Strawman Has A Point / Video Games

• In the Titans expansion pack campaign of Age of Mythology, Arkantos' son, Kastor, has been wreaking havoc, and Ajax and Amanra are tracking him down. Ajax declares that he wants to cut off Kastor's head for his crimes, but Amanra defends him, saying that he may be tricked, or maybe misguided. We are supposed to side with her in the argument, but regardless if Kastor is tricked or not, he still ordered his men to carry out attacks across multiple continents, causing the deaths of hundreds of men, including both Ajax and Amanra's, just because 2 Greek scouts attacked him first for repairing a temple to a Titan. Even if Kastor is the son of a close friend, Ajax can't just ignore his crimes, as many innocent people have been killed. The only reason Amanra suspects trickery is by the word of Arkantos (who has ascended to godhood).
• The ad campaign for Dead Space 2 highlighted its self-professed tasteless disgustingness by showing some middle-aged women squicked by it. "Your mom hates this" was the tagline. "Why would they even make something like this?" one woman asked. Good question, ma'am, good question. Moral Guardians and Media Watchdogs naturally were not pleased. (However, there was also a fan-made version (again using real mothers), one of whom laughed when she saw the same images, creeping out the younger people around her.)
• Superman in the first Injustice: Gods Among Us is meant to be seen as wrong for having killed the Joker (which led to his Start of Darkness and ended up turning him into a tyrant). In fact, people like Batman or Alfred in the comics give him the cold shoulder after this and Catwoman even treats him as a serial killer who can't wait to strike again. The problem is the same as in the other instances where the Joker is presented: he's the Joker! In this universe he managed to kill millions thanks to a nuke...while making Superman semi-responsible of all the deaths, including the deaths of Lois and her unborn child. This pushed him real hard into the Despair Event Horizon, in a way where no person, superpowered or not, could have maintained his sanity intact...and yet he's lambasted for not keeping the moral high ground despite the fact that the Joker more than deserved to be executed for his crimes (and most likely would have been anyways thanks to what he did). While it does not excuse all the awful things that Superman did later, it's pretty hard to blame Superman for killing someone who did something so horrid. He was under a modified version of Scarecrow's fear toxin — the same toxin that causes people to act crazy and out of character.
• In Dragon Quest IX, the Celestrians are charged with guarding the Protectorate (i.e. Earth) and collecting Benevolessence (concentrated gratitude) from mortalkind (i.e. humanity). The main way to collect Benevolessence is to care for humans, protecting them from monsters and solving their problems. However, when you speak with them, you quickly learn that the Celestrians hold the mortals in obvious disdain, which is treated as a negative trait of the Celestrians themselves... except the Celestrians exist — as a race — to protect and clean up after mortals (one of the Hero's first tasks in the game is to clean out a stable full of horseshit while the nearby farmer is napping). This would be an obnoxious job at the best of times — and the Celestrians have been doing it for hundreds if not thousands of years, and for most of that time there's been no end in sight. On top of that, their attitude is eminently justifiable — they exist to solve the problems mortals cause.
• The Jackal from Far Cry 2, on his interview tapes, sounds a lot more logical than the game seems to want you to think of him as, given the tape descriptions. While many of them are blatantly morally wrong, his logic to justify what he does makes a scary amount of sense. This is especially invoked in the tape asking him why Africa, when he gives the interviewer a small Hannibal Lecture, asking him if there's someone else's home he doesn't care about that he should sell weapons in. He might have been intended to be right all along, given that his ultimate goal is to help all the refugees and sane people escape the nation while the two warring factions all kill each other, and he even kills himself in the process to make sure his arms dealing can't cause another conflict like the one in the game. This is even more stark in the complete edition, which is sadly no longer available. With all of the bonus missions and audio tapes installed, it becomes obvious that the man you replaced on the hunt for the Jackal slowly realized that the Jackal was the only man trying to prevent the brush war from turning into an outright genocide, especially once the local factions stopped relying on their own men and started hiring foreign mercenaries who are just there to kill people and steal blood diamonds.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening briefly mentions at one point that the previous Exalt of Ylisse started a great war against Plegia in the past with the intent to wipe out the Grimleal. While this normally would be religious persecution, the fact that every Grimleal met in the entire game is a cultist who wants to cause the apocalypse just because, means that wanting to wipe them out isn't exactly an unreasonable response given the info known.
• In Killzone, the Helghast are portrayed as being Nazi-alikes that attacked the very America-like ISA, brutally fighting with war machines, super weapons and human experimentation. But reading into the backstory of the series shows that the Helghast got royally screwed by the ISA for decades before that point and during the series. Being left to fend for themselves on a Death World because of an ISA-backed MegaCorp, having everything destroyed by the ISA just as they were building it up, having heavy sanctions and blockades placed on them by the ISA, having their planet blown up, being forced to relocate to the ISA homeworld and be treated like second class citizens, and there was a rogue ISA general that tried to start a war so he'd have an excuse to wipe them completely. All this combined with them just being so much cooler and more cunning than the overaggressive, bumbling ISA have contributed to a lot of fans Rooting for the Empire. The devs seem to be taking notice, as Shadow Fall has Graying Morality on both sides and gives a mission where you play as the Helghast hero Echo.
• In Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Master Eraqus may be a big anti-Darkness Knight Templar — as seen when he tries to kill two of his own pupils to end Master Xehanort's plans for them — but given the near-endless amount of Dark Is Evil in the series — and said pupils later having worse fates anyway — one can't help but find him Properly Paranoid.
• League of Legends: Qiyana, Princess of Ixtal, is an unrepentant Alpha Bitch who believes Might Makes Right. However, she's not wrong in that Piltie miners entering Ixtal and freely stripping their resources needs to be punished, lest Ixtal lose their authority over the region. Furthermore, in her color story Fit to Rule, her older sister is scared of everything and completely unable to protect the village under her control from miners and should not have been assigned that role. While Qiyana is rude and thinks little of the common people, she will still protect them because they are her subjects and she has the power to do so. In-universe this is even acknowledged by Qiyana being by far the most popular member of the Ixtalan royalty.
• Little Busters!: The bad end for Kudryavka's route has Riki asking her to stay in Japan instead of going to Tevua to check in on her family. He's meant to be portrayed as selfish since this may be the last chance she has to see her family, and he's asking Kud to choose him over them. However, at this point in Kud's route, Tevua was in the middle of an armed conflict over its space program, which led to riots engulfing the region. Riki tries to rationalize his actions by pointing out Kud would be in danger if she were to leave, which is exactly what happens. If Riki lets Kud leave, then she ends up getting kidnapped by the rebels and gets chained up in a cave. She only manages to escape and come back to Japan unharmed due to her route's Deus ex Machina ending and the nature of the artificial world, which Riki was unaware of at the time and had no way of knowing.
• Mass Effect 3: During the meeting with the Council after escaping Earth, regardless of which one it is, they shut down Shepard and Udina's alliance argument with the pragmatic fact that with the Reapers focusing on Earth, they can use the time they have to start defending their own borders. The game treats this as a selfish act typical of the Council, and a sign that they still view humanity as expendable despite years of them attempting to prove themselves to the galaxy, but when one really thinks about it, it's hard not to see their point. Many fans have been annoyed with Shepard's obsession with Earth, pointing out that Earth isn't the only important planet in the galaxy and that it makes sense trying to save what can be saved and pile resources instead of wasting them trying to regain lost causes. While Shepard and Udina are absolutely correct that they need to work together, it doesn't give them the right to dismiss the Council as misanthropic and cowardly just for looking out for their own people.
• STAG in Saints Row: The Third do some pretty extreme things to fight crime. That said, consider how much mayhem the Saints and the other gangs cause on a regular basis - enough to either appall or impress real-world terrorists. It's enough to make one wonder why the US government didn't try clamping down earlier.
• This is a common criticism of Spec Ops: The Line. While the game goes out of its way to portray Martin Walker as a monster who's trying to blame others for things that he is clearly responsible for, a lot of players couldn't help but feel the events of the game really were out of his control. As it stands, the game doesn't give you any other options besides the various atrocities you commit; in the infamous white phosphorous incident, enemies infinitely respawn until you pull the trigger and you don't find out about the civilians you kill until after the deed has been done. Most of the other 'atrocities' can simply be chalked up to self-defence. The developers anticipated this reaction and state that there is another option - stop playing the game - but this has led to some critics Stating the Simple Solution - don't buy the game in the first place! One critic even argued that attempts to blame the player were just a cowardly way to absolve the developers of any responsibility for making the product in the first place, which in turn makes the lesson that you shouldn't blame others for your actions completely hypocritical.
• Valkyria Chronicles:
  • General Damon is Ambition Is Evil personified; he happily sends Squad 7 on suicidal missions as a meat shield for his own soldiers just to pad his own win-loss ratio. This comes to a head when he captures Selvaria, swooping in after the battle is over to take credit, and has her pistol-whipped to knock her out. Welkin and Alicia act like this is just the most horrible thing ever, but Damon counters with a pretty solid piece of logic: she's a Valkyria. The only safe way to take her alive is to do it while she's unconscious and unable to use her magic powers. When she regains consciousness, she uses those powers to detonate a castle and destroy the entire army in very short order.
  • Faldio spends most of the game being punished for awakening Alicia's Valkyria powers because he cared more about military power than the free will of a Gallian citizen. But, as he points out, if he hadn't done it, there would be no Gallia to fight for because it would have been conquered via the otherwise-unstoppable military power of a Valkyria. Everything about his character arc revolves around him committing this terrible act and eventually dying to redeem himself because of what a horrible thing it is to do, aligning itself with the "war is bad" themes of the story, but Gallia only survives the war because of what he did.
• Warcraft III:
  • During the "Culling of Stratholme", Arthas is informed that citizens of the town of Stratholme have eaten tainted food. This food has been cursed by the Legion to cause anyone to become undead after eating it. The response from Arthas is to kill all of the citizens before they become the undead. This is meant to be a Moral Event Horizon for the player (it's one in-universe for Uther and Jaina), and meant to be his Start of Darkness. The problem is that the situation was beyond salvaging, and Arthas' solution is, while brutal, by far the best option available. The citizens are already in the process of either becoming mindless undead slaves or getting killed by their infected neighbors, evidenced by the fact that most of them had already begun to turn. Uther merely says "there must be some other way," while offering no other way whatsoever, as it's known in-universe that there's no cure for undeath. The only other option they even seemed to have was waiting for the townsfolk to turn then killing them, which isn't really any more merciful while being far more dangerous.
  • In the Frozen Throne expansion, Maiev is treated as becoming a Knight Templar for continuing to hunt down Illidan after he has atoned for his crimes. However, besides the crimes Illidan was originally imprisoned for, he's also caused significant damage to the world and killed numerous Night Elves, including Maiev's second-in-command Naisha. Illidan's "atonement" only amounted to saving Tyrande's life because he's in love with her. A more accurate condemnation would be leaving Tyrande to die and lying to Malfurion, saying she'd seen Tyrande ripped apart by the undead.
  • Daelin Proudmoore is presented as a racist warmonger who can't let go of the past and is punishing the current Horde for the actions of the old Horde. Not only are many (if not most) of the higher ups in the new Horde leaders from the previous one, but in World of Warcraft, the Horde launches two separate unprovoked wars because their Warchief told them to. Given the Horde's actions under both Garrosh and Sylvanas, Daelin's insistence that the orcs will never truly change rings more true than Blizzard likely intended.
• Mr. Hattrick in Bully wants to get Mr. Galloway fired because Galloway is an alcoholic who drinks during school hours. Galloway is supported by the students because he's one of the very few teachers at the incredibly dysfunctional school who is kind and genuinely tries to teach the students, while Hattrick is an asshole, a hypocrite, and a bribe-taking bully who's been mistreating Galloway the whole time the two men have been colleagues. (Which is part [not all, but part] of why Galloway's drinking has gotten so bad.) But... Hattrick is still absolutely right that Galloway's drinking is out of control, especially since Galloway drinks during class and hides booze all over the school. In real life, being fired would be the least of the consequences Galloway might face as a result of this. Likewise, many schools would (and do) forgive bribery and abuse of students in favor of sacking the alcoholic, even if he's the only teacher who's actually doing any teaching.
• In Gears of War Judgment, Colonel Loomis is portrayed as being overzealous in his on-the-spot trial of Kilo Squad for their unauthorized use of the Lightmass Missile against Karn, and the game established Karn as being a serious threat in his own right in addition to being in command of the Locust forces attacking Halvo Bay. Colonel Loomis is presented in the wrong. But look at it from his perspective; Kilo Squad stole a weapon of mass destruction (low yield as it might have been comparatively, it still created a very large explosion) to deal with a threat that Loomis had only heard about from them, used said weapon against their own city in order to kill said threat, repeatedly defied direct orders to do so, and using the missile turned out to be completely unnecessary. Karn survived the blast unharmed, and you end up killing Karn on foot with five people in your squad. And unauthorized use of military hardware is a serious crime in real life. Loomis is a General Failure and The Inquisitor General, and it was stupid to hold a trial in the middle of a warzone. But arresting Kilo Squad was entirely called for.
• Pokémon:
  • In Pokémon Black and White, Team Plasma's position on the immorality of owning and fighting with Pokémon was a smidge too hypocritical to win many fans to their side, but does make the rest of the cast less likable, as few compelling or complete retorts are ever made. The closest thing to a retort that most people can come up with is basically "Well, I take care of my Pokémon and they seem to like me!" which is pretty spurious. Drayden brings up one point that would be solid — "if my Pokémon hated me, they would just leave" — if it were actually true, as there's no such mechanic in gameplay, and countless cases within all kinds of Pokémon media of a Pokémon hating its master or suffering abuse from them and staying beside them regardless. This is perhaps at least one reason why in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, Team Plasma underwent a major schism, resulting in a "New Team Plasma" that dropped all philosophical pretense and are more blatantly terroristic, while the "Old Team Plasma" consisting of people who truly believed in taking care of Pokémon are played in a much more favorable, noble light.
  • During the Delta Episode in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, Zinnia destroys Cozmo's link cable meant to get rid of the incoming meteor on the basis that a different dimension (implied to be the original Ruby and Sapphire) would be destroyed instead. Cozmo angrily retorts that Zinnia has no proof, which is entirely correct since she refuses to (or legitimately can't) provide evidence that she's right about the existence of sentient life in the other dimension, let alone that the meteor is guaranteed to cause it any damage. Worse yet, he's almost validated when Zinnia's attempt to Mega-Evolve Rayquaza nearly fails due to having lost too much power. If you hadn't chased Zinnia to Sky Pillar, her plan would have failed. Cozmo's plan truly was their only hope, and Zinnia's plan only works out of pure luck. As a result, Zinnia would have doomed their Earth to save a theoretical one, and the only reason that things work out is because the player has the Meteor Shard.
• Tales of Xillia 2 still has some members of the terrorist group Exodus. When they do cause destruction, it's often played up as being for no good reason. But when one thinks about it, they are trying to prevent peace between Elympios and Rieze Maxia, which is lead by Gaius, whose actions in the previous game were all done with the goal to eradicate life on Elympios (either by flat-out destroying the world or by indirect means) and has shown no open remorse for his previous actions to the open public. As it stands, the remnants of Exodus can be seen as trying to prevent peace with a man who could very well backstab them in the long run. The English version removes majority of these hints, causing them to lack this point and being nothing but terrorists for no reason.
• Normality is a lighthearted example, taking place in a Crapsack World where fun is outlawed. (A parody of a dictatorship, sure, but a rather transparent way to run one.) Thing is, if Kent Knutson, the protagonist who is arrested for having fun, is this society's idea of a fun guy, then maybe they have something here: He's an idiot.
• Batman: Arkham Series
  • In Batman: Arkham City, it's treated as a given that the player, as Batman, will stop the League of Shadows' plan to wipe out all the criminals locked up in the titular prison a la Protocol 10. However, the Enemy Chatter portrays the criminals as Card Carrying Villains who are only kept in line by their fear of their even worse bosses. The game shows what horrible crimes (including poisoning thousands of civilians with the Joker's blood, just to motivate Batman to find a cure) the criminals can commit from inside the prison. The previous game showed that therapy as it exists serves only to get the therapists killed, maimed, traumatized or brainwashed by their criminal patients. Neither prison nor asylum can hold Gotham's supervillains for more than 6 months, letting them rack up another big body count before Batman stops them again. Given the lack of viable alternatives to protect the people of Gotham from Batman's rogue gallery, the League of Shadows' plan begins to sound reasonable. Oracle even asks if standing back and letting the League do its work would really be for the worse with Batman only shaking her from that train of thought by pointing out that there are political prisoners that are only there because of actions taken against the League rather than actual guilt of being criminals.
  • Batman: Arkham Knight has the DLC adventure "A Matter of Family". The cops who Batgirl rescues through the story (which happens shortly before the events of Batman: Arkham Asylum and those inspired by The Killing Joke) all beg and vouch for Batgirl to kill the Joker for the stuff he's done to them. This is obviously meant to be seen as a wrong mentality since Batman and his allies don't kill criminals... but when one sees all the stuff that the Joker has done (such as what the Joker and Harley did to the amusement park's owner and her daughter), and will do in the future to Barbara in particular, and all the death, suffering and horror that would come out of them in general, it may have been better to follow their advice and finish him off before he set into motion all the events of the series.
• Fan-made Pokémon Insurgence has this with Jaern, the Second Augur, when talking about the First Augur. Freely admitting that his actions can be seen as extreme, he points out that the First Augur did his job of eradicating the cults in the Torren region. But that said First Augur also decided to not punish cult members begging for forgiveness, which did nothing, as said cult members never learned anything and simply left to join a different cult, inflating the membership of said cult.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II has an example where the strawman is the protagonist (and where said protagonist isn't a Villain Protagonist or even an Anti-Hero). At the beginning of the climax of the game when the group starts to assault the final dungeon of the main game, Rean asks why his sister is aboard the state-of-the-art airship of the empire, the Courageous. Elise claims that she's there to support her big brother and hopefully help motivate him to come back. Rean then starts making excuses that she shouldn't be there when the rest of the party, his sentient Humongous Mecha, the acting helmsman, and the acting captain of the ship are telling him to let her stay so that Rean will have someone to go back to. Except A: all of the people inside the Courageous are military students so they're hardly qualified to even pilot a ship belonging to the royal family and the only reason why they're there is to rescue the crown prince, B: Elise is pushing it as she's a civilian, has no military training, and can barely use a sword in a world where the adult enemies are some of the most dangerous characters in the series that even the protagonists can barely handle one round from them, and C: the Courageous isn't exactly a safe place as it's constantly under attack by the much larger ship, the Pantagruel. While Rean is an overprotective big brother who constantly worries over his sister, he isn't exactly wrong about Elise in that she is in one of the most dangerous places of the Civil War especially taking into account that she was kidnapped for a majority of the game. One of the many reasons why she's The Scrappy in the eyes of the fandom.
• From World of Final Fantasy, there's the Bahamutian Federation and the Civic Rank system which could theoretically be easily made into something good. In a nutshell: do stuff to help society (running a business, cleaning up trash, and reporting crimes are all listed as options) and get rewarded, be a selfish prat and get punished. Granted, yes, the way the idea was being handled was bad (ie. condemning harmless old men to the slums because their health problems won't let them be helpful) and there are plenty of other reasons why the Federation is bad, such as sending monster armies to invade peaceful kingdoms. Oh, and of course the Civic Rank system isn't even real anyway, it's just an excuse to get people to give up their souls to the Big Bad while thinking they're being helpful to their community. Still, there could be decent arguments made for the Civic Rank being a really good idea if it was handled better.
• Two examples in Final Fantasy XIV:
  • When the player finally goes to The Empire, you encounter Garleans (who are unable to use any magic themselves, relying off of Magitech instead) who not only resist your attempts to "help" but even call the Eorzean Alliance out for invading their land. While intended to show the consequences of Garlean propaganda portraying the magical using races as savages, they are right in that the Eorzean Alliance is actually invading Garlemald - and offering "help" that they didn't ask for. What certainly doesn't help is that Garleans were oft vilified and the victims of Fantastic Racism.
  • The Samurai questline in "Stormblood" left many people with a sour taste. The central theme of the expansion was how Ala Mhigo and Doma fight against The Empire that occupies them, and overthrow a society that leaves many oppressed. The Samurai questline for Stormblood is... about putting down one such rebellion. Not a single person disagrees with the one who instigated the rebellion, but they are dismissed and vilified for "disrupting the peace".
• In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the "Dark side" option on Tatooine is to... side with Czerka and the Jawa and kill all the Tusken Raiders, while the "Light side" option is to side with the Tusken Raiders and give them a piece of technology that will allow them to move out further into the desert so they won't step on anybody's toes. Already somewhat of a Broken Aesop considering who the Tusken Raiders are, but the Jawa have every reason to support this action. The Jawa are not only as indigenous to Tatooine as the Tusken, but the Jawa prefer to deal with Czerka since Czerka happily hires them and most importantly does not kill them on sight like the Tusken do. It's kind of hard to see this as truly "Dark side" considering that the "Light side" option is essentially agreeing to look the other way to what the Tusken Raiders did and letting them get away with murder.
• Mega Man X4 makes a big deal out of how wrong it was to label the Repliforce as Mavericks when they refuse to disarm and be questioned for their alleged involvement in a terrorist attack. However, when their response to being asked to disarm and be questioned is a kneejerk move for independence because "disarming would be dishonorable", to start a war where they begin attacking, occupying, and even in one case destroying a city, and going on to build a massive Kill Sat which is aimed at Earth to serve as their new home, one wonders exactly how undeserved labeling them as Mavericks really was. Capcom apparently realized this, as Mega Man X5 would go on to show they actually did have Mavericks among their ranks in Burn Dinorex, and the manga depicted Repliforce in a much less sympathetic light as a much more overtly ruthless and villainous organization.
• In Octopath Traveler, the Arc Villain of Ophilia's story, the Savior, has a Boss Banter with her during their battle where he tells her that Lianna's desire to resurrect her father is more important to her than her and Ophilia's sisterhood, and that Lianna had never considered Ophilia family. Ophilia counters that Lianna once helped her recover from the pain of her parents' deaths with her kindness and love. However, some players—particularly those who think Lianna is Unintentionally Unsympathetic—believe that the Savior makes the stronger argument; not only was Lianna willing to drug her adopted sister with a sleeping draught so that she could steal Aelfric's Lanthorn to use in a ritual to the local God of Evil for the mere chance to resurrect her father (which turned out to be a false hope), but after the Savior admits that the ritual's true purpose is to sacrifice his followers to said dark god in exchange for power to Take Over the World, Lianna admits that she still can't think of anything other than her desire to see her father again, leaving it uncertain if she would have aided the Savior if he had already told her that the ritual requires sacrifices. Japanese culture's views on orphans like Ophilia doesn't help, either.
• Master Detective Archives: Rain Code:
  • Yomi Hellsmile is supposed to be seen as in the wrong for accusing Makoto, the CEO of Amaterasu Corporation, of being part of a conspiracy when Makoto and Yuma confront Dr. Huesca in Chapter 4, since Yomi is designed with the purpose of being disliked by the audience for being a Jerkass only concerned with his own desires. The game never acknowledges it but Yomi was actually right about this, as Makoto had been plotting against him the whole time, and was indeed taking part in a conspiracy of his own, as revealed in Chapter 5.
  • Icardi, the member of the Resistance in Chapter 3 who kills the leader, Shachi, due to the belief that the Amaterasu Corporation Peacekeepers were too powerful to battle against, is supposed to be seen as in the wrong due to the destruction and chaos that his cynical beliefs lead to. He's actually right, as the Peacekeepers tried to disband the Resistance upon finding out about the Resistance in question, and in terms of the overall plot, the Peacekeepers have been constantly targeting the protagonists by trying to kill them at any opportunity, with the Peacekeepers being in a non-stop cycle of pointless violence. His point isn't false, but he certainly conveys it in a way that makes him look in the wrong.

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