There are plenty ofgreat video game heroeswho battle villains and stop their evil schemes. Or at least, that’s how it usually goes. Sometimes, the villains' actions and plans aren’t the main problem, though. Occasionally, it is the hero who has ruined everything, and they’re forced to clean up their own mess.
Typically, this happens accidentally. They make the wrong choice, kill the wrong person, or are tricked into doing something bad. Whatever the reason, they’re the ones who are at fault. Here are some games in which this sort of thing happens.
For the purposes of this list, every protagonist or playable character counts as a ‘hero’ even if they aren’t a conventional hero.
Spider-Man is one of the most honorable heroes in media, so you wouldn’t expect him to cause many problems. However, at the beginning of Shattered Dimensions, he accidentally destroys the Tablet of Order and Chaos while trying to stop Mysterio from stealing it.
This creates an imbalance in the multiverse, and Mysterio is still able to get away with one fragment of the tablet. Madame Web orders Spidey and other Spider-Men from different universes to find all of the fragments and put the thing back together again to restore balance.
7The Last Of Us Series
The Cycle Of Revenge
None of the main protagonists of The Last of Us or The Last of Us Part 2 can be blamed for starting the outbreak that led to the apocalypse in this universe. However, at the end of the first game, the main character, Joel, goes on a rampage to save Ellie, killing many people in the process.
One of those people happens to be the dad of Abby, one of the sequel’s protagonists. So, in the second game, she wants and achieves vengeance. Then, the other protagonist, Ellie, wants to avenge Joel. The conflict between Ellie and Abby is brutal and costs the lives of several of their loved ones. This all started because of what Joel did.
Solid Snake’s mission in Metal Gear Solid is to infiltrate Shadow Moses Island and stop the terrorists there from launching a nuclear strike. Access codes can initiate that strike, and during the game, Snake discovers the terrorists have the codes and have armed Metal Gear Rex. Don’t worry, though, Snake gets hold of a PAL card that can either arm or disarm the machine. So, he uses it, but quickly learns that he’s actually armed the thing.
It turns out the terrorists didn’t have the codes, so they weren’t able to arm Rex without the PAL card that Snake had. They tricked him into using the card, mainly through his nemesis, Liquid Snake, who spent much of the game posing as one of Snake’s support staff.
As funny as GlaDOS is, the unstable AI is certainly the antagonist of the first Portal game. She is the one who keeps Chell trapped in the giant Aperture Science Facility and forces her to do tests. So, when Chell reencounters the villain in Portal 2, it makes sense that the protagonist would team with the equally funny but more dim-witted Wheatley to bring her down.
The new duo succeeds, and Chell places Wheatly in GlaDOS' spot and has him run the entire facility. Then, the protagonist is finally ready to leave. Yet, Wheatley very quickly becomes mad with power and stops Chell from going anywhere. Then, he basically becomes the new GlaDOS.
The Quarry is about a group of teens who share one last night at summer camp. It ends up being a bad night, though, because they have to deal with hunters and werewolves. Things can go really bad for the crew, as they can all die.
This was all avoidable if they had just left during the day, like they were supposed to. They didn’t do that because Jacob, one of the playable characters, destroyed their vehicle to give himself one last night with Emma. Emma is one ofthe best characters in the game, but in hindsight, Jacob definitely made a mistake.
The main character of Prototype is an amnesiac named Alex Mercer. Like the rest of Manhattan, he must deal with a deadly virus that has been unleashed. This virus has turned him into a monstrous shapeshifter with a slew of impressive powers. He mainly uses them in an attempt to stop the outbreak.
However, partway through the game, he discovers that he was the one who started it. Before he got his powers, he was a scientist working on the virus. At one point, he destroyed a vial in anger, releasing the virus and creating the apocalypse. The Alex Mercer you control is a mix of Dr. Mercer and the virus.
Resident Evil Village begins in a wholesome manner, with Ethan Winters and his family spending a nice night together until Chris Redfield arrives and guns down his wife. It isn’t actually his wife. It’s a shapeshifter pretending to be her, but Ethan doesn’t know that, and the famous Resident Evil hero, Chris, doesn’t tell him for some reason. Chris and his team also take Ethan’s daughter to protect her from the shapeshifting villain, but his team quickly loses her.
All of this leads Ethan to go on a harrowing adventure to get his kid back and figure out why this is all happening. In the process, he loses limbs and his sanity. It was a terrible experience for Ethan, and it could’ve probably been avoided if Chris had explained everything to him sooner.
1Borderlands And Borderlands 2
Be Wary Of Vaults
In Borderlands, you control a group of Vault Hunters whose goal is to locate a mysterious Vault that is allegedly filled with great treasure. This leads to the end of the game, where the protagonists help open one of these vaults and are greeted by a huge monster. To stop it from destroying everything, the Vault Hunters kill it. Yet, in the process, a new element called Eridium is released.
This directly leads intothe best Borderlands game, Borderlands 2, where the corporation known as Hyperion has taken over the planet with the help of Eridium. They have made the planet of Pandora an even worse place to live, and their leader, Handsome Jack, is a threat to everyone. All of this came about because of those initial Vault Hunters.
