In-game rewards instead of in-game punishment - I can ditch the Mary Sue and not be penalized? Cool!

[American Lollinator Mace]

Has anyone played a game where it rewards you--either directly or indirectly--for something you thought you'd be punished for? For instance, Chrono Cross rewards you with being able to recruit Glenn (a shit-wrecker in combat) if you decide not to save Kid in Guldove.
Does anyone else have an example of this?

 

[ES 148]

Cave Story's best ending requires not talking Doctor Booster after he falls off a cliff in front of you, because this allows him to escape using the item he would have given you.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

Oddly enough, been thinking about this recently in a different context, where games give you a story decision with a counter intuitive result.

Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis has a particularly stupid one. At a certain point in a game, you have to make a choice whether to hunt down and capture an innocent creature. Agreeing gets you the "good" ending, while refusing gets you the "bad" ending.

Really hate it when games do that crap.

 

[Keerakh]

Megaman X3 lets you get Zero's saber if you beat Vile in the hidden stage and use Zero to fight that dumb bug thing.

 

[Monsieur Guillotine]

I don't know if you'd count this, but over half of The Stanley Parable is designed around not doing what you're "supposed" to.

 

[AF 802]

Not sure if this counts either, but you can ditch battles inside palaces in Persona 5 without consequence (while letting enemies escape has consequences).

 

[Ms. Cegination]

Hollow Knight has an NPC that has a crush on you that you can date and an NPC that constantly gets trapped in webs. If you leave him stuck in the webs, he dies, but if you save him, he steals your girl.

 

[The Shadow]

Metal Gear Solid gives you the stealth suit if you fail to save Meryl. Considering that's the easier option and the stealth is arguably more useful in the game than infinite ammo is...

 

[RadicalCentrist]

make a choice whether to hunt down and capture an innocent creature.

Explain. You mean an animal? What's the problem then?

Hollow Knight has an NPC that has a crush on you that you can date and an NPC that constantly gets trapped in webs. If you leave him stuck in the webs, he dies, but if you save him, he steals your girl.

Holy shit really? NTR Knight

 

[Robotron]

Hollow Knight has an NPC that has a crush on you that you can date and an NPC that constantly gets trapped in webs. If you leave him stuck in the webs, he dies, but if you save him, he steals your girl.

Remembered that if you also beat the one dream battle you get from saving said NPC enough times, she ends up leaving anyways.

 

[Wraith]

Played Disgaea and didn't know you could make your characters lift each other into a 10-character tower... then hurt somebody as a tower. Twas fun.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

Explain. You mean an animal? What's the problem then?

Holy shit really? NTR Knight

It's kind of a spoiler, but...

Spoiler

Mermaid, which are definitely sentient in this world.

So I guess you could say "person" in that sense, if you wanted to.

 

[GethN7]

Super Robot Wars, which I've Let's Sperged here, has some goofy examples of atypical game rewards/punishments.

Whenever they cover Gundam SEED/SEED Destiny's plot, they tend to mess with your head.

In SRW Alpha 3, the character Mu La Flaga, unlike canon, doesn't have to die. Simply don't deploy him in the unit he died in, and he lives to the end of the game, with cutscenes and everything taking into account his survival. The game follows canon fairly loyally otherwise, so most players either deploy him or expect the game to force deploy him and kill him off if they don't but it doesn't happen.

SRW J flips this around and kills him off automatically despite no real reason why he should have to die, even though they actually let more people live than in SRW Alpha 3's retread of the SEED plot.

SRW Z has some weird requirements for a true canon route that require doing strange things when covering Gundam SEED Destiny.

In one level, to qualify for this bonus route, you have to shoot down Kira Yamato from that show, but he's an ally (and was NOT shot down during the part of the show that stage retreads), so the game shouldn't let you kill him by default. You have to spam MAP weapons, which hit friends and foes indiscriminately, until they kill him off, and the game ordinarily encourages NOT doing this to allies, you just kill them off for no good reason doing this.

It's counter-intuitive especially because the true canon route pretty much rewrites GSD to be way less stupid in terms of plot, but you have to do strange things like mentioned above to throw the usual plot off the rails to get it.


SRW MX is also kinda goofy when covering the anime of RahXephon. Ordinarily, SRW let's you save people who should otherwise die in some horrible fashion and subvert their deaths, and through most of the game, most the crappier parts of that show are avoided or toned down, but then one level forces the PLAYER to reenact a death scene from the show, even forcing you to pull the trigger for a character's death, things SRW usually averts in one way or another.

 

[millais]

In Red Orchestra 2, teamkilling still counts towards weapon leveling stats the same as killing enemies, so some lazy people will go to empty servers and farm teamkills on bots until their weapons are fully leveled. Of course, teamkilling is still punished by negative team points and server autokicking past a certain threshold.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

I'm pretty sure everyone knows this, but Far Cry 3 if you dick around and don't leave the room, eventually the main bad guy will return and then the game ends.

 

[LN 910]

That’s Far Cry 4.

 

[GethN7]

I just remembered an interesting bit of backhanded reward that seems like punishment from Super Mario RPG.

In the town of Marrymore, they have a luxury suite room you can sleep in repeatedly and register a massive tab you have to pay off by working as a bellhop. It's technically punishment because you can't leave until you pay the bill off, but it can be a system of rewards if you are willing to be patient.

While working as a bellhop, the customers will hand out tips for good service, and some of the tips are stupidly valuable items, and the frequency they hand these out is good enough it can be worth it to game this for awhile, you can debt slavery yourself in getting enough Flower items (which increase Party MP) to get to max cap barely halfway through the game.

 

[TiggerNits]

Bloodborne.

Gascoigne's Daughter. Complete her quest she dies and so does her sister

Ignore a crying little girl? Probably make it until morning

The DLC has a bit of this too

Kill the innocent fetal child of a god? It stops torturing the end boss in his dreams!

 

[The Captain]

Not sure about punishment, but..

In Secret of Evermore on SNES, if you leave the upstairs bedroom of a house WITHOUT opening the chest, the owner of the house comes up and gives you a special magic spell that you can only get from him in that cutscene.

This one always stuck out to me.. in games you go in people's homes, opening their chests, taking potions, smashing pots, etc. but if you don't in this one instance = kickass spell.

 

[Bicycle Disaster]

Valkyrie Profile awards you the best ending if you misbehave on purpose otherwise you'll often get the bland ending.