History WhatMeasureIsAMook / VideoGames

* Invoked on the ''[[YouBastard player's]]'' part in ''VideoGame/{{Pikmin}}''. Over the course of the game, you'll send wave after wave of Pikmin to their inevitable doom, and when they're gone you'll just pull up more without thinking about it. The [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3syya-w9xgw theme song]], however, is a tearjerking, melancholy ballad from the Pikmin's point of view in which they're resigned to their fate.

** Kill enough mooks in ''VideoGame/{{Metal Gear Solid 4|GunsOfThePatriots}}, and Snake will have a flashback to when Liquid accused him of enjoying the killing in the first game, and will throw up in disgust.

** In terms of actual gameplay, this trope is reversed. If careful, it is possible to avoid killing or even being seen by any of the mooks in the entire game. Not so for the bosses, who must be killed because it's necessary for the story to progress.

** ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'' features a good aversion when you face [[spoiler:The Sorrow - who is backed up by ''everybody you've previously killed in the game''. The more you've killed, the more bodies you have to slog through.]]

** In 2, each soldier has their own dogtags, having their name and info on it,and every different member has a unique one. Raiden become angsty after your fist kill as well, feeling bad about it. You will even get called out on killing too many SEAGULLS.
** Kill enough mooks in 4, and Snake will have a flash back to when Liquid accused him of enjoying the killing in the first game, and will throw up.
** ''VideoGame/MetalGearRisingRevengeance'' takes thorough look at this. Raiden establishes early on that he believes the PMC cyborgs he fights against made their choice to oppose him, and didn't deserve mercy for throwing in with the types of people his enemies were. [[spoiler: Later, he's forced to face the fact that underneath their emotional inhibitors, many of the RedShirt enemies he's been cutting down had no real choice at all, being manipulated by the same system he was trying to protect people from in the first place. Raiden is deeply disturbed by this. [[SuperpoweredEvilSide Jack]]... [[SociopathicHero isn't]].]]

* Used disturbingly in ''VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}} I''. The main character Shion is shown conspicuously caring about artificially-created humans called Realians, even helping maintain them and arguing on their behalf. Later on, however, she has no compunctions about mowing down hundreds of them in random battles, right before confronting the bad guy and calling him out for, wait for it, abusing the Realians. Made even worse by the character Momo, who is a realian herself but who will gladly take part in the above-mentioned random battles.
** In all fairness, almost every enemy from the game is either an automated robot, a Gnosis (monster things), or a Gnosis-infectee; we know from the game that once infected, it's impossible to resist, and ''everyone'' who touches a Gnosis winds up infected (unless they have PlotArmor) and become Gnosis themselves. And, since all the soldiers, etc., in the game are in all likelihood Realians, we ''do'' know that they are highly susceptible to Gnosis contamination. The few enemies you fight who ''don't'' fall into one of those three categories are sentient, fully self-aware, and actively trying to kill you (or at least, most of the party/the universe).
*** Uh, ''nope''. Shion and the troupe kills Federation soldiers too, in Episode I no less. Jan Sauer, being a cop and cyborg, has no qualms about killing off any U-TIC soldiers on patrol when he goes to rescue MOMO, either. And once we go through the other Episodes, we see that this trope missed the updates once the games were released; heck, Virgil even calls Shion out '''after''' she gives him the Realians' override code that would make him so dismissive of them.
--->[[AC:Virgil: 'Hypocrite'...the word doesn't even begin to describe you.]]
** This trope is mentioned at one point in Xenogears by a random [=NPC=] in Kislev, which is for a portion of the game portrayed as the EvilEmpire to Aveh's [[TheKingdom Kingdom]]:

* ''VideoGame/{{Mother3}}'' plays with it. In Chapter 2 when Oshe Castle is crawling with [[{{Mooks}} Pigmasks]] they attack you and you bring them down like normal enemies. Come Chapter 3 you're playing as a member of their army, and now you're free to talk to the same Pigmasks in the castle who all have dialogue revealing they're all normal people. From then on you get more than a few reminders that they're people by getting hints to their personal lives, their taste in music, and even one that was a kid from your hometown. It doesn't stop you from bringing them down without abandon, though.

* In ''TheMarkOfKri'', murdered bandits will crawl, squrim, or even cry on the ground for a little while after being killed, unless [[TheChunkySalsaRule Chunky Salsa'd]]. It's not fun to watch.
* In the final mission of ''SyphonFilter 2'', Gabe Logan and [[spoiler:Jason Chance]] have a CirclingMonologue in which [[spoiler:Chance]] calls Logan out on killing hundreds of agents over the course of the game who were just trying to do their job.

* Averted in [[MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha Fate's]] story mode in ''MagicalBattleArena''. When everyone else fought their [[MirrorMatch illusionary copies]] on the fifth stage, they felt uncomfortable about it because they were beating themselves up. Fate, on the other hand, felt really bad about it because they were still technically alive even though their lives were fake and temporary, [[spoiler:which struck a little [[ArtificialHuman too close to home for her]]]].

* {{Lampshaded}} and statistically measured in ''SecondSight''. Each mission gives you a "morality" score, which starts at 100% and drops each time you kill someone (but not when you trick one mook into killing another one). The player has the option of sneaking past some mooks, and most can be knocked out with tranquilizers. Oddly enough, fisticuffs are lethal.

* In ''{{Tenchu}}'', the player can often [[EnemyChatter hear the mooks utter some lines]] while hiding in the Shadows. That includes lines as "The doctor said I should stay away from dangerous business for a while" (said by a ''{{ninja}}'' of all people) and "I need to cut down on my drinking, or my wife will be mad at me again". Though that might not be intentional. You could feel sorry for mooks getting murdered seconds after saying "[[TemptingFate I'm sure tonight will be completely uneventful]]".
* ''ValkyrieProfileCovenantOfThePlume'' plays with this - the protagonist (and by extension, his comrades) are actively encouraged to kill every foe they face, and brutally beat every trace of life from them while they're at it. The protagonist acknowledges what he's doing is morally questionable at best, but considers himself too far gone to care. Depending on the path the player takes, this can come back to seriously bite him in the backside.
* The personal emails that you sometimes find, alongside useful passcodes, security information etc, in dead or unconscious guards' computers in ''SplinterCell'' can be a bit of a guilt trip. In the first mission of ''Chaos Theory'', one of the guards you can grapple and interrogate instead tells you how he knew something like this would happen ever since his family was killed by Americans, and how he's prepared to die so he can meet them again. And he doesn't even have a name. It's a little disturbing, actually; even Sam is creeped out. Averted in ''Conviction'' though.
* ''SinAndPunishment'' has the Armed Volunteers, a military group devoted to defending against the monstrous Ruffians. Unfortunately, they're also creating martial law in Japan, so Achi's group labels them as their enemies. Once one of the main characters becomes [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever a giant Ruffian]], they mobilize, and the other main character's next mission is wiping out their entire military, a military that most of them joined specifically to protect humanity. If that wasn't enough, Achi laughs at their pathetic deaths, providing an early clue that there is something wrong with her.

* ''NoMoreHeroes2DesperateStruggle'' deconstructs this hard when it's revealed the whole plot is a revenge scheme against Travis for [[spoiler:killing the Final Boss's father and brothers in a number of side missions where they appeared as mooks only discernible by their lack of hair.]]

* ''MaxPayne2'' plays with this; it is possible to overhear two mooks having a conversation about the theme park you're all in. One will even spoil the other, and the latter will get pissed at him. After that, they just stand there until you kill them or they see you. It's also possible to come across one mook playing a piano beautifully while the other watches. The two are part of a squad sent to kill everyone in the building, and the second they see you, both try to kill you.

* Textbook use of this in ''TheForceUnleashed''. Using the dark side to kill hundreds, maybe thousands of stormtroopers fighting for their lives? Awesome! Trying to strike down Vader or Palpatine in anger? Bad apprentice! ''Bad!''

* ''ManaKhemia2FallOfAlchemy'' has Punis. They're capable of human language, thoughts, etc, and are friendly, gentle creatures; if you're playing Raze's path, you even get a party-member, a cute little girl, who was ''raised'' by Punis. Except Puniballs (not what you think... probably) are an ingredient in synthesizing, and how do you get those Puniballs? Why, killing Punis in random encounters! Including adorable Baby Puni, who have little pacifiers and everything. I might want to add that Punis look like blue Flan-type monsters, only with a happy little smiley face.

* ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty: ModernWarfare 2'' reminds one of this near the end. [[spoiler:The BigBad is then revealed to be a rogue general who has orchestrated the events of the game as one giant BatmanGambit, and now the two main characters shoot up his private guard in a mission to take him out for sheer revenge. While the game implies that these mooks are an elite paramilitary unit handpicked by the general and not really US soldiers at this point, there's no question that most if not all signed up believing they would be doing the right thing and probably aren't even aware of their boss's behind the scenes actions. On the other hand, Shepherd's troops saw him shoot Roach and Ghost, then threw their bodies into a ditch then doused them with gasoline.]] Although the Player is encouraged as [[spoiler:Mactavish]] to treat them such a way when [[spoiler:Sheperd bombs a base with many soldiers STILL INSIDE.]] And a variation of this occurs within the [[spoiler:Airport]] scene, as most people treat the [[spoiler:civilians]] as faceless, even though being encouraged to feel for them (and all the other people they have to kill). Some are [[spoiler:dragging the bodies of their [=FRIENDS=] less than 20m in front of you.]]

* In a web flash game series ''{{Mardek}}'', Emela asks this very same thing. She questions the morality of killing henchmen, remarking on how they have lives, and possibly families of their own, that she and her crew are tearing apart. She even exclaims "A killer killer is still a killer" (if you kill a killer, you're a killer as well), confusing the main lead. Her fellow teammates tells her to put it out of her mind, since as soldiers, this is part of the job.

* In ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure'', one of the storylines revolves around one of Eggman's robot Mooks, E-102 Gamma. It plays around with this trope a few times, and ends with one of the [[TearJerker most poignant moments in the series]].

* In ''MegaManZero'', Zero stops short of killing the Guardians when you first fight them, with no explanation offered. Granted, you find out later that they're {{Hero Antagonist}}s, but their subordinates, who are similarly just doing their job, are all fair game for bisection.

* {{Lampshaded}} in ''UniverseAtWar'': the Novus faction has the Ohm Robos, dirt-cheap MechaMooks who have a self-destruct attack. Their info card states that they ''know'' they're completely expendable... and they have no problem with the logic.
* One of the missions in an expansion for ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer: [[CommandAndConquerRedAlert Red Alert]]'' gives you a Russian {{cyborg}} SuperSoldier who easily slaughters his way though infantry, tanks, even a battleship and the Allies' MemeticBadass commando Tanya. The {{cutscene}} afterwards shows Tanya's grave...among hundreds of others.
* In ''HeavyRain'', one of the protagonists are given the choice of getting a crime boss you just interrogated his heart medication or leave him to die. Unless you're a really bad guy, you'll probably save him. On the way out you step over dozens of his guards, whom you killed on your way in. You might say they were shooting at you, but that's not an unusual reaction when someone drives a car into the house you're paid to protect.

* ''SengokuBasara'' plays this trope to the hilt. The various warlords you play as playable characters fight each other for practically no reason and are on quite cordial terms even as they're busy smacking the crap out of each other -- the hundreds of people [=KOed=] every battle are never even mentioned. In one case in ''Samurai Heroes'', Ieyasu consents to an alliance with the Hojo clan after the clan's messenger -- the ninja Kotaro Fuuma -- has butchered his way through Ieyasu's guards and doesn't seem to give it a second thought.
* In MMORPG ''{{Runescape}}'', this is parodied when in a quest cutscene an NPC guard openly acknowledges that the guards are killed all the time with no one complaining. His partner is horrified, at least until someone comes and kills both of them.

* Invoked on the ''[[YouBastard player's]]'' part in ''{{Pikmin}}''. Over the course of the game, you'll send wave after wave of Pikmin to their inevitable doom, and when they're gone you'll just pull up more without thinking about it. The [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3syya-w9xgw&feature=related theme song]], however, is a tearjerking, melancholy ballad from the Pikmin's point of view in which they're resigned to their fate.

* ''GuildWars Beyond: Winds of Change' - Having spent the better part of a decade at war, your character is increasingly bitter about the thousands he has killed and the pain it has caused to their loved ones and companions. One guard even muses he has spent so long treating a gang as a faceless enemy he never believed any would be there save to act as villains.

* This is a minor theme in ''[[VideoGame/TombRaider2013 the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider]]''. While not apparent at first, later portions of the game show that the Solarii forces that Lara massacres her way through are regular people stranded on an island they can't escape, and do everything to survive--[[NotSoDifferent just like her]]. If you return to previous areas, to hunt for collectibles for example, you'll often find Solarii patrolling around and talking about, say, trading smokes for a book or looking for a pet rat called "Sprinkles" that has escaped one guy's pocket. What makes it all the more tragic is that these people can't be reasoned with and, more often than not, have to be killed to advance the game.

* In Act II of ''Videogame/DiabloIII'' you can find a journal in the middle of a mook camp, in which one of the mooks writes about how long time they've been camping waiting for you, the stories he has heard about how strong is your player character, asking himself if they even have a chance to stop you, and wondering if they are not being used as cannon fodder by their superiors.

* In ''[[Videogame/{{Crysis}} Crysis 3]]'' after spectacularly blowing up a dam, you can find a black box next to the washed-up corpses of some enemy soldiers; Playing it reveals the screams and desperation of the soldiers trying to escape the flood, with their [[AFatherToHisMen commander]] frantically ordering "Stay calm!!!!", "Keep you head above the water!!!!", "Save your breath!!!!". Suddenly the blowing of the dam doesn't look so awesome anymore. And if that wasn't enough, you can also encounter another group of soldiers whose EnemyChatter reveals that they are there to rescue any survivors and their commander instructs them to separate the dead and resuscitate those who can.

* In Act II of ''Videogame/DiabloIII'' you can find a journal in the middle of a mook camp, in which one of the mooks writes about how long time they've been camping, the stories he has heard about how powerful is your player character, asking himself if they can even stop you, and wondering if they are not being used as canon fodder by their superiors.

* In the first ''VideoGame/MassEffect'' you encounter a situation on The Citadel where you shoot up a bar full of mooks to get to a local crime boss. After clearing the first encounter you go to the next one where you have a choice of talking it through with the guards. You can explain that you just killed a roomful of people to get there and did they want to die too instead of killing them.

* In Act II of ''Videogame/DiabloIII'' you can find a journal in the middle of a mook camp, in which one of the mooks writes about how long time they've been camping, the stories he has heard about how powerful is your player character, asking himself if they can even stop you, and wondering if they are not being used as canon fodder by their superiors.

* In Act II of ''Videogame/DiabloIII'' you can find a journal in the middle of a mook camp, in which one of the mooks writes about how he has heard how strong is your player character, asking himself if they can even stop you, and wondering if they are not being used as canon fodder by their superiors.

->[[AC:Virgil: Hypocrit doesn't even ''begin'' to describe YOU.]]

* The first two ''{{Thief}}'' games make a point of averting this. On the hardest difficulty you must never kill. Even at easy difficulty there are some major guilt trips awaiting the kill-crazy thief. Ironically the most effective of these is a spider. His name is Longdaddy, he is avoidable and the owner of the garden he lurks in is overjoyed at the work he puts in keeping his garden free from pests.

* In ''{{Half-Life}}'', both {{Mook}} and OneManArmy are [[{{Deconstruction}} deconstructed]]; sneaky players can listen in on the [[ArmiesAreEvil Army]] as they have weird self-hating conversations about [[CavalryBetrayal slaughtering hundreds of scientists who expected them to RESCUE them]] - and later their rage at the player, who they believe was the mastermind behind the invasion and have been slaughtering their comrades wholesale. On the other hand, one of the Marines laments having none of the scientists fight back.

*** Uh, ''nope''. Shion and the troupe kills Federation soldiers too, in Episode I no less. Jan Sauer, being a cop and cyborg, has no qualms about killing off any soldiers on patrol when he goes to rescue MOMO. And once we go through the other Episodes, we see that this trope missed the updates once the games were released; heck, Virgil even calls Shion out '''after''' she gives him the Realians' override code that would make him so dismissive of them.

* At one point in ''VideoGame/{{TombRaider2013}}'' you'll come across 2 mooks searching for one's pet rat Sprinkles. YMMV but it's heartbreaking for rat owners such as myself and really adds to the despair and bleakness of the game.

* ''VideoGame/{{Dishonored}}'' averts this handily - not only are the guards humanized through idle conversations and letters, but there's actually a valid reason to avoid wholesale murder - the fewer city guards you kill, the less the city falls into chaos from the plague that turns people into ghouls (as the guards keep them in check.) Not even the main antagonists of the game have to be killed (though leaving them alive often involves setting them up for a FateWorseThanDeath.) Should you finish the game without killing a single soul, you'll be rewarded the "Clean Hands" achievement.
** [[FridgeLogic However, killing the Weepers (basically people so infected with plague they become zombie-like) counts against this achievement, even though the game itself states that they're brain damaged beyond repair and only serve to transmit the disease to other innocent victims.]]
*** That's because [[spoiler:in the best ending, the cure for the Weepers gets developed, meaning you murdered the innocent people who could have been saved.]]

*** Shown in VideoGame/PennyArcade's [[TearJerker comic]] [[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/10/19/ Ambiguitas]].

* Zig zagged in VideoGame/SuperRobotWars: original generation. your battalion cuts through what amounts to an intermediate army of mooks without mention, then there's one that's portrayed as sympathetic, but he joins your battalion and you go back to killing an army of mooks without a second thought.

** Also, in ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'' they are said to feel very real pain, according to [[spoiler:Wheatley]].

* ''VideoGame/NinjaGaiden 3''. The [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYjO2Hs1zRU&feature=player_embedded teaser trailer]] indicates that this will be a major theme in the game.
* In ''{{Uncharted}} 2'', Drake has the [[BigBad Lazarevic]] at his mercy finally, and he tries to tell Drake that "We're NotSoDifferent, you and I". This immediately makes him unable to pull the trigger on him, despite having no problems killing hundreds of human enemies throughout the game.

** There's another, slightly strange instance of this early in ''{{Uncharted}} 2''; in the early museum break-in level, there's a scene where Harry offers Nate a pair of pistols. Nate is horrified by the prospect of shooting at the innocent guards until Harry reassures him that they're just non-lethal tranquillizers. Shortly after this scene though, there's an in-game sequence where Nate, hanging from a ledge, tosses an unsuspecting guard off the roof and hundreds of feet down the cliff below. Harry makes a quip about the guard's demise, and the two proceed as though nothing had happened.

*** Shown in PennyArcade's [[TearJerker comic]] [[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/10/19/ Ambiguitas]].
** Penny Arcade also dealt with the seemingly suicidal Uncharted henchmen in [[http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/11/04 Working Conditions]].
* Commented on in ''GhostTrick''. One of Sissel's powers is saving the lives of others by changing their fates. However, he defeats hitmen Jeego and Tengo by dropping heavy objects on them, crushing them apparently to death (we even see Jeego's body comedically flattened against a rolling wrecking ball). Sissel muses whether, if he killed Tengo, he'd then have to go back and save ''his'' life. [[spoiler: He doesn't. In fact they're not mentioned again, even in the epilogue.]]

* ''Borderlands2'' parodies this mercilessly when you escort Claptrap to his ship and kill some mooks on the way -

* ''SpecOpsTheLine'' features this multiple times when your squad can overhear some random conversations between enemy soldiers they go off break and start patrolling again. Typically, they're sympathetic and even a little charming, and you're going to shoot them dead anyway because you're playing a shooter game. This is also invoked (to the point of parody) by The Radioman when your squad starts killing the last few soldiers guarding his compound:

* ''{{Dishonored}}'' averts this handily - not only are the guards humanized through idle conversations and letters, but there's actually a valid reason to avoid wholesale murder - the fewer city guards you kill, the less the city falls into chaos from the plague that turns people into ghouls (as the guards keep them in check.) Not even the main antagonists of the game have to be killed (though leaving them alive often involves setting them up for a FateWorseThanDeath.) Should you finish the game without killing a single soul, you'll be rewarded the "Clean Hands" achievement.