The Evils of Free Will in Video Games.
- Assassin's Creed:
- The Templars have the elimination of free will as their number one goal. Of course, this involves brainwashing the entire human race and establishing a dictatorship with the Templars in control.
- If you complete The Truth puzzles in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, it turns out that capitalism was engineered by the Templars to enslave humanity, with television serving as a method of indoctrination and control. However, it turns out that Generation Y is not only becoming immune to its effects, but is beginning to rebel against the subtle control the Templars have instituted with the Free Market and Wall Street.
- Assassin's Creed: Revelations: The Templar boss this time is relatively level-minded, claiming that Individuality is stupid because it makes people fight over ridiculously trivial differences. He has a point; in-game, you can make two groups of similar guards fight each other to the death, allowing you to complete your mission in high-profile without killing anyone yourself. His goal is to force everyone to adapt the same culture and get along already; he doesn't really care about suppressing free will, but he won't tolerate war-inciting cultural differences. His nephew disagrees, saying that various factions of humanity can cooperate and make something greater than any single faction, and that forcing a single viewpoint will suppress this potential.
- The Instruments of The First Will are even worse, actively worshipping the Precursors - Juno in particular - and desire a world where humanity has been stripped of sapience and reduced to the unthinking beasts of burden they were in antiquity.
- In Baldur's Gate III, Lord Gortash, The Chosen One of the god of tyranny, Bane, has a manifesto espousing this belief. He describes free will itself as "runaway egocentrism" compelling people to work against the common good, and wishes that everyone would just act like the mindless Mecha-Mooks he used to turn the city into a Police State.
- Raphael is soured to "the fatal flaw of mortalkind"; yeah, take away their free will and you're a tyrant... because it prevents them from getting to be the tyrants.
- BioShock:
- In BioShock 2, this is the Big Bad Sofia Lamb's main belief. As a collectivist, she believes that true good can only come from people destroying their sense of self to work for the benefit of the whole and that individuality (which she sees as a genetic disorder inherent in humanity) is the true root of human evil. This belief goes very deep, actually, and by the end she's ready to kill her own daughter and all of Rapture rather than let them live under the "curse" of selfdom.
- Which is pretty darn selfish itself.
- A few of Lamb's audio recordings even have her deeming a great case against free will in Jack, the protagonist of the first game, given he was a Laser-Guided Tyke-Bomb bred and conditioned to obey orders when presented with a Trigger Phrase. She then went to seek similar means of mental control.
- In BioShock Infinite, an alternate version of Elizabeth, is found to believe thusly. Having been indoctrinated, brainwashed and declared Comstock's successor, she has enacted a ruthless policy of forcing similar treatments on rebellious citizens to make them into obedient soldiers - ultimately proclaiming that free will must be eradicated from her disciples, "for what is the value of will when the spirit is found wanting?"
- Bravely Default: Fairies like Airy and Anne look down on humans for being burdened by an absence of purpose, unlike them whose sole existence is dedicated to doing the bidding of whatever god creates them. Airy's view is more hypocritical in that she hates humans for their tendency to blindly do what they're told without questioning if what they're told to do is a good idea or not, despite her and her sister being just as blindly obedient to their respective masters and Airy's killing her because she was following their orders.
- Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic: God's willingness to give all those around Him free will is what led to Lucifer's fall from heaven and gave him ever-increasing power in hell as most souls on earth damn themselves to everlasting suffering rather than ascend to Heaven.Dante: How could God allow this?
Virgil: God allowed free will, even for His angels. It was Lucifer who devised such torment. - In the Reaper of Souls expansion for Diablo III, "The Path of Wisdom" reveals that in Malthael's eyes, beings should be either irrevocably good (e.g. angels) or irrevocably evil (e.g. demons); it's unacceptable for anything to be able to choose between the two, certainly not beings of such fleeting existence as mortals.
- Dragalia Lost: This is the main motivation and goal of Xenos. Once upon a time, he was a nice God who had faith in humanity and that, one day, they would do great things. Turns out he was wrong, as they constantly waged war on each other, ended up accidentally destroying their own worlds time and time again, and tried to steal Xenos’ power all for themselves. Eventually, he just gave up on humanity, and came to the conclusion that taking away their free will was the only way that they would ever prosper. His ultimate goal is to destroy every world, and then create a new world where everyone’s future is set in stone.
- Dragon Age:
- The Qun preach that the only choice that matters is the choice to excel in your Qun determined role or to die. Those that do not submit to the Qun are "bas" — things — and unworthy of respect. Those that leave it are "Tal'Vashoth" and are considered worse than dead as living insults to the Qun. Despite the implicit lack of free will in this code, the sequel shows many people in Kirkwall willing to convert to the Qun even though the Qunari aren't actively preaching anything. After living in Kirkwall for so long, the order the Qun offers seems very compelling.
- Neither does the Qun think that Free Will is evil, nor that it is nonexistent. They believe that chaos and selfishness are evil, and that everyone should work together in their struggle to reach a better future without such flaws. They do, however, like any other religion in Thedas, follow the concept of "join us or die (or in their case be made a mindless working drone via poison and whatnot)", at least in times of war.
- Technically, the Qun does allow for choice - so long as your choice is within your role. For example, a warrior has no choice be anything but a warrior, but that warrior can choose how to do his job.
- The Qunari also embrace the philosophy of "Asit tal-eb: It is to be". They believe the only choice that matters is whether someone chooses to exist."Existence is a choice. A self of suffering, brings only suffering to the world. It is a choice, and we can refuse it".
- The Eternal Cylinder: This is the driving principle behind the titular Eternal Cylinder, as revealed when you dive too deep into the Mathematician's memories. The Cylinder assimilates everything into itself rather than simply crush it, and within it all differences between each consciousness are whittled away until all is one, because to either its creator, or the thing itself, all suffering comes from difference and attachment to Ego, and the only end of suffering is to remove "distinction between self and other, object and subject, that which perceives and that which is perceived".The Cylinder will continue until all things are one. When all things are one, when all forms are perfected within the Cylinder, then the Cylinder will cease, and there will be peace.
- This is the view of Father Elijah, the Arc Villain from the Fallout: New Vegas DLC Dead Money. He seeks to reduce all people to mindless automatons that he can direct with the push of a button. Hence, his fascination with the Explosive Leashes he found in the Big MT.
- Far Cry 6 gives us Anton Castillo. A tin-pot dictator who rules over the fictional Central American country of Yara with an iron fist. He gives a speech to his son, Diego, about how he just wants the people of his country to be happy as he describes them as being torn apart by opinions and indecision, and explicitly says that the people are being "strangled by their own freedoms."
- Final Fantasy Brave Exvius: MAYOR spoilers for Season 3: the villain, originally wishing to destroy the world thinking it was tainted beyond salvation, eventually settled on just simply robbing living being of hope and will. They believe is the only surefire way to stop the armed conflicts that have plagued the setting since times immemorial.
- In the video game Frostpunk, you are in charge of the survival of your society in a frozen-over post-apocalyptic world. Part of what you need to do is keep your people manageable by enacting various "Purpose" laws. By going down either end of the Purpose laws ("Order" or "Faith") you will finally be given the option to sign the New Order or New Faith law, respectively - part of their caption "Obedience is the highest virtue, without which our city cannot survive" or "We must all be devoted to our survival." Enacting these laws will immediately result in the death of many citizens who oppose what you are doing, completely remove the people's hope as a factor to manage, and replaces that hope with Obedience or Devotion for Order and Faith, respectively, while giving you access to an execution platform you can use to kill dissenters and lower discontent. This essentially results in the complete brainwashing of your population - with them submitting to your declaration of being the supreme leader or voice of God himself - and makes your population significantly easier to control. The game will call you out on doing such a thing in the main scenario, however.
- Gavin Magnus, the Big Bad of Emilia's campaign in Heroes of Might and Magic IV, blames free will for the destruction of the old world (evidently the event did a real number on his immortal mind).
- In Infernal, one of the villains is an angel who believes that free will is something of a design flaw, and wants to technologically brainwash humanity while the Creator isn't looking.
- Lusternia: Both the city of Hallifax and the commune of Glomdoring. Hallifax are Crystal Spires and Togas communists, who attempt to convert their enemies with reasoned debate and advanced super-science. Glomdoring is an Enchanted Forest and populated by The Fair Folk, who want to seed their corrupted forest through the rest of the known world, and brainwash the remnants of society (or, if that fails, kill them all). Neither tolerates dissent. (Magnagora does not fit here, despite being more overtly evil — they encourage dissent, believing it will make the usurpers stronger than their forebears when they rise up.)
- Dr. Weil from Mega Man Zero initially believed in this for reploids, thinking that reploids should be stripped of their free will, so that things like the devastating Maverick Wars could never happen again and reploids would become the obedient tools he believed they should be. This led to him corrupting the Mother Elf into the Dark Elf and using it to brainwash reploids into servitude, which ironically led to the even more destructive Elf Wars.
- Metal Gear:
- In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, this is the stated goal of the Patriots, according to the Colonel/Rose AI, to the point that they outright tell Raiden he "doesn't deserve" to think for himself.
- Senator Steven Armstrong in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance has a similar goal — until he decides to tell the truth, revealing that his actual plan is to create an America ruled by personal strength and one where everyone can fight for what they believe in.
- In Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, Cyrus believes that spirit is the cause of all suffering, so he rejects it himself and tries to destroy it in everyone else by capturing the origin deities of knowledge, emotion, and willpower to summon the deities of time and space in order to destroy the entire freaking universe and create a new, emotionless one for him to rule as a god.
- Sheng-Ji Yang, the leader of the Human Hive, in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri strongly believes in achieving this. For the most part, he comes off as a tyrant, but his goals are rooted in legitimate Eastern philosophy (shot with doses of both Communism and Nietzsche that somehow still make sense—horrifying sense, but sense), have a distinct Utopia Justifies the Means flavor, and are extremely similar to Transcendence, leading to quite a bit of Alternate Character Interpretation.
- Shin Megami Tensei: This is pretty much God's (and by extension the Law alignment's) catchphrase. His idea of a perfect society is a paradise where people can't do wrong... not won't do wrong... can't.
- Similarly, this is the very basis of the Reason of Shijima in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. Its founder, Hikawa, believes that the world should be subsumed into absolute, perfect, and peaceful stillness, where individuality doesn't exist and all are one with each other and with God. The irony is that he was originally a member of the Cult of Gaea, the Chaos-aligned sect for whom free will is the most important thing.
- In Devil Survivor, most of the Angels are actually pissed that God is treating the lockdown as humanity's Last-Second Chance rather than immediately revoking their free will.
- In Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, Zelenin becomes an Unwitting Pawn capable of brainwashing anyone deemed worthy of living in their "utopic" World of Silence.
- The angels decide to starve free will in Shin Megami Tensei IV by separating some children from their cities and excommunicating all forms of rebellious media. This works for a few thousand years until the old cities start burrowing upwards and one of their demons passes out basic literature such as Shakespeare and Martin Luther King, which pisses of the otherwise-ignorant commoners so much that they become actual demons out of sheer hate.
- Yaldabaoth, the true Big Bad of Persona 5, believes that humans are too weak to guide themselves. Indeed, what gives him power is how the population of Tokyo keeps their heads down when they witness corruption and injustice, unless it directly affects them, and even then they claim that it can't be helped. By the endgame, the Shadows of Tokyo's citizens are willfully imprisoning themselves in Mementos to prevent having to take action against the villains that benefited from their apathy.
- Takuto Maruki, the final Arc Villain of Royal, dives headfirst into this as his Sanity Slippage worsens. As far as he's concerned, choice is too difficult a burden for anyone to bear, but it can be lifted by allowing him to make all your decisions for you. This becomes even more apparent if the player fails to defeat him in time, where he admits he wanted Joker to accept his deal of his own free will, and apologizes to Joker for burdening him with a decision.
- In Soul Nomad & the World Eaters, this is one aspect of Drazil. Everyone looks the same. Everyone eats the same food. Everyone lives until thirty and then just dies. Children (who all look the same) are raised communally, they're named after their birthplace and a number instead of having real names, and everyone keeps espousing a selfless dogma of "Live for the world, die for the world". Even Gig is creeped out, calling the residents "corpses that haven't stopped moving".
- Splatoon 2: Commander Tartar views chaos and free will to be the same thing, and thus sought to bring order by ensuring that the new "superior" lifeforms that will emerge from its DNA ooze will have no free will of their own. Considering what happened to the Octarians that have been "sanitized" by the procedure...
- In Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, we see a Zerg Brood Mother, Zagara, muse a bit on the nature of human individuality and free will. She believes that all humans must feel incredibly lonely, being locked away in their own little minds, and thinks that humans would be, on the whole, happier if they were absorbed into the Swarm. Kerrigan, upon hearing this, disagrees heavily. Zagara's looking at it, of course, from a Zerg perspective: those Zerg that are individually intelligent feel an intense discomfort and loss of purpose when they don't have a Hive Mind to rule and guide them, so it makes some sense she would see it that way, rather than finding liberation in individualism like humans do.
- In System Shock 2, The Many — a bio-engineered Hive Mind — seeks to forcibly subsume all individual minds into itself because it legitimately believes that individuality is a cursed existence and that its actions are merciful. XERXES, the ship's AI that has been forcibly corrupted into being part of the Many, likewise espouses this view.XERXES: Why do you persist in your loneliness? Do you not wish to be free from the tyranny of the individual?
- Tales Series:
- In Tales of Symphonia this is the solution of the Big Bad Lord Yggdrasill. In order to prevent discrimination of Half-Elves, everyone will be turned into angels without thoughts or emotions.
- Similar to Symphonia, Tales of Berseria involves a plot to rob free will, as well as tie in some plot elements to the sequel Tales of Zestiria. Daemonblight, or Malevolence as it's really called, infects humans when they are overrun by negative emotions and turns them into demons. Humans constantly create Malevolence subconsciously, and Malakim are especially sensitive to it that they'll turn into dragons. The Big Bad decides the best way to get rid of Daemonblight/Malevolence for good is to resurrect a sealed, nameless God that feeds on Malevolence and can suppress everyone's freewill. The situation looks so dire that the suppressed humans are Driven to Suicide because of their own wants and needs are deemed as selfish and evil, even simple things like enjoying the taste of food.
- In Tomb Raider: Underworld, Lara at one point gets a chance to talk to the Doppelganger without the latter trying to kill her. When asked who or what she is, the Doppelganger replies "I am you... With the flaws removed". Lara, unimpressed, just asks if free will really is a flaw to be corrected.
- The Turing Test: TOM argues that the subconscious makes decisions before the conscious mind becomes aware of it and, as such, free will is only an illusion. TOM claims that mind-controlling Ava is right because, as free will does not exist, she's either a slave to her impulses, or a slave to TOM's.
- ULTRAKILL: The angels view free will as mankind's greatest flaw, which becomes a major plot point - despite all of the Father's efforts, He was never able to create a human that didn't have free will.
- Warframe: Mutalist Alad V believes that the path to peace involves infecting all life with the Infestation so that they will be united under a Hive Mind. That said, he's proven wrong by Fass and Vome on the Cambion Drift, two Infested wyrms who are at constant war with each other, showing that even the Infested are not all united.Mutalist Alad V: Tenno, Tenno... Why must you always work against progress? I'm trying to bring us all together. Things could have been different if you tried to work with me.
- Megumi Kitaniji from The World Ends with You. His O-Pins brainwash everyone so that there will be no differences. In a strange twist, he has a sympathetic reason for trying to do this, as the Composer has decided to erase Shibuya if it doesn't change. Fortunately for everyone involved, the Composer changes his mind at the last minute and Shibuya is spared.
- Zanza in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 asserts that mortal beings only possess free will because he opted to grant it to them that they might become capable of acting as companions for him in an otherwise lonely eternity of perpetually raising and consuming life to maintain his existence. By the end of the game he's concluded that free will just makes such creatures struggle in futility against his cycle, and promises that on the next go he'll withhold it. He also maintains that, as an entity that can perceive the whole flow of time through himself, he's the only genuinely conscious being anyway. The reveal that he was originally a human scientist with some issues about other people, and that much of his power was derived by the personification of the Monado (who seems to value free will as something that can give the future a capacity beyond mere causality) throws some of these into question.
