra's against the full brunt of Master Xehanort's Dark Is Evil possession, as revealed in the Blank Points secret ending.
• League of Legends: The Lux comics paint Sylas as being in the wrong for stealing Lux's powers to free himself from being executed. But given that Sylas had already been imprisoned for a decade without a trial and was being sentenced to death on a whim of the ruling class and Lux couldn't stop the executioner herself, it's hard to see what alternative he had besides forcibly freeing himself.
• Metroid: Other M:
  • Samus leaving Adam Malkovitch's command to become an independent bounty hunter against his will ^note This drastically retcons the manga in which Adam actually encouraged Samus to leave and was her first client after she became a bounty hunter. is treated as a terrible decision and an act of betrayal toward her father figure (yet Adam doesn't really act like one in the flashbacks). Adam clearly resents her for this and this is why he's reluctant to work with her when they meet again years later. Samus belittles herself saying "I was young and naive" then proceeds to "redeem" herself by acting extremely obedient to Adam including one infamous instance where she doesn’t activate her Varia suit in a lava-filled area because Adam hadn't authorized it. It is later revealed in the game that her decision was motivated by the death of Adam's brother Ian with whom she was very close. Still it doesn't explain how quitting a job is something of an irreparable black mark especially when according to the other games her career as a bounty hunter was quite successful (she defeated the space pirates and saved the galaxy more than once) and when she said that she felt uncomfortable among her misogynist teammates who looked down on her.
  • The Big Bad Melissa Bergman/MB was a clone of Mother Brain created by the Galactic Federation to control their bioweapons. Despite this, they became a sympathetic figure until her developing personality and independence made them decide to reprogram her, with her parental figure failing to stand up for them causing her to snap. Samus pities her staying it was the wrongful treatment of her that pushed to villainy, except it doesn't seem that wrongful given she was one of the most dangerous villains reborn displaying all the red flags for A.I. Is a Crapshoot and attempted galactic genocide for the actions of a few.
• In Persona 5, there's the Phantom Thieves stealing Kunikazu Okumura's heart, which has the unintended consequences of Okumura being murdered by his co-conspirators, who proceed to frame the Phantom Thieves for his death, and which the Phantom Thieves believe is proof that they've become so preoccupied with their fame that they've lost sight of their goals. The problem is that Okumura is at least as bad as most of the Phantom Thieves' major targets, having run his food corporation in an exploitative way, assassinating rivals and setting up an Arranged Marriage between his daughter Haru and the son of a Diet member in order to launch his political career, despite knowing that his soon-to-be son-in-law is a violent creep that views Haru as a plaything. The Phantom Thieves are initially hesitant to steal Okumura's heart, even with possible evidence that connects him to being behind the mental shutdowns (he didn't do it, but he did request some of them, which is just as bad), since they don't know for certain whether he's guilty. That only changes once they meet Haru, who reveals that she's known about her father's misdeeds for some time, and that she'll soon be forced to move in with her fiance. While it is revealed that the Conspiracy hacked into Mishima's site to make Okumura the most requested target, the Phantom Thieves had good reason to target him: He was still a murderer and was going to sell his daughter off to an abusive asshole.
• Sonic's alliance with Eggman in Sonic Lost World. After accidentally freeing the Deadly Six from Eggman’s control and they start to suck the planet dry of its life-force, Sonic accepts Eggman’s help to disable the extractor. This isn't an unreasonable decision since Eggman created the machine and does not want the world to be destroyed however Tails berates Sonic for trusting Eggman more than him. Although Eggman later turns against Sonic, this happens after they successfully stop the Deadly Six. Yet for some reason the game sides with Tails and ends with Sonic apologizing for "doubting him".
• Invoked and played for laughs in Tropico 5 when Socialism is researched:
  Penultimo: (heavyhearted) Presidente, don't research that. Don't you know that if you do, you will then research Socialism. Which everyone knows is bad. We should stick to our current model of capitalist cronyism. I, my friends, and and all my relatives think is the best model for government.
• Valkyria Chronicles has the flinders of its moral lessons all over the place, but the Valkyria in general get the gold star for this one. We're told in no uncertain terms that Valkyria powers are Bad News, but we're never really given a good explanation for why that is; the closest we get is the fact that one guy in the entire world would want to exploit them for personal gain. One guy. Who dies at the end of the game after his homemade artificial Valkyria power-armor crapped out on him. But, since Ambition Is Evil and the Valkyria make tanks look like tinker toys, everybody who doesn't think that those powers are evil ends up crushed to death by raining anvils.
• The protagonist of Undertale's decision to kill some attacking monsters during a Neutral Run tends to cross into this territory, as they tend to be judged for killing monsters who were trying to kill them first. While it's true it's entirely possible to win every fight passively, it's not like the protagonist attacks NPCs or monsters who leave them be making it clear the protagonist understands the difference between combatants and civilians and is acting out of self-defense, nor does the protagonist have any issue interacting with or even befriending non-aggressive monsters cementing that they don't view monsters as a threat due to Fantastic Racism.
  • From a meta-standpoint the criticism is more justifiable as the protagonist's in-universe ability to rewind time including in the event of their death means they are never truly in mortal danger and can simply try again if they accidentally get someone killed, but most monsters aren't aware of this yet still hold a seemingly-normal lost child to an impossibly high moral standard.
• An oft-criticized aspect of The Walking Dead (Telltale) games is that you are often brow-beaten by players for whatever decision you make, no matter the scenario, and no matter what options you actually had, because they will find some excuse to argue why it was wrong, but it is at its worst in Season 3. Suddenly in the final episode, the game decides that you are supposed to sympathize with The New Frontier, the band of bloodthirsty child-murdering raiders who wipe out settlements, kill dissenters via Kangaroo Courts, and outright enjoy what they do, because one of their own members accidentally blew open their wall trying to kill you and let zombies in to begin killing their members. Suddenly every decision you've ever made opposing them, and even the act of opposing them itself, is now portrayed as wrong because they are getting killed by their own actions and you are supposed to care about "these poor people who are dying because of you".
• World of Warcraft
  • Arthas is framed as being in the wrong for culling Strathholme, as Jaina and Uther leave him because he crossed the In-Universe Moral Event Horizon and even stripped Uther of his rank and exiled his knights when he refuses. However, the story doesn't present a clear reason why this is wrong aside from having Jaina and Uther say it it's bad, and the fact he is condemning innocent/not-infected people to death, the later being extreme for sure. However, neither Uther or Jaina saw how quickly the plague spread and infected people, making it difficult to find those who aren't infected, neither give Arthas any advice, alternative suggestions, or even try to reason with him better when it is clear he doesn't want to purge the city, but feels he has no other option to do so. Uther instead makes a vague "there has to be another way" before condemning Arthas for his order, and Jaina pulls a Screw This, I'm Outta Here and leaves, leaving Arthas without any other alternatives except to purge the city. Plus, Arthas ended up being right that there was no saving those infected, and doing so saved the rest of the kingdom from falling to the Scourge (though he would be the one to undo that later). Thus, many players felt Arthas being framed as wrong doesn't make sense with what is shown on screen, and shown in the rest of the series, and feel he made the right call in a truly bad situation. Blizzard's inability to fully settle on how they view it doesn't help either; Jaina sees herself as wrong for not staying and stopping him, but in Shadowlands Uther is framed as in the right while Arthas was the one who was wrong, leaving it harder to tell how wrong the scene was meant to make him come across.
  • During the Rage of the Firelands patch, the Night Elf Druid Leyara switched sides with Fandral Staghelm and became a Druid of the Flame because her daughter had been killed in one of the Horde's attacks on Ashenvale, an attack she felt could have been prevented if Malfurion Stormrage had taken a more proactive stance against the Horde. When he learned of this, Malfurion seemed to believe she was being unreasonable, but many players felt her anger was justified (and perhaps even agreed with her line of thinking, at least right up until she jumped off the slippery slope).
    
    The funny thing is that Leyara was supposed to be a Take That, Audience! towards the Alliance players who'd been complaining about the Druids' neutrality, but the way she was presented made players sympathetic to her and caused them to view Malfurion as even more of a Jerkass than they had before.
  • In the novel Wolfheart, King Varian is the only Alliance leader to refuse membership to the Worgen of Gilneas. Why? Not because they're Worgen but because Gilneas stood by behind their great walls and let their former allies be destroyed by the Undead, the Legion, and then later the Forsaken. Everyone tries to tell Varian not to be unreasonable, but Varian was forced to see the fall of many nations in the North while Gilneas buried their heads in the sand and refuses to offer aid when needed, so it isn't unreasonable he has reservations about giving help to someone who formerly refused to help you when you needed it. Naturally, Varian not only ends up liking the Worgen by the end of the novel but even leading them to counter-attack the Horde. His original reservations are simply brushed aside.
  • In Mists of Pandria, Jaina is portrayed as wrong for trying to purge the Sunreavers from Dalaran after discovering that the Horde had used them to sneak in and take the Divine Bell for themselves, with Varian calling her out on it, and the Blood Elves leaders treating her as a monster for doing so. The problem is that Jaina's reasons are shown for both factions to be somewhat justifiable: the Sunreavers did take advantage of their position as essentially part of neutral faction to allow the Horde to break into another city, their leader knew they were doing so yet allowed it to happen, and Jaina had, after everything that Garrosh's Horde had done to her, allowed the Sunreavers to stay due to recognizing the need for them to remain as a neutral faction, showing she was able to put aside her feelings enough to work with them, only for them to backstab her. While Jaina killing those who don't surrender is extreme and wrong, her reaction is somewhat understandable given the Sunreavers are in the wrong for violating her trust and helping Garrosh. Worse, Varian tries to call her out on this because her actions ruined a secret meeting he had with the Blood Elves to convince them to join the Alliance, but Jaina didn't know that was happening, so it isn't like she did so knowing what would happen.
  • In Garrosh Hellscream's final confrontation with Thrall, he accuses Thrall of forcing the title of Warchief on him when he wasn't ready and making him into what he is. The writers obviously intended this to be a desperate case of Never My Fault on Garrosh's behalf. However, many players sympathized with Garrosh, feeling that Thrall had failed him as a mentor. Despite obviously wanting to build him up as a right-hand man and protégé, Thrall never made any serious attempts at reining in Garrosh's racism and warmongering, he romanticized Garrosh's father Grom as a great hero despite those same flaws being present in him, and he continuously rewarded Garrosh with higher and higher positions within the Horde, culminating in him being named Thrall's successor as Warchief over better-suited characters like Cairne and Vol'jin, something that was seen as a bad idea by many even at the time. While Garrosh should certainly be held responsible for his actions, Thrall both enabled him by putting him in a position of power, and failed to teach him how to lead wisely, so to see him just brush off all wrongdoing rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
  • Xe'ra is said to be controlling and prejudiced against those who use powers besides the Light. The writers even intended to make her a case of exploring that not every Naaru is good from the player's perspective. Given that Illidan is coming close to He Who Fights Monsters and both Fel and Void often induce The Dark Side Will Make You Forget, she has a point about an aversion to non-Light powers; while it was wrong of her to omit that Naaru can turn into Void Gods, if she wanted to avoid that fate herself it makes her aversion to anyone using the Void understandable. Yet this purported prejudice didn't stop Xe'ra from recruiting people like the non-Light-using player characters, NCP Archmage Y'mera and Alleria (prior to Alleria's using the power of the Void, and even then Turalyon and Lothraxion talked her into being merciful. The fact that Turalyon and Lothraxion were both able to talk Xe'ra out of a more merciless approach proves that she's not controlling anyone, even the Lightforged Draenei). She's also a Naaru who's rallying people to help people fight the Burning Legion. Not only does it turn her into a Base-Breaking Character, the story treats her as if she's some Holier Than Thou fundamentalist and nearly everyone involved ends up disagreeing with her (except Turalyon). Despite Velen needing her help and being devoted to her cause (as recently as the Battle for the Exodar scenario, he suddenly switches face and doesn't object to Illidan killing her, only criticizing her decision to try to force the Light on Illidan. No one else called him out on this either except Turalyon. It's also egregious as the story is obviously Character Shilling for Illidan, but Xe'ra doing it is treated negatively.
  • A number of characters feel the Arbiter was unfair in how it decided what afterlife a soul goes to because it "Used cold logic and didn't account for what the soul wanted". Along with that, a couple characters explicitly state they expected to go to a different afterlife than the one they were assigned. However, the Arbiter makes it's decision by experiencing the entirety of each soul's life before choosing where it will go and is never once shown to actually be wrong. Alexandros Mograine thought he should be in Bastion rather than Maldraxxus but learning the details of each made him realize the latter actually did suit him better. Likewise, Vashj admitted her envisioned afterlife of being pampered by servants for eternity would get boring very quickly and she prefers the intrigue of Maldraxxus. The only souls that ever go somewhere that isn't ideal for them are the ones where outside forces interfered, usually someone working for Zovaal sending said soul to the Maw.
• This trope is why people began Rooting for the Empire from the initial previews of XCOM 2. Yes, the aliens have taken over Earth... and they've created advanced futuristic cities that people are offered the choice to move to, where they will be free of poverty, hunger and homelessness, they have shared incredibly advanced technology with humanity, and even provide free hospitals where genetic tailoring has severely reduced, if not eliminated, all manner of ailments and afflictions, like many genetic defects, cancer and AIDS. Even their Police State actions are justifiable since, y'know, there's a bunch of xenophobic conspiracy theorists running around blowing up hospitals, assassinating government officials, and murdering law enforcement officers. Really, the Advent initially comes off as being no worse than most human governments and in many ways better than they are. The informed wrongness completely disappears, however, when you discover that the aliens are still using humans as fodder for their experiments instead of treating them like people, and their hospitals and gene clinics are merely fronts for harvesting genetic material in order to find psy-capable gene sequences. A note is made by the XCOM resistance that all of the cases of missing persons last went to the clinics before vanishing.