History IDidWhatIHadToDo / VideoGames

-->''Makoto:'' [[spoiler:I had no choice. They must eat in order to survive.]]

*** Although in [[VideoGame/MassEffect3 ME3]], you discover that [[spoiler: the Spectres knew that [[TheExtremistWasRight Shepard was telling the truth]] about the [[EldritchAbomination Reapers]]]] - turning [[spoiler: Tela]] into either a complete hypocrite or a foolish cynic, knowingly working with someone actively trying to screw over the galaxy's [[PlayerCharacter best hope]] for survival by turning over his/her [[spoiler: [[OnlyMostlyDead almost-corpse]] over to the [[BrainwashedAndCrazy Collectors]], rather than the aforementioned [[WellIntentionedExtremist Cerberus]], who - [[AsYouKnow as you know by now]] - ended up constructing a new body for Shepard's frozen-but-completely-intact brain.]]

* The ''VideoGame/NintendoWars'' game ''Advance Wars: Dual Strike'' has the player, as Jake, be presented with a choice: Either he can kill the BigBad, who is [[EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt draining the life force out of the entire planet]] in order to extend his own life, and has ([[OffstageVillainy presumably]]) killed millions if not billions of lives in doing so, or he can sit and watch as the villain wipes out all life on the planet to extend his own life just a little longer. Maybe this would trouble a normal kid, but Jake is ''a military officer who has just fought a war to get to this point'', and has ordered the deaths of hundreds, if not tens of thousands of [[WhatMeasureIsAMook enemy soldiers]] and [[WeHaveReserves made decisions that inevitably lead to his own units' deaths]]. In fact, you are graded upon the ''efficiency'' with which you mow down your opponents and minimize sacrifices. If you, for some reason, decide not to save the world, [[TheAtoner Hawke]] will do it for you... [[YouBastard you coward]].

* ''[[VideoGame/AdvanceWars Advance Wars Dual-Strike]]'' has the player, as Jake, be presented with a choice: Either he can kill the BigBad, who is [[EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt draining the life force out of the entire planet]] in order to extend his own life, and has ([[OffstageVillainy presumably]]) killed millions if not billions of lives in doing so, or he can sit and watch as the villain wipes out all life on the planet to extend his own life just a little longer. Maybe this would trouble a normal kid, but Jake is ''a military officer who has just fought a war to get to this point'', and has ordered the deaths of hundreds, if not tens of thousands of [[WhatMeasureIsAMook enemy soldiers]] and [[WeHaveReserves made decisions that inevitably lead to his own units' deaths]]. In fact, you are graded upon the ''efficiency'' with which you mow down your opponents and minimize sacrifices. If you, for some reason, decide not to save the world, [[TheAtoner Hawke]] will do it for you... [[TakeThatAudience you coward.]]

* Liberated soldiers (including the main characters) in ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles3'' will often invoke this when justifying their lives of warfare prior to being freed from the Flame Clocks; since their continued existence was dependent on constantly replenishing the Clock's reserves through killing and fighting was all they'd ever been brought up to know, they'll often insist it was an understandable necessity. As the game goes on, some people start to have less conviction in referencing it, and the party speaking to a few later NPCs even question how hastily they'll let themselves off the hook with it.

* At the end of Episode 4 of ''VideoGame/SallyFace,'' Ashley says that Sal [[spoiler: was found by the police muttering, [[MadnessMantra "I had no choice, I had to do it, there wasn't any other way," to himself over and over]] after being [[KillEmAll forced to kill everyone in Addison Apartments]] in order to prevent [[BigBad The Red-Eyed Demon]] from being able to find a new host to inhabit.]]

* ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn'': General Aaron Herres authorized and spearheaded Operation Enduring Victory, which was [[spoiler:essentially an elaborate propaganda campaign that fooled humanity into thinking the Zero Dawn project would save them when he knew it wouldn't, and then used that as a justification to throw billions of lives into the meatgrinder to delay the [[GreyGoo Faro Plague]] as much as possible, despite knowing that the best case was still [[ApocalypseHow the extinction of all life on Earth]]--Project Zero Dawn was not a weapon to save humanity, it was a terraforming system meant to restore the world after everything was destroyed. He [[LiarRevealed reveals this in full]] to the Zero Dawn recruits, and leaves behind a final message in APOLLO openly admitting that he's effectively a worse mass murderer than the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Ghengis Khan combined]].

* ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn'': General Aaron Herres authorized and spearheaded Operation Enduring Victory, which was [[spoiler:essentially an elaborate propaganda campaign that fooled humanity into thinking the Zero Dawn project would save them when he knew it wouldn't, and then used that as a justification to throw billions of lives into the meatgrinder to delay the [[GreyGoo Faro Plague]] as much as possible, despite knowing that the best case was still [[ApocalypseHow the extinction of all life on Earth]]--Project Zero Dawn was not a weapon to save humanity, it was a terraforming system meant to restore the world after everything was destroyed. He [[LiarRevealed reveals this in full]] to the Zero Dawn recruits, and leaves behind a final message in APOLLO openly admitting that he's effectively a worse mass murderer than the likes of Hitler and Ghengis Khan combined]].

** This is how Loghain Mac Tir justifies [[spoiler: his retreat at the Battle of Ostagar, [[CavalryBetrayal abandoning King Cailan and a good portion of the Ferelden army to die at the hands of the darkspawn horde]], rather than launch a flank attack to relieve them. As Loghain claims, the signal his army was waiting for to attack came late, by which point Cailan had overextended his forces, and trying to save him would have just sent more soldiers to die in a pointless meatgrinder. In-universe and out, it's hotly debated whether Loghain was telling the truth or just trying to justify [[UriahGambit leaving the king, his own son-in-law, to die]] so [[OpportunisticBastard Loghain could seize control of Ferelden in the power vacuum following Cailan's death]] and run the country as he saw fit]].

* At the end of Episode 4 of ''VideoGame/SallyFace,'' Ashley says that Sal [[spoiler: was found by the police muttering, [[MadnessManta "I had no choice, I had to do it, there wasn't any other way," to himself over and over]] after being [[KillEmAll forced to kill everyone in Addison Apartments]] in order to prevent [[BigBad The Red-Eyed Demon]] from being able to find a new host to inhabit.]]

* ''VideoGame/StarcraftI'': This is invoked by Mengsk in the first campaign after very questionable choices with heavy side-effects, such as [[spoiler:using psi emitters to lure billions of zerg to destroy confederate forces, regardless of the civilian casualties caught meanwhile]]. Although he states that he will do whatever is necessary to save humanity, in the vein of a WellIntentionedExtremist, in the end it turns out that [[spoiler:he exploited everybody and his goal was just to take revenge on the Confederacy no matter the others lives ruined and to rule the sector or see it burnt to ashes around him]]).

'''Kerrigan''': What I... had... to...

-->'''Mengsk''': We will do whatever it takes to save humanity. Our responsibility is too great to do any less.

* ''VideoGame/Starcraft'': This is invoked by Mengsk in the first campaign after very questionable choices with heavy side-effects, such as [[spoiler:using psi emitters to lure billions of zerg to destroy confederate forces, regardless of the civilian casualties caught meanwhile]]. Although he states that he will do whatever is necessary to save humanity, in the vein of a WellIntentionedExtremist, in the end it turns out that [[spoiler:he exploited everybody and his goal was just to take revenge on the Confederacy no matter the others lives ruined and to rule the sector or see it burnt to ashes around him]]).

'''Kerrigan''': I had to get you out.\\

-->'''[[spoiler: Mordin]]:''' Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong.

* The bright, colourful and friendly Exiles of ''VideoGame/WildStar'' WildStar have done some terrible things to survive in a galaxy controlled by their worst enemies, the Dominion.

** Dr. Halsey spends much of the series grappling with being the creator of the SPARTAN-II program, which involved kidnapping 75 children from their families, replacing them with flash clones (which swiftly died), and turning said children into deadly {{Super Soldier}}s through experimental and highly-dangerous medical treatments which kill or cripple more than half. The reason why she originally conceived the idea in the first place was that she saw them as the only way to prevent the UNSC from falling into civil war, but [[VideoGame/HaloReach her journal]] makes it clear that she sometimes has trouble convincing herself that it was all worth it. She ultimately decides to make up for her sins by doing everything she can to help her Spartans survive. That said, she'll still pull this trope whenever people ask her about the [=IIs=]; when she's interrogated about the shady aspects of the S-II program at the beginning of ''VideoGame/Halo4'', she points out that her Spartans played a key role in saving humanity from the Covenant. This one's more of a blatant self-justification, as the interrogator quickly points out that the [=IIs=] were originally tended to fight human rebels.

** The Pan-Asian Coalition leader(s) are guilty of this trope. When the European Union (and possibly also the USA) plan to colonize Africa to flee the encroaching ice age, PAC launches an unprovoked and merciless attack to conquer Africa for itself. PAC aren't considered villains in the game, since from their point of view, it was necessary for their nations' survival.

* A CentralTheme in ''VideoGame/{{Frostpunk}}''. The game is about managing a Victorian colony surviving a post-apocalyptic ice age. Players can introduce unsavoury edicts like making children work manual labour jobs and burying the dead in mass graves. If the player is too harsh then people will lose hope and resent the leader and eventually banish him out into the wilderness to die. If the player doesn't implement any of them they will run into some serious resource problems. Later on, a massive crisis event happens [[spoiler:when the city discovers that the neighbouring settlement Winterhome is completely dead and a faction forms to try to escape back down to London, which is also destroyed - the people of your colony are the last living humans left. At this point a new decision opens up to turn the colony into either a totalitarian dictatorship or a religious theocracy which starts out more benign but gradually becomes NotSoDifferent.]]

** [[spoiler: Anders]] uses this as justification for [[spoiler: blowing up the Chantry]] in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII''.
** Defied by Ser Ruth, a Grey Warden in ''Videogame/DragonAgeInquisition''. She willingly submits to the Inquisition's justice, knowing that death is the likely punishment she will suffer. When it's pointed out that as a Grey Warden she could invoke this trope, she refuses to do so. As far as she's concerned, being a Warden doesn't excuse her for [[spoiler:murdering a fellow Warden for a BloodMagic sacrifice as so many others did]]. She also admits that she's done worse for less cause in the past [[KarmaHoudini using the Wardens' carte blanche to do anything if it means fighting the Blights to avoid punishment]]. Ser Ruth believes it's high time Wardens stopped using their duty to justify horrible crimes and wants her fate to set an example for them. Thus the only punishment she will dislike is [[spoiler:being sent to the Deep Roads to die alone, because it's the only one that won't send any clear message]].

* [[spoiler:Kouin]] in ''VisualNovel/EienNoAselia'' uses this as a justification for his actions. He has to do what he has to do [[spoiler:in order to save Kyouko, who has been devoured by her sword, Void.]]

* A CentralTheme in ''[[VideoGame/FrostPunk Frostpunk]]''. The game is about managing a Victorian colony surviving a post-apocalyptic ice age. Players can introduce unsavoury edicts like making children work manual labour jobs and burying the dead in mass graves. If the player is too harsh then people will lose hope and resent the leader and eventually banish him out into the wilderness to die. If the player doesn't implement any of them they will run into some serious resource problems. Later on, a massive crisis event happens [[spoiler:when the city discovers that the neighbouring settlement Winterhome is completely dead and a faction forms to try to escape back down to London, which is also destroyed - the people of your colony are the last living humans left. At this point a new decision opens up to turn the colony into either a totalitarian dictatorship or a religious theocracy which starts out more benign but gradually becomes NotSoDifferent.]]

** In ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'', the Sangheili Shipmaster Rtas 'Vadum decides to completely incinerate a Flood-infected portion of Africa, a decision to which Fleet Admiral Lord Terrence Hood initially reacts with hostility, but is forced to realize that there was nothing else to do.

** Dr. Halsey spends much of the series grappling with being the creator of the SPARTAN-II program, which involved kidnapping 75 children from their families, replacing them with flash clones (which swiftly died), and turning said children into deadly {{Super Soldier}}s through experimental and highly-dangerous medical treatments which kill or cripple more than half. The reason why she originally conceived the idea in the first place was that she saw them as the only way to prevent the UNSC from falling into civil war, but [[VideoGame/HaloReach her journal]] makes it clear that she sometimes has trouble convincing herself that it was all worth it. She ultimately decides to make up for her sins by doing everything she can to help her Spartans survive. That said, she'll still pull this trope whenever people ask her about the [=IIs=]; when she's interrogated about the shady aspects of the S-II program at the beginning of ''VideoGame/{{Halo 4}}'', she points out that her Spartans played a key role in saving humanity from the Covenant. This one's more of a blatant self-justification, as the interrogator quickly points out that the [=IIs=] were originally tended to fight human rebels.

* ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquer Red Alert 3]]'' has the President of the United States say [[spoiler:"Well, since you don't have the guts to do what needs to be done, I'm gonna wipe those Soviets off the face of the Earth myself! And you can't stop me! If my heart stops beating, the weapon fires!"]]

* At the end of Episode 4 of ''VideoGame/SallyFace,'' Ashley says that Sal [[spoiler: was found by the police muttering, "I had no choice, I had to do it, there wasn't any other way," to himself over and over after being forced to kill everyone in Addison Apartments in order to prevent [[BigBad The Red-Eyed Demon]] from being able to find a new host to inhabit.]]

* At the end of Episode 4 of ''VideoGame/SallyFace,'' Ashley says that Sal was found by the police muttering, "I had no choice, I had to do it, there wasn't any other way," to himself over and over after being forced to kill everyone in Addison Apartments in order to prevent [[BigBad The Red-Eyed Demon]] from being able to find a new host to inhabit.