Basic Trope: Video Game lets players do good things, and their actions are rewarded in turn.
- Straight: Travis Hunter decides to let Dan the Master live after their battle. Later on in the game, Dan will join your party for sparing him.
- Exaggerated: Travis saves every person he meets, acts kindly towards his teammates, and helps old ladies across the street. This is how you unlock the Golden Ending.
- Downplayed: Defeating all the enemies in a given level reduces the difficulty of the next. But then, they deserved it, and would've hurt civilians in the next cutscene if you didn't.
- Beating the game without killing Dan will get you a Dan Approved badge on your save file, but nothing else happens.
- Justified: The game uses Postmodernism to tell you to be a hero instead of just a mindless drone killing others.
- Inverted:
- Spare Dan the Master and he will stab you in the back in the latter half of the game.
- Slaughter a house full of civilians and the game grants you more EXP than soldiers.
- Subverted: You're suggested to keep Dan alive, but the action doesn't change anything about the game later on.
- Double Subverted: You do, however, get a very satisfying cutscene at the end.
- Parodied: The game's core mechanics are about finding lost balloons, playing with downtrodden kids at the park, and helping people overcome their crippling mental problems. There's also a full combat system with plenty of chances to go nuts against evildoers... but it's a sidequest.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes, sparing a boss will see them helping you, and other times, they will hurt you for your mercy.
- Averted: You cannot spare any boss or opponent you meet, and if you can the result will be no different than if you don't.
- Enforced: After work on the extensive system where evil actions are punished, the developers are suggested/told to create a system where good actions are rewarded.
- Lampshaded: "Huh! I'm sure glad I helped Dan out earlier!" "Me too, Travis!"
- Invoked: Your party can be formed from the ranks of bosses you spare.
- Exploited: The really bad guys try and play on Travis' mercy to get him to drop his guard.
- Defied: Dan blows himself up rather than joining the good guys.
- Implied: Dan seems like a nice guy, and in an earlier cutscene would prefer to get revenge on his abusers controlling him. Maybe, if you show him the error of his ways nonviolently...
- Discussed: "Is there any reason you act so nice?" "Good deeds lend good rewards, I say!"
- Conversed: "Oh! I wasn't expecting him to help me out back there! I'll have to remember that..."
- Deconstructed: After enough of your Pacifist Run, Travis moves up from a Technical Pacifist to an Actual Pacifist, and you lose control of him as he gives up combat.
- Reconstructed: At the end of the game, when Travis faces overwhelming odds against the Final Boss, all the people you helped along the way agree to lend him their power, beginning a Heroic Second Wind for Round Two.
- Played For Laughs: The game pairs this alongside Video Game Cruelty Potential, where you can be either a stalwart goody-two-shoes or a smarmy little jerk. And they're both equally hilarious.
- Played For Drama: If you play the game normally, the Big Bad seems to be just an ordinary villain in a typical video game Excuse Plot. But if you play enough of the good path, you can reform him as you learn the truth about his actions... and even that he didn't cause all of them.
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