History ShootTheDog / Videogames

* The "quadruquel" VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda has a few optional moments to gun down canines too. While rescuing the Moshae for the Angaara, you are given the opportunity to destroy a Kett facility with brainwashed Angaara captives still in it. You can also let Sloane Kelly, a VillainWithGoodIntentions [[spoiler: get shot by a sniper, by just not choosing to intervene via QTE, in order to prop up a different VillainWithGoodIntentions who is more agreeable]]. You will also have to sacrifice either the salarian pathfinder or some krogan scouts, in order to rescue the salarian ark.

* While you can easily be a MessianicArchetype in most of ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'', when it comes to the dwarven city of Orzammar, if you attempt to give it at least a somewhat happy ending in the epilogue, you will be forced to Shoot the Dog repeatedly because apparently, in dwarven society, NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished. Examples include: [[spoiler: A dwarven girl wishes to study in the Circle of Magi. Seems innocent enough, but helping her may eventually cause the Chantry to start an Exalted March against Orzammar for harboring apostates, so you'll have to shoot her dream down. The same situation will occur in the epilogue when you help an Andrastian priest with his simple request to build a local Chantry church, so you'll have to deny him all help as well. Finally, during the main quest, you'll be forced to work with the MagnificentBastard Bhelen who killed his eldest brother Trian and let the Dwarf Noble PC take the blame, causing him to become exiled; rather than the ReasonableAuthorityFigure Lord Harrowmont. Because once made king, Harrowmont will fall ill, Orzammar will close itself off from the world and fall into political chaos. But if Bhelen becomes king, he becomes a benevolent dictator who abolishes many of the restrictive dwarven policies (like the Caste System) and opens up Orzammar to the world.]]
** [[spoiler: Actually, the Exalted March only starts if you help the Brother trying to spread the Chantry teachings; however, the epilogue is notoriously buggy, so you might get that ending anyway.]]

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'', Snake's ultimate mission is to [[spoiler: eliminate his old mentor, The Boss, in order to avert a nuclear war.]] At the very end, she lays there dying, and orders him to fire the bullet that will end her life. [[PlayerPunch The game forces you to pull the trigger]].

* Played straight, [[{{AvertedTrope}} averted,]] [[{{SubvertedTrope}} subverted,]] and all-around [[{{DeconstructorFleet}} torn apart]] in ''[[{{VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine}} Spec Ops: The Line]]''. All of the [[{{WarIsHell}} many,]] [[{{FromBadToWorse}} many,]] '''[[{{MoralEventHorizon}} many]]''' horrible things that happen throughout the game are done by people who claim to be doing it for the greater good or consider the acts a necessary evil. In almost every case, they're just deluding themselves.

* In ''{{VideoGame/Halo 3}}'', Sgt Johnson says Keyes must shoot him and herself to prevent themselves from being used to activate the Halos. However, it turns into a KickTheDog when Truth intervenes and kills Keyes himself. WhyDontYouJustShootHim Truth that is. He didn't appear to have a shield ala Regret.
** A more tragic example happened to her father in [[VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved the first game]]. He was turned into a Flood Proto-Gravemind, and the Chief had to kill him to prevent the Flood from taking over.

* In ''VideoGame/SplinterCell: Double Agent'', one of your earlier "karma choices" is to [[spoiler: decide whether to shoot the pilot of the helicopter that the terrorist organization hijacked, as an act of loyalty to the terrorists. If Sam decides to instead hesitate and stay loyal to the government, Sam's only friend in the organization does it instead in a last-minute decision to save Sam's face.]]

*** The above example is made even worse when WordOfGod revealed in ''Conviction'' that not only Sam [[spoiler:killing Lambert]] is canon, but that [[spoiler: Lambert did '''everything''' in Double Agent to protect Sam's daughter, thus only adding to the guilt of killing a friend on a whim.]]

* It's not necessary but highly advised you kill your infected friend Billy in ''[[VideoGame/DontEscape Don't Escape 2]]'', or he'll turn into a zombie by nightfall and make your chances of survival a lot tougher. The player character can choose to kill him in a handful of different ways.

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'', Snake's ultimate mission is to [[spoiler: eliminate his old mentor, The Boss, in order to avert a nuclear war.]] At the very end, she lays there dying, and orders him to fire the bullet that will end her life. The game forces you to pull the trigger.

* The backstory of the ''GearsOfWar'' series has the Coalition of Ordered Governments launch a simultaneous attack on every city and strategic resource on the planet except for the capital city and everything around it on the granite plateau that they're built on in order to buy time to fight back against the Locust, which they had been fighting a losing battle against for the past year. This ends up killing billions but also stops the Locust offensive cold, as the COG government was given an estimate of ''six months'' before the Locust rendered humanity extinct, and fulfills its purpose as the COG, through narrowing the front to a relatively easy-to-defend perimeter instead of a massive, planet-wide government where the Locust could pop up anywhere, and allows humanity to hold out for 13 more years before [[PyrrhicVictory finally winning]].

** Clementine [[spoiler:has a near literal run in with the Trope Name. She puts a dog out of its misery after it is impaled on a broken pole.]]

* In ''{{Lusternia}}'', the [[PhysicalGod Vernal Gods]] use a child marked as food for [[EldritchAbomination Muud]] as bait to capture him, and as a living seal to keep him [[SealedEvilInACan permanently trapped]]. To ensure she never commits suicide, thus freeing him, they trap her in a LotusEaterMachine.

* In ''VideoGame/CrusaderKings'', you will have a short and bloody reign if you don't become very good at this. Assassinating honorable nobles -- even children -- to prevent civil wars trying to put them on the throne and arranging loveless marriages between one's daughters and brutal sadists to forge vital alliances are only the most ordinary deeds a feudal ruler must do to protect their people.

* In ''VideoGame/CrusaderKings'', you will have a short and brutal reign if you don't become very good at this. Assassinating honorable nobles -- even children -- to prevent civil wars trying to put them on the throne and arranging loveless marriages between one's daughters and brutal sadists to forge vital alliances are only the most ordinary deeds a feudal ruler must do to protect their people.

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'', Snake's ultimate mission is to [[spoiler: eliminate his old mentor, The Boss, in order to avert a nuclear war.]] At the very end, she lays there dying, and ''orders'' him to fire the bullet that will end her life. As if that wasn't [[TearJerker/MetalGear heartbreaking]] enough, the game forces you to pull the trigger ''yourself''.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Lusternia}}'', the [[PhysicalGod Vernal Gods]] use a child marked as food for [[EldritchAbomination Muud]] as bait to capture him, and as a living seal to keep him [[SealedEvilInACan permanently trapped]]. To ensure she never commits suicide, thus freeing him, they trap her in a LotusEaterMachine.

* In ''{{VideoGame/Fallout 3}}'', there are many different times this can happen. [[spoiler: For instance, putting the Modified FEV in Project Purity to kill anyone or anything that is mutated.]] Another is in The Pitt, [[spoiler: to kidnap (and probably doom) the baby so that the slaves can be free and find a cure faster to the Trog condition.]]
** [[spoiler: Both instances are cases of ChaoticStupid instead of Shoot the Dog: If you think the matter through, putting FEV into the water will kill EVERY LIVING THING EVERYWHERE (ApocalypseHow Class 5) eventually. This is a [[PhlebotinumBomb biological]] {{weapon|OfMassDestruction}} here, a class of weapons notoriously unreliable, particularly in FEV's case. All life mutates. What's to stop it killing later mutations? What's to stop it from killing mutations caused by the still existing radiation? As for the Trog Cure... What scientific training do Wernher and Midea have?]]
** Another example from ''{{VideoGame/Fallout 3}}'': [[spoiler:the player comes across a computer simulation run by one Stanislaus Braun, who has been torturing its inhabitants for the past two hundred years. The action which nets the most karma? Activating a fail-safe which calls in simulated Chinese soldiers who arrive and kill everyone.]]
** There is a glitch involving the follower Dogmeat (a dog) and the perk "Puppies!", which you get from Broken Steel. If you have the perk and Dogmeat dies, a new dog that replaces Dogmeat will show up. If you [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential kill Dogmeat]], recruit a follower, recruit the new dog, and then kill the new dog (repeating the process), you can obtain every follower in the game (normally, you are only allowed one follower and Dogmeat). You are shooting the dog for the purpose of gaining a relative army of followers.

* In ''{{Lusternia}}'', the [[PhysicalGod Vernal Gods]] use a child marked as food for [[EldritchAbomination Muud]] as bait to capture him, and as a living seal to keep him [[SealedEvilInACan permanently trapped]]. To ensure she never commits suicide, thus freeing him, they trap her in a LotusEaterMachine.

* ''VideoGame/MightAndMagic VI'' has the main characters release the BigBad of Heroes II, leaving him free to restart his scheming to gain the throne of Enroth. There is a very pragmatic and logical reason for that: he's the only one around that knows the Ritual of the Void, and you need to learn said Ritual to keep the world from blowing up in the process of saving it. Compared to TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, Archibald Ironfist on the loose is a ''much'' better option.

* King Loghaire in ''{{Arcanum}}'' is forced to banish the Black Mountain Clan and allow elves to interfere in the Dwarven justice system, an unforgivable crime against Black Mountain's honor, for the sake of preventing a war between elves and dwarves that could devastate the continent. He deeply regrets it though, and states that if given the choice a second time, he'd happily go to war with all the world for the sake of his kin's honor.