Yeah I can't do it either. I can't just be evil for the sake of evil. Now, if you gave me a character that was trying to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, or felt like they had to make an evil choice "for the greater good" I might be inclined to indulge that path for the storytelling.

I don't like being mean to people. I can be grumpy bastard, sure, but actually being mean to people just leaves me hollow inside. It's like when you get into a physical altercation and afterward there's the comedown as all the adrenaline drains out and you just feel like an asshole. Once you pause to reflect you just feel hollow.

Fallout 3 was the game that cemented it. I watched footage of the game before it released (I was extremely hyped, and even pre-ordered it for my Xbox 360) and in one of those videos they show you that you can sneak up to someone and plant a live grenade on them. Well, the character they did that to was Roy, the leader of the Ghouls that want to get into Tenpenny Tower. So when I got to Tenpenny Tower I decided to do what was in the video, sneaked up behind Roy, and put a grenade in his pocket. Turned him into gristle. I laughed.

Then I got the mission from the guard at Tenpenny to solve their "Ghoul issue." Having already killed Roy, negotiation was off the table. The Ghouls opened fire on me as soon as they saw me down in their tunnel base. Well, being fired upon means I can guiltlessly return fire, right? So I pasted all those motherfuckers. No love no loss, right? Well, so it would seem, until I reached the end of their lair. There was a woman down there, a ghoul, and for some reason she wasn't hostile. Maybe it was a bug, all the rest were hostile, but she wasn't. I could talk to her. So we talked. She told me all about Roy, how she and Roy were in love, that she was waiting for Roy to return so they could have a future together. She told me that Roy always said she was pretty. I'd killed all the hostiles, I'd done everything I thought I had to do, and yet the quest wasn't "completed."

I put 2 and 2 together and realized I had to kill her to complete the mission. Oddly, I couldn't do it to her face. I waited until she turned around to walk away then pulled out my combat rifle and blew her cranium apart. I targeted her head because for some reason I thought it would be the more humane option, faster, less pain. This was a stupid videogame character and I was feeling so off about how I was about to treat her that I was compelled to do it that way. "QUEST COMPLETED" played on my screen and I just felt like an absolute monster. I felt hollow. I felt more in that moment than possibly any videogame has ever made me feel. It's been like 13 years and I still remember that moment. I still remember her hoarsely telling me that Roy told her she was pretty no matter what she looked like on the outside.

I've been playing videogames since the mid 90s, killed a lot of 'bad guys,' mowed down hordes of nazis in WWII games (still don't feel bad about that shit lmao) but there was something about that murder that rocked me. Semantics I know, but I didn't kill her, I murdered her. I murdered a woman for the crime of associating with a man that a richer man wanted dead. It was like a stain that wouldn't wash out. I never finished that playthrough.