Video Game Caring Potential



Not all games inspire base cruelty in players; some games make you feel like a Mama Bear or Papa Wolf to the little AI bots in your virtual world. You'll go out of your way to save Sgt. Chavez because his Final Speech is just too heartbreaking to bear, or Mecha Mook #27 who bravely got the Plot Coupon when all his unit died... and is just so darned cute!

In short, the game presents characters in such a way that you actually try to save the little buggers rather than do the sensible thing and use your Mook Maker or Clown Car Grave to replace them like the Redshirt Army that they are. Don't underestimate human sentimentality; even if the character is "just" a Companion Cube, their death will often inspire a Player Punch reaction which only gets more intense if the units or NPCs were thanking you on doing a good job. Games designers might choose to do this to inspire loyalty, discourage Zerg Rush strategies, and get the player emotionally invested in the game, and generally to make game play less cerebral and more visceral. Failure to achieve this may lead to apathy and even cruelty towards the Small Annoying Creature with the dumb AI. You know the rest.

God games are usually a strange mix of both, with players gleefully massacring some characters while carefully protecting others. If a mission objective requires you to protect someone, it becomes an Escort Mission.

Can lead to a chronic case of Save Scumming, especially if the NPCs to be protected are Made of Plasticine.

Action Adventure
"The cute dog attacks the ogre. The cute dog misses the ogre. The ogre attacks the cute dog. The cute dog is killed! You are direly saddened about the death of the cute dog."
 * Heavy Rain will likely make you seriously sympathize with the main characters and propel you to make sure they stay alive. But on the other hand, maybe you'll be tempted to use the saw during the Lizard Trial..
 * Pandoras Tower has Elena.You can keep her company, chat with her, give her gifts, and in exchange she will make medicine and translate the documents you find, even if you do nothing of the above.Also, even though beating a boss resets the progress of her curse, you really don't want to see what happens to her if you let the meter drop below red because you really had to finish the dungeon in one run.Even though you can easily heal her back, the moment is still heart-wrenching.
 * ADOM: You get this message even if your character is a bloodthirsty trollish berserker or dark elf necromancer:

"BDF: Oh my God... No. Not the"
 * "The spell hits the ! The is killed! The spell hits Rex! Poor Rex is killed! Heartbreaking...
 * A Boy and His Blob for the Wii features a Hug button just for this purpose.
 * Cannon Fodder is particularly mean with this. Each and every one of your 200+ soldiers is individually named, with their ranks and kills, and any soldier surviving a mission will be promoted; those who don't survive are recalled by name at the end of each level, and possibly added to the honours board. The first four - Jools, Jops, Stoo and RJ - are beloved by game players everywhere; they're also ShoutOuts to the main game developers. And you will give everything to try and keep them alive, because that Lost In Service list scrolling up between the poppies is devastating. The game satirises pretty much every single last one of the Military and Warfare Tropes. Oh, and all the characters are about nine pixels high.
 * Cave Story . Incidentally, this is the only way to access a bonus level and the best ending.
 * This is the purpose of Creatures, more or less.
 * The semi-sentient AI population, Darwinians, in Introversion's Darwinia. Though, if you move fast enough you can 'revive' them endlessly, unless they get annihilated by a Soul Destroyer, in which case they leave saddening ghostly echoes of their bodies behind. And then there's the level, where most of the methods of winning involve sending wave upon wave of the cute little guys . Made worse because the Darwinians are voiced by one of the developer's pet cat and meow very sweetly as they die.
 * Earthbound: Ness abandoned the cookie.
 * There's also the Bird Men in . If you get one of them killed on your way to, another one will gladly join your side if you go back to their house.
 * A cute game is trying to keep the AI-controlled player second player in Final Fight. And punishing them for their stupidity when they don't get out of the way. This is actually somewhat useful, as having two players means double the powerups.
 * The Godfather the game. You can get away with blasting a few innocent citizens, but every single person has a name that you somehow know. It's not so fun seeing Eduardo Mellini bleeding out in the middle of Fifth and Ten. Occasionally they will also shout things like "Don't do this! I have a wife and kids!"
 * Made worse by their lack of survival instincts! GET OUT OF THE WAY, SAL! THERE'S A HIGH SPEED CHASE TAKING PLACE HERE!
 * Also, the security guards at banks. They're not even mob affiliated, they're just doing their jobs! For the small banks, you can get away with robbing it and not killing any of them. Doesn't work for the big banks....
 * There's also your Corleone allies who always help you out whenever they see you in trouble, and the guys you hire to help take down enemy strongholds. It's rather sad to see them get killed in action on your behalf.
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The nameless Grove Street mooks you pick up to assist in missions will chatter with C.J. on the way to the goal, giving him shit like all his named friends. Makes it hard to watch them mowed down like wheat. Of course it doesn't help they tend to fire wildly at every cop that comes by.
 * Ico is all about this. You spend the entire game worrying about how Yorda is doing. Her ability to open doors certainly helps as well.
 * The first time Ico calls her across a gap she can't possibly leap, and she jumps anyway, trusting Ico to catch her and pull her up.
 * Although still images don't do it justice, you can get a good idea of the heart-in-throat moments from this picture.
 * Heck, Ico calling for Yorda and leading her by the hand through hordes of Dark Spirits. Or Ico fighting his way through those hordes to pull her out of their grasp with all the ferocity a ten-year-old boy can muster.
 * All of this is made even more interesting because Yorda speaks an unknown language; Ico (and the player) haven't a clue what she's saying, and they have to communicate via body language. That she's so darned important to you when you can't even understand her is impressive, to say the least.
 * Of course, the main inspiration for Ico was Another World, which has a similar caring relationship with a mute alien who looks exactly the same as your average mook. But it's easy to forget this when . And then there's the ending...
 * Surprisingly, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction of all games has this trope. If you press the special button (Y in the Game Cube version) while holding someone Hulk normally slams them into the ground. But if you do so while holding a civilian, Hulk just puts them down gently and pats them on the head.
 * Of course, you can always follow this up by punting them halfway across the city...
 * In Limbo, the protagonist is just a silent little kid in a freakish monochrome world where Everything Is Trying to Kill You. If you don't have any platformer or puzzler skills at the start, you will develop them just to get him through.
 * The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask, for the N64. You have to complete a sidequest which revolves around reuniting a separated couple because the man, Kafei, has been cursed to become a child. You actually have to complete the quest twice to get all the items for game completion, but to get one of the items (the postman's hat) involves not helping Kafei reclaim his mask he was going to give to his girl Anju. This of course means that Anju is going to wait in Clock Town alone, until the moon crashes down on her...
 * It helps to remember that every character will only experience the True Ending, since Link will reset time until he gets it right.
 * You can totally get the Postman's Hat and reunite Kafei and Anju on the same run. Be sure to get the Letter to Mother, warp back to town after helping Kafei, go straight to the post office and give the postman the Letter. Receive Postman's Hat. Run back to the inn. You're welcome.
 * The entire game is based around manipulating this trope. Termina is a world as alien to Link as it is to the player. By the end of the game, his burgeoning care for the people of Termina is mirrored by the player's growing familiarity with the world and its problems.
 * Okami allows the player, in their role as a benevolent goddess, to perform good deeds ranging from making trees and flowers bloom to finding water for reservoirs to battling demons. One good deed was to buy some charcoal for a little girl to play with- AWWW!
 * Don't forget feeding the animals, which gives you a little cutscene of them eating. Afterward they'll have little hearts floating around when they see you.
 * In fact, Okami breathes this trope. As a benevolent goddess, you earn Praise (for leveling up) not just by heroic deeds and beating the bad guys, but by feeding those animals, making trees bloom, turning dead land into fertile ground, and taking other totally non-violent actions to simply improve peoples' lives. It restores life and a sense of wonder to the world, enhancing your divine strength.
 * But in your own hour of need, will they remember you?
 * Overlord can enter into this at times - your Minions are ultra-expendable, but the basic (brown) ones can pick up pieces of equipment from fallen enemies... (actually, they all can, but while the other variants just get generic graphical upgrades that reflect how good their equipment is, you can actually SEE what the Browns are carrying). Since certain pieces of equipment are unique, gained from defeating specific bosses or one-time-only encounters - or just plain rare - you can easily end up wanting to protect the one who's wearing a golden crown and wielding a giant fondue fork, partially because they're unique and powerful items (which will be Lost Forever if he dies) and partially because they serve as souvenirs of an interesting boss-fight.
 * Of course, some of them can also become valued simply for comedic value, such as the one wearing a tophat and wielding a bouquet of flowers, or the one wearing a full beard (the previous owner didn't need it anymore).
 * The sequel encourages players to keep their minions alive more, since the Minions now have names, personalities, manageable equipment, mounts, levels, and the ability to raise favorites from the dead at a graveyard. However as an Evil Overlord you're mainly motivated by the fact that you don't want powerful Minions carrying special equipment such as BFSes, Gladiator Helmets or one-of-a-kind hats to go to waste.
 * Course in the sequel if you really care about your favourite Minion you can bring him back to life. At a cost, to save a level 10 Minion for example will require you to kill 100 in trade.
 * Losing Pikmin can cause players to feel bad. Something about their screams is upsetting, and then there are those water vapour ghosts to remind you how badly you let them all down. It's even worse if you just leave some behind after dark. Not to mention they're basically dying for capitalism in the second game.
 * Pikmin don't have graves, you know.
 * Which makes the massive Pikmin carnage in Super Smash Bros Brawl somewhat of a Player Punch for those who also played Pikmin.
 * Also, in the first game, Olimar himself, as an extension of the player, becomes attached to the little critters, as evidenced in his log entries. He amusedly notes their various quirks as the days go by, and he berates himself if they get caught in a bomb blast or if the Pikmin race dies out.
 * GLaDOS spends an entire level in Portal trying to make the player bond with the Companion Cube, only to tell you at the end of the level that
 * In the sequel, you encounter a turret-bot reclamation facility that is called "The Turret Redemption Slide." Among the piles of scrapped robots, there is a functioning one, easily spotted due to its active laser sight. If you pick it up and carry it off, it says "Thank you" in that strangely endearing robotic voice.
 * Generally, the turrets talk to the player in a very endearing way. "Please put me down,", "Where are you?" and "Good night," are all great examples of this.
 * The first level of Psychonauts gives you the option of escorting Dogan across a mine field safely in the very first level. As long as you don't go too far ahead, it's pretty easy, you get a few arrowheads, and you feel like you've just started on your way to become a hero. Then he explodes.
 * Well, his mental personification explodes. If it helps, Dogan probably wanted to leave Coach Oleander's mind anyway.
 * There are also articles of emotional luggage scattered throughout all the mental levels. They are all so sad and crying because they miss their tags...yeah...and, oh, so lovely rejoice when you reunite them.
 * It's not hard for fixing Fred, Gloria, and Edgar to end up feeling like a personal responsibility. They start off more funny than anything but interesting, then you get to know them personally and you're bound to really get attached to at least one of them, and from there you gradually find out the rest. So you're rewarded with a Plot Coupon for each one, but completing their minds' main stories gives a "Ya done good, kid, ya done good" kind of satisfaction itself.
 * In Shadow of the Colossus,
 * Sadistically, the game manages to make you care about practically every other Colossus you kill. This doesn't keep you from being pulled along, with the character, on his grim path, or being perversely thrilled by the challenge even while knowing you will be devastated by your own actions in a moment.
 * Some of them you can't feel bad for killing, like that damned boar, but yes, about half of them make you feel like you've destroyed something ancient and majestic.
 * Go up to Agro without a weapon out (with your hand showing as the cursor) and tap the attack button. Wander will stroke his horse's flank lovingly. No reason, just a sign he cares about his mount.
 * Of course, this may be a subtle admonishment for a player trying to attack their horse.
 * In Shadow of Destiny, the player can take the time to fetch a kitten and let a small girl adopt it. There's no reward for doing so, just giving a child a kitten.
 * The point of Yoshi's Island to babysit Mario, and being Mario of course you want to protect him...but if he ever gets knocked off Yoshi you'll either want to kill him yourself or redouble your efforts to not get hit if ONLY to not hear that crying again. Yoshi's Island DS adds Baby Peach, Donkey Kong, Wario and Bowser to the mix... I bet you can guess who has the LEAST tolerable sounds.
 * Scarface the World Is Yours. Some of the mooks that will fight by your side get unique conversations with Tony; a nice bit of character development. Of course, the fact that they kick so many kinds of ass will also inspire the desire to keep them alive. See how many missions you can do with the same minion!
 * This happens once or twice in the introductory level of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. If you act quickly enough, you can save the lives of various Galactic Federation marines . You'll receive a reward for saving one in particular, who is injured and firing at his aggressors from behind a crate.
 * In the Sonic Adventure games for the Dreamcast and Game Cube, the player can partake in a mini-game to raise Chao, which are essentially tiny (and cute) alien-like creatures. Powerups acquired in the main game can be brought back to 'Chao World', and used to raise the chao's stats and change their appearance, among other things. The joy a player gets when their Chao evolve from a baby to their next form is hard to reproduce. The mini-game can also be a source of cruelty potential, if you're really feeling sadistic.
 * In the Suikoden series, sometimes your characters can die for real, be it in a cinematic event or a less-dramatic death on the battlefield. Either way, you do feel lousy for the death of your characters, which are sometimes friends with your other characters, or even family. It also doesn't help that many of the best endings and secrets are unlocked by making it to the end of the game with all 108 characters alive.
 * Certain characters will die outside of your control in final stages of each game. There's absolutely nothing you can do about it; their deaths are part of the ending. But despite the sheer number of characters, the games tend to make you care enough about them that it's still a Player Punch.
 * A guy on YouTube going by the name of Burning Dog Face created a full Let's Play of American McGee's Alice and sounded quite genuinely distressed at one character's death at the hands of the Red Queen. It was quite a Player Punch.


 * He also sounded very pleased at the end when ... You can't blame him!
 * All of Burning Dog Faces videos have a bit of this trope. He generally goes for the villains with the most morally questionable or cruel behaviour first, and leaves the ones with more sympathetic motives until last.
 * The AI partners in Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 aren't good for much aside from distracting enemy aces. However, it feels good to help out your partners and hear them express their gratitude. Mission Mode encourages you to do this, as having friendly relations with other pilots can unlock bonus missions, and there's even a set of missions specifically for improving relations with them. Conversely, when you're on opposite sides with the character you like, they'll express horror and rage when they see you're their enemy now and thoroughly guilt-trip you. To top it off, Kamille's path in Mission Mode allows you to reverse the Downer Ending of Z Gundam by saving Henken, the Radish, and Emma.
 * Assassin's Creed II uses this to build up the Player Punch, by having you spend the first hour interacting with Ezio's family. This includes defending his sister's honor against a philandering boyfriend, doing favors for his sick little brother and his mother, and in general getting across the message that the Auditore are a very close and caring family. Later on there's a Quick Time Event that allows you to hug Leonardo da Vinci, who at this point is Ezio's best friend.
 * Assassin's Creed Brotherhood allows the player to build up a crew of assassins that you recruit from the oppressed citizenry. You can outfit them with kit and send them out on missions. Also, destroying the Borgia oppression leads to the revitalization of Rome, and eventually The Renaissance.
 * As you progress through the game, the background chatter of NPCs will include statements like "things are really getting better" and "there will be a special throne in Hell for Cesare Borgia when this is all over."
 * In the last part of the first God of War, in a very intense battle, . If they get hurt, you can.
 * You could say one objective of Dead Rising 2 is all about this. You play as Chuck Greene whose daughter, Katey was bitten by a zombie, to prevent her transformation into one of the walking dead, she requires a shot of Zombrex every 24 hours. Seeing how this is...well, Dead Rising, it's another thing you have to neatly fit into your schedule. You have to find Zombrex while finding the truth, then also administer a shot to save her. It's really easy to start caring for little Katey, you can even bring her gifts for experience points and achievements! However, you CAN ignore this fact and let her die, since this is...well, Dead Rising, but it condemns you to Ending F, which ends on an absolutely tragic note, not only that, but you'll feel like a complete bastard.
 * You can't save most of the guards slaughtered by the Joker and his goons in Batman: Arkham Asylum, but everyone you do save thanks you profusely, and the other surviving guards express their gratitude for you just being there. You even get an achievement on one level for saving all the guards and an escaped prisoner.
 * This is made somewhat worse, however, when you return to the same areas and
 * The last chapter of Telltale's Tales of Monkey Island ends in a brutal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown by the Big Bad on the happy-go-lucky main character, Guybrush Threepwood. It looks extremely painful and brutal but it's made even worse when you can hear the pain in Guybrush's voice every time he talks.  The idea was that as he's getting thrown all over, you're suppose to come up with a way to get him out of it. In the commentary, the creators said a lot of people had trouble playing because they felt so terrible for Guybrush.
 * Among the inmates of Batman: Arkham City are any number of innocent political prisoners. You'll hear them long before you see them, screaming and pleading for help as they're assaulted by criminals. And while you don't have to stop what you're doing and save them, it's very satisfying to dive in, kick their tormentors to the curb, and hear them thank you like only someone trapped in a war zone can.

Air Combat

 * Ace Combat games usually have a Redshirt Army alongside the player's plane. While it's possible to go ahead and focus on destroying the targets while leaving the other planes to go down, there's some satisfaction to be gained in helping allies to fend off enemy planes and gain air superiority. Fires of Liberation explicates this by rewarding the player for helping out in secondary operations, such as by letting them call down Macross Missile Massacres.
 * More importantly, your wingmen/-women. If you don't feel sad about PJ in Belkan War, you have emotional capacity of a tree stump, but on the other hand, can you really get yourself mad enough at Pixy, after all you've been through together, can you? And how about Edge, Grimm, and Chopper in AC5--don't you feel really close to them, despite not really knowing anything about them except their names and appearances?
 * In Star Wars: Battle for Naboo, you play a Naboo pilot leading a resistance movement against the Trade Federation occupying the planet. At various points, farmers are being slaughtered and their homes razed by droids. It's hard not to veer away from the main objective to quickly dispatch the metal bastards, especially as you listen to the terrified screams and desperate pleas over the comm channel.
 * Likewise, when you free prisoners from internment camps and lead them to safety. Only one or two of the vehicles have to make it, but it feels terrible knowing that they've suffered in those camps for weeks, only to die just when freedom was within sight. Unfortunately, it's damn near impossible to keep all of them alive.
 * The ancient PC game G-Police inspired a feeling of protectiveness over the nearly helpless ground units that filled the missions. The player character's fellow law enforcement officers that are on the ground need your air support, or they aren't going to last. The small, weak but relentlessly persistent vehicles engender a Papa Wolf feeling.

Other

 * Touched upon in this Kotaku article about "The Daddening of Video Games".
 * 100% Completion in Lemmings seems like a moral imperative. The lemmings' cute character designs don't help.
 * Used during the "Years of Yarncraft" storyline from Sluggy Freelance, when Torg and Zoe play a MMORPG and save some virtual puppies from being drowned. Then they discover that the bad guy they stopped just comes back to drown more puppies, only now they can't stop him because they already completed the quest. Eventually the mountain of dead puppies blots out the sun.
 * Die Anstalt. These poor little fluffy animals are so screwed up, you can't help but feel for them and genuinely want them to get better. Especially the alligator. Dear God. The poor thing cries when you finally help him.
 * Heavy Rain makes it very hard not to get attached to the characters. Especially considering all the horrible things they go through..
 * Ethan's interactions with Shaun and Jason can also make you rather protective of them.
 * In the Ace Attorney games, your partner Maya may be an annoyingly naive, burger demolishing bundle of energy, but it still feels like a punch in the gut every time she's accused of murder and/or kidnapped. Which happens an awful lot.
 * The Minoto version of "The Little Match Girl" is all about undoing the story's Tear Jerker ending by saving the titular girl. It begins with her lying frozen and apparently dead on the ground...but a nearby snowman will donate his arms to use in building a fire to save her. After you've built the fire, she wakes up and kisses the snowman out of gratitude, giving him Blush Stickers. From there you move on to giving her a decent meal, and then to buying so many matches that she can move into a castle.
 * Numerous players in Minecraft have adopted pet slimes, since a bug prevents them from despawning. The recent addition of wolves and cats also encourages this, since they can be tamed and will subsequently fight alongside you or shun creepers respectively as long as you can keep them healthy.
 * The Let's Play'er Snap Wave adopted a pet creeper he named Mr. Creepy, which saved his life on numerous occasions. He almost started crying after it died.
 * Someone once rounded up Testificates to give them a nice new home.
 * Giving Villagers happy, safe, monster-free dwellings is also rewarding, since a grown village will eventually spawn friendly, powerful iron golems that will attack hostile monsters.
 * Catherine gives you plenty of opportunities to encourage, teach and save from themselves other guys in the same situation you are in. In fact, they'll even thank you for it.
 * The Christmas 2007 event on Gaia Online had users fostering adorable shabby orphans, who would hang out by the user's avatar. The goal was to respond to the orphan's occasional requests and improve their (Dickens-esque) living conditions a little before returning them to the orphanage (and receiving an item as a reward for every few orphans so helped). Many users decided to "unofficially adopt" their orphans by never returning them to the orphanage. Then, when the event ended and the orphans went away anyway, the users stormed the forums to demand them back.
 * This led to the February 2008 Chance Item... adoption forms for said orphans. And the Fandom Rejoiced.

First Person Shooter

 * Bioshock's Little Sisters sit on the thin line between this and Video Game Cruelty Potential. Yes, they are creepy little wretches, but you feel like a Big Damn Hero when you save one of them.
 * A sequence in the end turns it Up to Eleven when
 * Even moreso in the sequel. You'd be shocked how much more incentive you have to protect them when they call you 'daddy' and all the creepily cute dialogue they have is directed at you.
 * In Bioshock 2, Mark Meltzer and by extension his missing daughter Cindy. Anyone who followed the ARG Something In The Sea is very familiar with Mark, and you can find audio diaries detailing his search for Cindy in the game. Many players became obsessed with the idea of helping Mark.
 * It's not just the Little Sisters. There are players who actively try to find a way to collect and cure the girls without harming the Big Daddies...or failing that, get through the game without collecting any Little Sisters except the ones the storyline forces them to.
 * Elizabeth in Infinite seems to be designed for this. The player character is tasked with finding and protecting her, and she's very powerful. She's also very cute, has Of Corsets Sexy, her head proportions and hair seem to make her look younger, and overusing her powers actually harms her.
 * Your squad members from Call of Duty would probably count if the interesting ones weren't immortal for plot reasons.
 * There are achievements for saving certain soldiers in Call of Duty 4 and World at War.
 * The first game strips Private Elder of his invulnerable status after Sergeant Moody gives you the explosives during the assault on Brecourt Manor, meaning he'll usually buy the farm about the time you reach the last gun. Screw that, says I.
 * In Call of Duty 4, you get an achievement for saving an innocent farmer in one of the missions from being gunned down.
 * In the Vorkuta level in Black Ops, you'll face several times your prisoner allies being clubbed down by the guards. You've the potential to try to save them by stabbing the guards with your shiv to death. The sad part however is that no matter as fast as you try to be, the prisoners dies anyway.
 * Far Cry 2. Keeping your buddies alive and doing what they ask gives instant return any time you are gunned down by the enemy mercenaries. Your health drops to zero, you fall to the ground, black out... and instead of being treated to a load game screen, you come to a 48-year-old Kosovar Papa Wolf shooting people left and right and dragging your bleeding hide to cover in one of the most movie-like moments ever pulled off in a 1st perspective game.
 * Not to mention they can sometimes die for real, while you continuously give them your healing items to ease their suffering.
 * The resistance soldiers that join you in Half Life 2 ("Follow Freeman!") are infinite in number and they die easily. They're more or less supposed to be cannon fodder, making your life a little easier, but there is something inspiring about losing as few of them as possible. Especially the ones that look like Gordon Frohman.
 * Which also happens to look just like John Freeman, making them even more worth saving.
 * On a more specific note, you will become very attached to Alyx. She's arguably tougher than Gordon is thanks to her insane health regeneration (thankfully sparing you the normal pain of an Escort Mission) and can fight off zombies at close range, but you will go out of your way to protect her regardless. And when you will do anything to save her.
 * Don't forget dear old Dog, adorable pile of ambulatory scrap metal that he is. Each and every one of his appearances is an absolute delight. He's just so darn enthusiastic about, well... everything. Oh, and his interactions with Alyx are practically guaranteed to make you smile.
 * Of course, when you account for the fact that he's powerful enough to fling about armored titanium cars, protecting him isn't too big a concern.
 * In addition, he ripped the brain out of a strider and beat up a telekinetic super maggot, or 'Advisor' to those with the lingo. When he falls off the strider it's tear jerking to see that he looks like he's dead, then he wakes up, dances around and has a race with you.
 * Jet Force Gemini: The ants. Although most of them are heartless monsters and shoot you or even the tribals without hesitation, there are some ants which are just throwing their weapons away when they see you and capitulate because they want to live further. Made it cruel when you have to kill them all to open an energy door...
 * In Mercenaries 2, most of the various factions are either idiots or complete jerks to you. The sole exception is the PLAV, who actually act like nice guys, and it becomes hard not to think of them in a positive light when they yell things like "Viva la Mercenario!" and "The Merc's on our side, we can't lose!" or even "The Mercenary is here! We're saved!" Everyone else is an asshole, but these guys like you and make you feel welcome and give you the impression that you're doing some good. No wonder everyone favors them over Universal Petroleum's jackass mercenaries.
 * The Chinese General somehow fits, too, as he gives you the final nuke without hesitating, thanking you for your assistance. Unlike the UN dude.
 * The single-player campaign of World in Conflict continually emphasizes that you're leading an undersized, overworked company of troops in desperate last stands and daring blitzkriegs. It feels like you must keep tabs on the health of all units and minimize losses, but in reality, you get as many reinforcements as you need, and a decent number of objectives let you Take Your Time.
 * The Halo games. Especially the first three, with such amiable and go-get-em Marines, you can't help but feel bad when they die. And then Legendary Difficulty happened.
 * The Huragok. They, alone, pose no threat; instead they shield the nearby Covenant. However, in ODST, if you defeat the Covenant they're shielding, the Engineer/Huragok will...explode. It's...a bit of a lose/lose situation. It can end up either I Have to Leave One Covenant Alive Caring Potential (there's an achievement for not killing a single Huragok, explosions included) or Screw It They're Going to Die Anyways But I'm Still Sad Caring Potential.
 * In Reach certain troopers will join you as fireteams which now means the people who are essentially Red Shirt now have names making it more tragic when they eventually die.
 * Deus Ex Invisible War the entire Leila Nassif mission involves you finding a young girl, establishing that they're safe from the evil man who is killing the students who don't meet his extreme views, then telling her father that she's safe. There is no difference in the end result, but if you didn't stop at the police station first then expect to feel like crap.
 * Deus Ex Human Revolution - who would follow ? This troper certainly threw the usual sneaking out of the window and went berserk to.
 * Players have outright abandoned their pacifist runs without regret to, either because non-lethal takedowns weren't getting the job fast enough or because those bastards deserved it. Similar rampages have also occurred upon players finding and/or witnessing the absolute massacre of terrified, innocent civilians in the  hotel.
 * HR gives you the option to talk several people out of suicide, and one man into releasing a hostage. You don't have to, but you get a nice bonus (Silver Tongue achievement) if you do.

Horror

 * Fatal Frame II gives you a twin sister to protect. She's a bit of a hassle because her knee is permanently injured, so she's slower, but what you soon learn is that These feelings are well transmitted into the player during the game, and so, Mayu's safety becomes an indisputable priority.
 * In Haunting Ground, you pair up with a white German Shepherd named Hewie early on. He becomes your main defense as you try to escape from your deranged pursuers. A major contributing factor towards what ending you get is how well you treat Hewie. You are given the option to praise him at any time, and can heal him if he is injured by giving him dog-only restorative items. If Hewie becomes so injured to point where lies incapacited on the ground, you can go over to him and press the 'praise' button to comfort him and get him back on his feet. There is also a part later on in the game where
 * Left 4 Dead can be this way sometimes when it comes to the survivor AI. Sure, they may get in the way sometimes when you are shooting and they may always snatch up health items first, but it's hard not to care about them when they are so willing to give up their health kits and pain pills to keep you alive, even if they are on the verge of death themselves.
 * YMMV on this. Many players find the AI so intolerable ("What the hell!? You could have saved me from that Smoker, you were standing right next to it!") that they punish the computer players by withholding assistance and letting them suffer.
 * Averted in Resident Evil 4, with Ashley. You're supposed to care for her and watch her, but it occasionally falls into Video Game Cruelty Potential when after she causes you to restart one too many times, you spend time trying to shoot her with rocket launchers, mine darts, and sniper rifles.
 * Played straight with the dog caught in the Bear Trap at the beginning. You'd have to have ice in your veins not to free him with the whimpers he makes.
 * Resident Evil 2 has Sherry Birkin, a twelve-year-old girl whom player character Claire Redfield must protect. Sure, she's not as handy as Leon's partner character (Badass Lady in Red Ada Wong), but she's just so adorable. What's more, when you walk through a level with Sherry in tow, and you stop long enough for her to catch up, she walks up and holds Claire's hand. It's hard not to feel at least a little protective of her.
 * Silent Hill 4 ends up with you playing lonely Henry protecting his nextdoor neighbor, Eileen. With Henry having been trapped in his hellish room for five or six days and counting, Eileen having been beaten within an inch of her life and limping around pitifully behind him, and the player being terrified (this IS Silent Hill), it's hard not to go out of your way to keep Eileen safe and healthy, either out of sympathy for one or both characters, or simply out of not wanting your lone companion to lose her mind and leave you braving the Otherworld all alone.
 * A rather bizarre example with the old Infocom text-adventure The Lurking Horror. At one point you pick up a dead hand. At another you encounter a vat of liquid which reanimated dead tissue. Drop the hand in the vat and, it comes to life, clambers onto your shoulder, and just sits there. It will occasionally point you in the right direction if you're lost, and it can scare the crap out of an irritating NPC. Since it's one of the only friendly things in the game, many players get extremely angry if anything (re-)kills the dead hand.
 * Deadly Premonition - You play as an FBI agent visiting a small town afflicted by a series of murders. You first meet up with the sheriff and his deputies, who are very unhappy with your interference. Later on they get to know you, and you genuinely start to like them; they take you out to dinner, romance blooms with one, and you help them and the other different and likeable characters around town with their own individual problems.
 * Deadly Premonition - You play as an FBI agent visiting a small town afflicted by a series of murders. You first meet up with the sheriff and his deputies, who are very unhappy with your interference. Later on they get to know you, and you genuinely start to like them; they take you out to dinner, romance blooms with one, and you help them and the other different and likeable characters around town with their own individual problems.

MMORPG

 * World of Warcraft slightly invokes this trope in the Death Knight starting quest line when you have to execute a member of your own race that you knew way back after he/she pleads with you to come to your senses.
 * And again in the quest The Mosswalker Savior, which can very suddenly turn around the player's feelings about the Oracles.
 * You get decent XP for the quest line, but that's not why you will go through hell to help little Pamela Redpath find her daddy.
 * The game invokes this in a TRINKET with the badlands quest reward
 * The craft skill Inscription has 'Forged Documents' as one of the higher level items. Once per day, you can make them and get a quest to turn them in to one of about six random people in the major city. One of them on the alliance side is Thomas Miller the baker, but if you give them to him you will probably feel like you just kicked a blind kid's one legged puppy. "My bread made someone sick? I hope my meager savings will help..."
 * Then again, Thomas Miller is something of a scrappy due to the way he wanders town going off about his bread. He's up there with the girl who stole the boy's gorilla (Formailly him stealing her doll) and the dwarf woman in Ironforge who goes off about her bread.
 * On the other hand, how else is he supposed to sell his bread without his own shop? He has to make a living somehow, and that daily alone might discourage this troper from ever picking up Inscription, quite frankly.
 * Arguably invoked in Star Trek Online: A lazy or selfish player could send his away team ahead on ground missions to do all the dirty work for him, and if they die there's very little in the way of penalties. Similarly, Tactical Captains gain a power to summon Red Shirt security officers; as one might expect, they have very low health and their primary usage is as cannon fodder. It can be quite satisfying to keep them alive, though.
 * For the space segments, there are a few missions with NPC ships that are under attack when you warp in. In particular, the recent Deferi sector has a repeatable mission which involves stopping an attack on a convoy of weakly armed transport ships. There's absolutely no reward for saving them, aside from a little extra firepower throughout the rest of the mission, but it's hard to let them just get destroyed.
 * Also in Deferi sector, there's an optional encounter with a Breen starship. Your tactical officer will detect Deferi lifesigns aboard, so you're given the option to hail the ship. The Breen will let you talk to the (Obviously scared) Deferi captive, who pretends to be an exchange officer. At this point, there are several choices: You can buy the Deferi slave outright with Latinum, you can destroy the ship with the Deferi still aboard, or you can employ a sensor-disrupting tactic to beam the Deferi straight to your ship. In an especially unusual twist, you can then either destroy the Breen ship or take the Deferi and leave the Breen ship intact. This is one case where not only is it wise to show compassion for your allies, but for your enemy as well.
 * Arguably invoked in Vindictus : Ellis, who happens to be an annoyingly naive cadet who follows around an army official and happens to eventually grow on you. Eventually,
 * Ever lose a cat in Runescape? A kitten becomes a cat after ten real-time hours of being fed and petted. Alongside loving being stroked and enjoying play, a cat is the key to at least three quests. One of those quests involves mucking around inside a pyramid without being able to set the cat down. Since the rules concerning item loss-on-player death are linked to the price of items (your armor is more expensive than your cat) and you can only lose what you are actually holding, this can be frustrating.
 * Hell, it's easy to get attached to any of the pets. You'd be surprised how much you can like a giant crab.
 * Probably a better example: When players die in runescape, all of the items they lost on death are kept under a short-lived gravestone. Given that the most dangerous areas and a long way from the nearest respawn, it's not unlikely that you'll lose a lot because you couldn't get back in time. However, other players can repair your gravestone, giving you precious minutes so you can get your armour back... or they can just watch the gravestone wither away and take what used to be yours...
 * BioWare follows their usual standard in Star Wars the Old Republic. If you do a good turn for the various NPCs you meet during your quests, they'll frequently send you an in-game email with their heartfelt, and heartwarming, thanks.
 * Guild Wars second chapter, Factions, has a mission on the Luxon side, Gyala Hatchery. Normally, escort missions can be a pain, particularly if the AI you are guiding is prone to wading into combat (I'm looking at -you-, Rurik). Gyala Hatchery inspires players to go for the Master-level mission completion due to the fact that you must protect 3 newly hatched Seige Turtles, which waddle around in the middle of the group. Sure, they'll grow up to be artillery-carrying weapons of mass destruction, but it's hard not to feel bad when one bites the dust.

RPG
"Shepard: You'll dream of a warm place. And when you wake up, you'll be in it."
 * BioWare RPGs all feature engaging casts of secondary characters that look up to the protagonist. While you can do mean, terrible things to them if you want, it's usually more satisfying to be nice to them. Most of the games also feature certain scenarios with diplomatic solutions. Sure, it's easy to wipe out a tribe of kobolds or lizardmen, but it's much more satisfying to earn their trust, arrange for peaceful cohabitation with humans, and have them consider you an honored friend.
 * Minsc in Baldurs Gate II. His epilogue will have you shed a tear, guaranteed.
 * Neverwinter Nights gives you Deekin. Anyone who can be cruel to Deekin is a monster with no soul. And those few who didn't care for him probably found themselves attached to Grobnar from Neverwinter Nights 2.
 * Aribeth's reaction if you convince her to come back at the end of Neverwinter Nights. And her reaction if you reassure her in the face of her apprehension at returning to the world of the living at the end of Hordes of the Underdark.
 * Knights of the Old Republic: the dialogue involved in turning back from the Dark Side.
 * Seeing Carth recover from his paranoia and vow to help you despite The Reveal.
 * Finding out that  Juhani's inspiration for becoming a Jedi. She can be touchy and tempermental, but crack that and you have an awesome friend.
 * And while you can cross the Moral Event Horizon by  the fact that you have to do it playing Dark Side has stopped many players from actually following through.
 * Jade Empire: the Drowned Orphan Quest. The ghosts of the orphans desperately want peace, as does . The Open Palm ending allows you to be bring peace to the spirits of all parties. Hell, half the fun of Open Palm is being able to settle the restless dead.
 * It's hard to be a Complete Monster to cute little Wild Flower...And sooo satisfying to kick that nasty demon that's bothering her into next week.
 * Kicking  ass is very satisfying after hearing him insult Dawn Star (the sweetest, nicest person in your party) to her face. It's also a CMOH to free the enslaved spirit of.
 * Picking the Colonist backstory in Mass Effect results in a sidequest where you find a character who was from the same colony as you, but who was captured and enslaved and became severely messed up. She was rescued, but grabbed a weapon away and hid. She talks about herself in the third person, and you can either rush in and jab her with a sedative or talk to her, approaching slowly, and administer it without spooking her. On the way you can learn some of the details about what happened and tell her it's not her fault. If you play it right, you can convince her to take the sedative herself, then, as she falls asleep in your arms, whisper the following to her:


 * That scene in particular is a Shout-Out to Aliens. It's much more noticeable if you're playing a Female!Shepard.
 * In the sequel, you get an email from her with her using the first person, thanking you and saying she's getting better. Yep, Good Feels Good.
 * Mass Effect 2 is replete with these. In particular, Miranda, Thane, Kasumi and Tali's loyalty all have endings that are bound to warm even the hardest hearts. And, of course,
 * The Suicide Mission is a big one. It's possible to lose nearly everyone (including Shepard!) -- in the worst ending, only survive, but it is possible to get everyone through.
 * You can encounter a quarian on her Pilgrimage, being harassed by security on a false claim of thievery. Shepard can mention he has knowledge of the quarians, and she's genuinely shocked that an alien would bother to know anything about her race. The tone suggests that s/he's the first person to speak to her like a normal person since she left to Flotllia. And you can tell the people harrassing her to piss off with an Interrupt.
 * Sharing a bottle of brandy with Dr. Chakwas.
 * The ending of the Overlord DLC: is something even the most die-hard of Renegade players shy away from. The ending also has die-hard Paragons clamour for an option to
 * Early on in the game you're hunting down Garrus and find out about a concerted effort by nearly every local crime syndicate to take down a vigilante. They're sending in wave after wave of dumb mercenaries as cannon fodder--death is a guarantee. Just after Shepard signs up to infiltrate the groups, a dumb hotshot kid comes in to join. It's obvious that this kid won't last two seconds, and a Paragon interrupt has Shepard take his gun from him and send him off. Later, you get an email from him thanking you for saving his life.
 * Dragon Age: Origins has this both in companion-related quests and in dialogue at camp. Though in one case there's an odd subversion: Alistair's companion quest.
 * Leliana and Alistair are this in general, especially if you romance one of them. They're both just too damn sweet and Adorkable.
 * The team's resident Dark Action Girl, Morrigan, comes across as a Stupid Evil Jerkass to most of the cast. This can also extend to the player. But if the PC shows her respect and treats her well, it is possible to befriend or romance her. Considering what a dick she can be at times, it can be very satisfying to see Morrigan slowly soften up when she's around you and basically tell you that you are the only person she gives a damn about.
 * Your dog. From the way he fetches items for you, fights alongside you, interacts with your teammates, and rolls around happily on his back when you pet him at camp, even the most ruthless Warden will probably be nice to their poochie.
 * Dragon Age II has Merrill, a shy elf girl who turned to blood magic and is now hated by her whole clan. Once she befriends Hawke, she's the most adorable little thing. Heck, even your snarky companions act nice to her!
 * This short comic neatly sums up every player's reaction upon first meeting her.
 * Non-Bioware but definitely closely related example: talking to the Handmaiden after Atris nearly tortures her to death with Force Lightning for falling in love with you in Knights of the Old Republic 2.
 * Possibly more so is the speech Visas/Mical (depending on player character gender) gives you after the final trip to Dantooine if you were nice to her/him.
 * Many of Nippon Ichi's game have ending flags based on the number of allies you killed. In particular, the first Disgaea game, Hour of Darkness, locks you out of the best (and ultimately canon) ending if you kill even one of your own characters.
 * Dragon Quest V was built on it.
 * The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has given all the NPCs personality, unique quotes, a friendship minigame that will have them fight for you if they like you enough, and they don't come back to life.
 * Well, there's one who comes back to life naturally, but he inspires more Cruelty than Caring.
 * It's also easy to become loyal to causes within the game. Try not to feel proud when you wear a Kvatch cuirass after saving the town.
 * Pillaging your way through Oblivion - especially just after completing the Crusader quest- can bring with it a healthy sense of retribution as you loose a hundredfold the pain and suffering of Kvatch on those poor, poor Dremora. Good for Level Grinding, too.
 * Or sad when your little Imperial Legion helpers run to help (and die)...
 * Baurus, the only other character to survive the attack in the tutorial, will pledge loyalty to the player and accompany him on several quests - assuming he survived the last one. Emerging from the Oblivion Gate onto the Bruma battlefield where Martin is giving a victory speech only to see Baurus among the dead can be quite a Player Punch.
 * One of the quests for the Dark Brotherhood involves you killing an entire family, and  This troper dares you to read the list and not feel like a terrible person for what you're about to do.
 * One quest in the Fighters Guild has a woman named Biene Amelion hire you to raid her family's crypt and fetch some artifacts that she hopes she can sell off and clear some debts accumulated by her father. You can choose to forgo that entirely and just pay the debt off yourself.
 * Fable 2 allows you to marry and have a son or daughter, which will rapidly mature into an adorable child that calls you "dah-dee" or "mum-mee" depending on your gender.
 * . Guess it depends on what you care most for...it's got to be the dog surely!
 * A great many players developed an attachment to Dogmeat of the Fallout series, going to great lengths to keep him alive despite being more of a liability than anything else. ( Hell, the AI practically made him play fetch with sticks of thrown dynamite in the first game) Bethesda seemingly took note of this trend, as the DLC Broken Steel introduced a Perk called 'Puppies!' that specifically lets Dogmeat respawn if killed.
 * He actually comes back tougher.
 * Fallout in general can involve a lot of this for a good character. Things like saving Big Town give you a real warm and fuzzy feeling, even if you don't ask for a reward.
 * Especially if you don't ask for a reward. Although it makes money a little harder to come by, the role-playing satisfaction inherent in being good to Big Town and Megaton and Rivet City and anywhere else decent people are just trying to get by is one of the best parts of the game for a good character.
 * In Fallout 3, reports of your exploits are also spread by the disc jockey Three Dog, who pays increasing tribute to you. You also get random encounters from inhabitants of the wasteland thanking you for everything you're going for them. It can increase the warm-and-fuzziness.
 * Final Fantasy IV: The After Years puts Calca and Brina (raised out of the Uncanny Valley territory they resided in Final Fantasy IV) in the player's team and has them
 * That sort of thing happens in Final Fantasy Tactics with Miluda, which is an enemy example. You have to fight her twice and there's no way around it.
 * It's quite the Wham moment the first time you go to the effort of having a Mediator with Invite in the party specifically for that fight, go out of your way to incapacitate all of her allies, and then learn that no, there's no way you can convince her to join your side.
 * Some players will go out of their way to save their generic party members from death (if any character stays at "knocked out" status for too long, they die permanently), even if it means restarting a battle that is almost over.
 * Similarly in Tactics, if you ever try and manually dismiss a party member from the menu screen, they give a "Do you really want to do this" speech. With generic team mates it hurts the soul a bit...with unique characters it hurts a bit more...but with MONSTERS...dear god...it's so sad...if I have to make room in my party because of extra chocobo, I either have to break the eggs (horrifying enough by itself.) or mash the "accept" button so I don't even see the message...if I read it, I will not have the heart to go through with it.
 * Final Fantasy VI has a moment when you have to take care of another character by feeding him fish. Him living or dying doesn't matter to the story as the game progresses either way, but there's something oddly rewarding in keeping him alive.
 * On the other hand, the emotional impact of the story is much greater if he dies, so some players try to make him die on purpose. Of course, since the mechanics of the fishing minigame are never explained, there's high chance the result during your first playthrough will be random anyway.
 * Perhaps especially notable, as the person you save is in fact
 * Just for the record.
 * Final Fantasy VII has this trope twice. The most famous one, near the end of the game, is when you confront the Turks one last time. If you did a sidequest earlier in which you teamed up with them, you can choose not to fight. The two sides make peace and go their separate ways. An earlier example is when you steal a submarine and encounter a trio of Shinra goons guarding it... except it's those same goons you befriended earlier in the game when you were undercover. You can choose to simply take the guards prisoner instead of killing them.
 * Also, in an inversion, Rude has a crush on Tifa, as he tells Reno at one point. If she's the only party member left standing, he has a 50% chance of hesitating and skipping his turn! So the game cares about you, too!
 * Vivi, though most of the characters have their own really heart-rending moment.
 * In Final Fantasy X, during Operation Mi'ihen,  but its' their Chocobos' faces that hurt the most.
 * Same story in the opening sequence for Final Fantasy XII.
 * Lost in Blue, which has DS and Wii incarnations, is another game built around Video Game Caring Potential. You play as Keith, a young man who finds himself stranded on a desert island with Skye, who has lost her glasses and is Blind Without'Em. You must forage for food and water to keep you and your partner alive, and since she doesn't leave the cave you call home unless you're dragging her by the hand a la Ico, you have to plan ahead to leave her adequate food and water while you're away unlocking new parts of the island or hurry back when her stats drop too low. "She's getting thirsty... She's hungry..."
 * Although RPGs can be a mixed bag when it comes to this trope, since most tend to revolve around a group of plucky young adventurers who can go on for days about The Power of Friendship, the later games in the Persona series are rife with it in the form of Social Links. Because it's unlikely that a player will be able to successfully complete all of them in a single playthrough, and there's no consequence for not doing them, the ones the player does complete are probably going to be the ones for the characters they like best (like the little girl whose parents are divorced in 3, or the boy whose sister was murdered in the main plot in 4).
 * Persona 3 and 4 have this in the form of Social Links. There is something incredibly satisfying in maxing someone's link out, knowing they're going to be alright, Nanako in particular, with her "I love you, Big Bro!". Persona 3 Portable takes this Up to Eleven with . Maxing out his Social Link can
 * Pikachu in Pokémon Yellow Version. This version introduced the happiness mechanic, but only for Pikachu- you could look at it and see how it liked you. So you wanted to keep it happy by using it in battle but not letting it faint, not keeping it locked up in the PC, etc. (Or you could just repeatedly use the Potion from your PC on it at full health and get it to love you in two minutes flat.)
 * In the remakes of Pokémon Gold and Silver, HeartGold and SoulSilver, you can have not only Pikachu out and about with you, but any Pokémon you want. So if Pikachu couldn't earn your love, now you've got options.
 * Not only that, but can get to interact with them in a much deeper level. At first they will get angry at you repeatedly, but if you care well about them they will go as far as play with you and look for flowers and things to give to you.
 * Nicknaming your Pokémon will inevitably lead to you caring about them. And getting pissed at enemies who KO your little Pichu. And then you bust out your Level 100 Charizard and roast the NPC's team of Grass-types.
 * Ever since the happiness system was introduced in Gen II, you try to keep your Pokémon happy, even if only for those that evolve because of it. Interestingly, there's a move that increases in power for this (Return), and one for how much they hate you (Frustration).
 * Forging a deeper connection with your Pokémon is pretty much the whole point of a Nuzlocke Challenge run. If a Pokémon faints, it is "dead" and can never be used again, the number of Pokémon you can catch is also limited, which makes you use species that would've been overlooked otherwise, and you also have to name every one you catch. When done right, every lost party member feels like a punch in the gut.
 * Petty, an author of a Nuzlocke comic, just knows how to pull at your heartstrings every time she has a friend die.
 * Something completely unrelated to the Pokémon themselves, however, is an optional side-quest in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl and its remake, Platinum. In it, there is a cave beneath Cycling Road named Wayward cave, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin In the furthest point of the cave is a young girl named Mira, whose sprite looks to be about half the height of your character's. She has a lone Kadabra without Teleport, Dig, Rock Smash (required to get through the cave), or Flash. She begs you to escort her out, which your character does without your input (you'd have to have a heart of ice to refuse, though.) What really makes this an example is that Mira really doesn't give you much of a reward for saving her, other than you being able to rebattle her in the Battleground or team up with her in the Battle Tower later, neither of which are very significant in themselves. Saving her is completely optional, too. Fridge Horror kicks in when you think about the real-life implications of being stuck in a dark cave with literally no way of escape, and exactly how terrifying it would be to a little girl.
 * The Quest for Glory adventure/RPG series has the character classes of fighter, mage, thief and paladin. Becoming and playing as the latter requires going well out of the way of the rest of the game mechanics to do Right. Some of a paladin's deeds are too rewarding to count as simple altruism (returning a reward, telling a disarmed enemy to re-arm -> Flaming Sword), others likely count (snuggling a rotting undead -> one released spirit, you smelling and waist deep in a lake).
 * In Snatcher, you can reconcile with your wife, or help an elderly Freeman return to his family before death. You are not rewarded for doing so beyond the congratulations of your Robot Buddy.
 * In Valkyria Chronicles, you command a small squadron of Militia soldiers in a WWII-ish war. Each and every one of those 50-odd soldiers have their own appearance, traits, skills, backstory, and future life that they will go on to after the ending - IF they're still alive. And thanks to the fairly well-balanced AI, the only way they're going to die, is if YOU screw up. And yes, they have death-sequences with lines, calling out to loved ones, declaring their loyalty to the nation, the unit, or even just to you, as they draw their last breath... which, of course, makes you hate General Damon with the burning intensity of a thousand suns when he starts treating the militiamen as expendable Cannon Fodder.
 * Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines has a few times where you technically don't need to save the NPC to finish the quest, but it feels so much nicer to pull it off.
 * Zhao, a Chinese ex-gangster, gave you information to fulfill a debt of honor, and now his gang is trying to kill him for helping you; he's so stoic about his fate that it just seems wrong if you can't kill the enemy fast enough to keep him alive, even though you get the information either way.
 * A Japanese girl came to America hunting a demon that slaughtered her master, and you've helped her find that demon; even if she dies in the fight, you can still kill the demon and get the mission XP, but who really wants to see Yukie die after coming so far for vengeance?
 * A confused elderly scholar got kidnapped for his knowledge of an ancient sarcophagus, and you needed to rescue him for that same info. When you find him, he's polite, helpful, scared, clad only in a bathrobe, locked inside a damp corner of a cave, and willing to tell you everything he knows for even a hope of rescue. Once his captors set off the bombs and bring down the entire cave in a last-ditch effort to kill you, you can either sprint off on your own and make much better time, or take the time to lead out Dr. Johansen while trying to ignore that big flashing death timer on your screen.
 * Therese and Jeanette Voerman, two feuding sisters . If you've come to like both, it can be a Player Punch when you're forced to choose which one of them dies at the hands of the other. If you have high enough social stats and you've been nice to both of them, though, you can talk them into forgiving each other and reuniting.
 * And then there's a dying girl you can save by turning her into a ghoul. The process creates a "blood bond" meaning she falls in love with you (though this is closer to an addiction to your presense and blood), and she will ask to stay with you, offering you her college money and other assistance, including ultimately the best armour in the game. However . Heartbreaking as it is, it really is better for her to turn her away.
 * In The Witcher your character is later
 * Whose heart shall I break, Shani's or Triss'? Caring potential for Alvin may factor into the decision, as either woman has something to provide him.
 * One of the first quests in Ancient Domains of Mystery provides this (along with That One Sidequest): Why would you risk your brand-new level one character going up against giant ants (fast carapace-armored psych-immune killing machines), an underground river (in a world with Super Drowning Skills) and four more levels of early-game hell? Because an adorable little girl admiringly calls you a "true hero" for bringing back her puppy dog. That's why.
 * There's much caring potential in Fallout: New Vegas. First, there's the companions, each of them is well written, well voiced, incredibly helpful, and, thankfully, in casual mode, quite immortal. However, in Hardcore mode, they can (and almost certainly will) die. For this reason, more than a few people avoid taking companions with them in Hardcore mode, seeing as how they couldn't bear the thought of seeing their friends die.
 * Then there's the towns, filled with nice, charming, helpful citizens who will give you discounts and free stuff once you've done them a few small favors. Makes it a hell of a lot harder for you to come back in your next playthrough and murder them all horribly with a chainsaw, doesn't it?
 * In Golden Sun 1, the town of Kolima has all of its residents turned into trees - frozen in whatever position they were in at the time. If you visit the town before this happens, you'll see a group of kids playing by a river just outside of the town. They stand on each others' shoulders to try to get a persimmon out of the tree. When you come back and they've become trees, the children were still standing on each other, and so they collapsed, with one of the children landing in the river. At this point, you can either walk into the water and pull the kid-tree into the shallows, or go on with your business. Once the plot's moved on and the people are restored to human form, the child will thank you and give you a little reward. It doesn't take much effort to save her, and the reward is small. However, if you don't save her, the other two children she was playing with will mope around and give heartrendingly sad statements about the fate of their friend. That alone is enough to make you want to restart...
 * Shin Megami Tensei has this with the demon negotation system. If you encounter a demon who has a same-species already in your party, you can talk your way out of doing battle with them, which spares the lives of both you and the demon and in some cases rewards you with an item, HP and MP restoration, or Macca. So you just recruited one of the cute little Jack Frosts, and you encounter a wave with another one of them...forget battle, they're too adorable to kill!
 * In Strange Journey's fifth sector, you'll occasionally find comrades, Jimenez included, who have fallen asleep due to sleep floors. You can kick them awake, which tends to reward you with an item.
 * Some demons will actually beg for their lives if you beat them within an inch of it. It's surprisingly satisfying to have something like a giant snake demon thank you for sparing him, or even join you out of appreciation.
 * Near the end of Bastion, the player is given the opportunity to save, rather than leaving to die. If you choose the first option,
 * There's a lot you can do in Planescape: Torment to fulfill this trope, from helping a terrified and mentally shattered woman find her way home after decades of searching to helping a shy guard and a lonely but cheerful woman come together. But what really deserves special mention is.
 * Not to mention that it gets a lot harder to  once you've played the game to the end and know the true cost of.

Simulation

 * Heck, this is the whole point of "virtual pet" games... Tamagotchi, Digimon, Neopets, etc.
 * And the plaintive pleas to reconsider will make you feel like a real bastard if you ever put a Neopet up for adoption and leave the game.
 * In Black and White, Sable and several similar characters become normal villagers once they stop being important to the game. The player should, theoretically, be able to keep them alive until the end.
 * If you are good or neutral, you can grab an NPC and place him in your village, the game speaks "Live here in peace."
 * You also can pet your Creature and cause him to turn into a puddle of happy goo.
 * Dwarf Fortress names every single one of your dwarves, all the elves, all the humans etc. It also names monsters and animals that kill things, which can lead to situations like having a giant bat called "Bridgebane the Hammer of Pacifism". And who wouldn't want to keep a bat with a name like that alive?
 * The guy who lost half his military to the damn thing. The "batman" creatures (according to the DF Wiki, they CAN breathe in space) are often assigned names because your dwarves feel like it, and are far better for the purposes of this trope because they didn't get that name by butchering your dwarves.
 * This happens because your dwarves have favorite animals. A fortress with a dwarf who likes a certain type of anthro creature will end up with every member of a tribe of, for instance, slug men each having unique names.
 * Don't forget the excruciating level of detail injuries go into. One of the few times I felt bad about something in a video game was watching a little ASCII smiley face slowly crawl along. Checking his wounds, he'd lost both legs, one arm, and one lung to goblin assault.
 * Nor the detailed relationships between all your dwarves with spouses, children, lovers, friends, acquaintances, enemies, and several levels between.
 * Add to that making personality a factor in behavior -- an irritable noble who demands crap you can't produce gets sent quickly to the killing chambers, a laid back noble who requests things you're producing anyway is an unexpected gift.
 * Your original 7 dwarves work so hard to get your fortress off the ground. It's not fun when one of them dies, especially if it's a particularly stupid death. (Which is unfortunately very easy to accomplish.)
 * There is a notable gameplay aspect to this tendency in DF. Even if you don't particularly care about a given entity in the game, your dwarves do. If your dwarf's pet or family member or close friend dies, they can get very upset.
 * All of which lead to some of the most creative Video Game Cruelty Potential as the player tries to build the most inventively vicious deathtraps possible to turn goblin sieges into paste. Or even better, catch them all in cages and let your happy little dwarves use them for sparring practice. Especially once you've lost a few favorite dwarves to the goblins.
 * No matter how long its owner has been dead, a war dog will always keep the title "pet of (name)".
 * Companions in Adventurer Mode can inspire this as well.
 * Just try not to feel any affection for your fake spouse and child in Harvest Moon. Even after every Scripted Event has been shown and there is nothing left to do, it is near impossible to stop playing thanks to the Playable Epilogue.
 * If you played any Harvest Moon game, it's a good bet that you have been in a panic about finding some random citizen's birthday, and saying a prayer that they like the Radish that you didn't sell specially to give to them! And I won't even mention your animals (Everyone else panicked and brought their dog in at the chance of rain, right?)
 * Sometimes, Video Game Caring Potential breeds itself, in that in some games your dog likes you more for holding it when you go to sleep. If you always let your pet sleep on your bed anyway, there's no chance of leaving it out in a storm in the first place.
 * Also played straight in Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim. In an innovative, if sometimes frustrating twist, you do not have direct control over your troops; rather, you are the sovereign of the land, and you hire heroes and they wander about questing on their own. It's like a more interactive version of Progress Quest, really. With nifty sprite graphics. If you want something attacked, either wait for the hero to wander by it, which will cause other heroes to hear the sounds of battle and join in; build a guard tower close by to direct your free guardsmen there; or place a bounty on the object and they will attack until either they destroy the object (for example, the elven buildings in the abducted prince quest) or pick it up and bring it home (for example, the titular items in the "Bell, Book, and Candle" quest).
 * In the iPhone game Pocket God, you control a small tribe on an island. You can kill them in various horrible ways (feeding them swordfish, drowning them etc), but you can also set the sky to sunset and the little looks of wonder on their faces is possibly the cutest thing ever. You can also light a fire, make it night-time, and watch them all curl up in a group to sleep like they didn't just spend all day getting attacked by dinosaurs and ice monsters.
 * This is the major premise of the Princess Maker games. And it works.
 * Heck, even Something Awful was so damn proud of their adoptive brat by the end of it.
 * The Sims is both this and cruelty potential, depending on the kind of player you are.
 * Alice and Kev is an example of just how powerful this can be in The Sims.
 * A Creepypasta actually shows this too.
 * Though not strictly a video game, Vocaloid is a brilliant demonstration of this principle. Think about it: It's a digital voice simulator built on samples of a voice actor or actress' donated data, each with a cute anime-style mascot character, but with no explicit personality. After you've listened to those characters sing, it's hard not to think of them as people and even have incredible loyalty to the programs you use the most.
 * Miku Hatsune is a full-on Idol, and adorable. Although her most popular video is her cute Ievan Polka (waving a leek), this one will leave you wanting to hold and love and protect her. Crowning Music of Awesome, Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
 * And then there's The Disappearance of Miku where she sings her last song, recognizing that she is just software and saying goodbye as her memories disappear, as the user uninstalls her.
 * To the uninitiated, many songs tend to elicit reactions like, "It's a computer program! Why am I crying?"
 * In Choice of Broadsides, you can become good friends (and even lovers if you take the Gay Option!) with Villeneuve, an honorable pirate. If you do so and have high enough combat skills, you can choose to merely disarm him/her instead of outright killing him/her, upon which he/she will surrender voluntarily and say that if he/she has to give up his/her ship, at least it's to you. Tends to be much more satisfying than just offing him/her.
 * Monster Rancher has plenty of this as you work your Mons up to tournament champions. Doubly so if it's a game where they can die.
 * Caring for cute little lambs, ducklings, and puppies is one of the reasons Farmville is so popular.
 * Animal Crossing can bring this up, seeing as it's basically a neighborhood simulator. You can easily get attached to your villagers, who are all cute, colorful animals that you can befriend and snuggy wuggy woogy wub. This effect can be even worse for furries playing the game.
 * It can be extremely heartbreaking if one moves away because of your neighbor limit. Sometimes, neighbors will move to friend's towns. This can potentially cause a estranged relationship with that real-life friend.
 * My Little Pony Friendship Gardens runs off this. You create your own Little Pony and can feed her apples, play games with her, brush her hair, teach her how to jump, and generally keep her happy --

Space Combat

 * Brilliantly done in the Homeworld series. Each part has a single moment where extra efforts aimed at saving people are more or less optional and are without material reward of any kind but are extremely compelling and self-satisfactory:
 * In the first game you return home after a hyperdrive test run only to find your planet in flames and some aliens destroying the cryo trays with the last remnants of your race. One of the trays is already damaged by the time you arrive, and in a "normal" course of events the invaders will destroy it before you can destroy them. There is no reprimand for that and no bonuses for saving the tray, but, goddammit, there is a hundred thousand people in it!
 * This troper failed the first time... He immediately started all over and next time had six salvage corvetes, all ready to capture three enemy ships destroying defenseless cryotray. "The subjects didn't survive interrogation." indeed.
 * In the "Cataclysm" sequel you encounter a civilian convoy under attack by viral missiles. Here extra lengths to protect the transports are more or less justified from the pragmatic point of view, since each converted transport starts launching missiles itself, and once the enemy runs out of clean transports it turns on you. Still you can't help but feel a moral obligation to protect as many transports as possible. Espescially once you hear the screams of a ship's crew being "converted" and realise just how many people are supposed to be in there...
 * The finale of Homeworld 2 reenacts the tragedy that destroyed the original homeworld when three planet destroyers start barraging the surface of your core planet with nukes. Intercepting every rocket is be a bit annoying, as it must be done manually and you'll have to constantly switch between the tactical screen, where the rockets are visible, and the game screen, where all the fighting takes place, but these inconviniences are completely blotted out by a single thought: "Not a single rocket must reach the surface. You hear me? NOT A SINGLE ONE!!!"
 * In Star Trek Bridge Commander, you encounter a vessel belonging to the enemy who, during a large firefight, has kept out of battle with their shields down. Your crew makes note of it before it turns away and warps out. You encounter the same ship later, guarding your objective, but again, with its shields down and making no effort to attack you. This is where you ought to slow down, take a breath, and think, "What Would Captain Picard Do?" Open hailing frequencies. The result is gaining a new ally and making the last level much easier, your sector admiral giving you huge glowing praise, more detail about what's going on with the plot, and the satisfaction that Gene Roddenberry's view of the universe is still alive and well, even in an action game.
 * Starlancer, a space fighter from the makers of Wing Commander, has an entire squadron of Red Shirt wingmen, none of whom are actually useful in battle and tend to ram things to death (their own). But...they each have their own backstory in the game's information system, like the petite blonde girl who joined the Navy Fighter Corps after being a star in a barnstorming show...in space. Or the bitter little Frenchman, or the black-market dealing Scot, or the sultry Italian chick...the list goes on. Also, when they die, they die screaming in a truly disturbing manner.
 * Speaking of Wing Commander, it's not uncommon for players to replay missions where their wingmen were killed in the first game, in which Anyone Can Die was in full force. Except for Maniac, who can just stay dead.
 * Also, in Wing Commander III, on the later missions where Anyone Can Die comes into play. There's a reason you can take fewer wingmen along the final stretch  However, if you bring Maniac along, he actually listens, sometimes, and becomes a little more competent, so he's not as bad a choice.

Strategy

 * In the latest Advance Wars, troops now get "Veteran" statuses etc. for defeating troops- making individual units theoretically more unique. This was done to discourage the Infantry Spam tactics from previous games. Unfortunately, with the boosts so meager for the unit's usual unlikeliness to survive for much longer, it doesn't work very well.
 * Game Boy Wars 3, on the other hand, has Materials in addition to the standard Gold for building units. The price gaps with Materials are much smaller in the game than the ones with money in other installments--and with the Gold price gaps being outright immense in Game Boy Wars 3, this does mean infantry spam is weakened, as replacing units is punished, and just repairing them could easily deny you better units. Good thing too, because enemy units are weakened when adjacent to multiple units.
 * As if the EXP system (which was also in Super Famicom Wars) wasn't enough, eh? Add unit promotion in GBW3 and there's plenty of reason to stay alive.
 * The latest Advance Wars also changed how the Technique-rating was calculated. Before, you could spam units towards the end of the game to make your survival look good, but that actually lowers it in the new one. Now, the best strategy is to let many of them live.
 * The method of calculating tries to anyway. Unfortunately, it fails spectacularly the way the formula is handled.
 * None of the above have anything on Arrangement in Campaign mode of Game Boy Wars 3. In Campaign, completing a map puts your surviving units in the reserves and then on a subsequent map, Arrangement will let you send out a unit, with its Experience retained, on an allowed property near your HQ, and you don't have to pay anything for it, just the property's liberty for the turn. You can even promote certain units before putting them out on the field if they are at S Rank. Obviously, the key to succeeding in Campaign would be to plan out your units so as to deal with any possible situation, and concentrate on keeping them alive.
 * Battalion Wars does the same thing by making everything adorable. The first time you take control of a tank and a grunt quietly goes "Take good care of her, sir" may make you go "aww". The trouble starts when you realize that the opposing forces are just as cute, and they have accents.
 * The Anglo Isles in Battalion Wars II, being based on Britain, naturally have awesome accents for their troops. In the first section of Campaign, you're fighting against them :(.
 * The spiritual hex-based predecessor of the AW series, interface-wise, Nectaris, gives units from 1-9 xp, they earn one for an attack, one extra for attacking with no losses, and of course each xp slightly boosts all combat-related stats. Much like Myth, however, you only get what you have, instead factories are for repairing units that aren't totally destroyed.
 * A semi-obscure open source strategy game for the PC called Battle for Wesnoth turns this up to 11. Not only can you recall units from previous scenarios in the campaign modes, but they also have quasi-unique names and randomized traits such as "Swift" and "Intelligent" which give them certain bonuses. There just has to be at least 1 guy out there who has mourned the death of a unit.
 * Not to forget, longer they live, stronger they become. Recruited a peasant in the beginning of the campaign? If you keep good care of him, he will be a royal guard by the time you lay siege to the enemy capital.
 * In all iterations Civilization starting with III (including the console game Revolutions), the "Cultural Victory" path rewards you for building an enlightened Democracy with Cathedrals and Universities to contrast your cruel and warlike Communist neighbors. It makes you go all warm and fuzzy inside to see neighboring cities defect en masse and welcome those poor, oppressed people into your civilization.
 * Also your subjects will occasionally throw "We Love the King/Queen Day" celebrations in your honor, complete with fireworks. It's good to see them acknowledge how great you are
 * In Civilization II (at least; might also be present in some of the others), "We Love the X Days" give celebrating cities some kind of bonus. Usually this is the resource-gathering potential of the next-best government form, but Republics and Democracies, as the top-tier govs, instead give the city in question an additional population point every turn. This effectively turned those two government forms into a kind of Game Breaker for experienced players. Like they weren't already.
 * Democratic-type governments in general are the "grow and make money like crazy" systems in all Civilization-type games.
 * In II and III they give a direct boost to the economy by boosting Trade/Commerce.
 * In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (Civilization in space), Democratic Politics gives a boost to Growth and Efficiency, which you can combine with Knowledge Values and Cybernetic Future Society to achieve a Paradigm Economy (i.e. maximum Efficiency) with pretty much every faction (even the Peacekeeping Forces, as I recall), meaning you can run a very large empire with far less money lost to corruption than under any other system, or combine with Planned Economics and Eudaimonic Future Society (which is basically Video Game Caring Potential in the form of a Social Engineering option) to get to a state of Population Boom (i.e. maximum Growth), which is a Game Breaker. (The direct boost to income is provided by Free Market Economics.)
 * This comes nowhere close to showing the game caring potential. Just consider "Interlude 6 : despair", which the player receives if his first mindworm unit is killed, along with its commander, who's a friend and pupil.  Makes you want to just keep it far from any real battle.
 * In IV, Representation increases Research and Happiness in large cities, and Universal Suffrage increases the amount of money produced by Towns (the direct boost to income is provided by Free Trade economics).
 * The downside to all of these, however, is that they all reduce your ability to support troops and make war.
 * Dominions 3 has both named commanders and generic ordinary units, each represented by individual sprites on the battlefield. Watching enemy heavy cavalry ride down my troops (complete with individual screams), or seeing a veteran commander fall victim to assassination (or worse, disease, which causes them to lose 1 HP a turn until they die), made it -very- satisfying to utterly annihilate the enemy gods responsible.
 * This is exacerbated by the popular supercombatant strategy, where one goes through the process of summoning a select commander, loading them up with hand picked magical items, and sending them off to war. Seeing these guys on the receiving end of a well made trap is just depressing.
 * Don't forget about national heroes.
 * In End War, you are given a persistent battalion that you upgrade and improve, with unique callsigns, consistent voices in response to your orders (including sounds of abject panic that convey the fact that they're getting ripped apart much better than the dispassionate voice of your XO saying they're getting hammered), and carried over experience... if they stay alive. While a defeated unit will be evacuated if possible, it's still possible for an enemy to kill them entirely. It eventually hits the point where you can get paranoid about using WMDs for fear that the enemy will kill your units with a reprisal. It eventually becomes a fairly major point of Heartwarming when you hear them say they won't let you down, and worrying when they yell for evac or support, and an outright kick in the teeth when their unit card glows with the skull and crossbones that says that the unit is dead instead of evacuated.
 * The Jagged Alliance series always penalizes you if you let too many of your hires die. If named characters lack a proper burial (say, you dumped the body in a river instead of securing the area in order to transport it out) then your reputation will plummet and only the will-work-for-anyone dregs will join you. For generic guards, if too many die it will be harder or more expensive to secure their replacements.
 * If you help the local villagers (instead of trying to use them as meat shields), your reputation in the town (which affects a town tax-rate stat) won't plummet.
 * The actual voice clips of characters when they refuse to work for you, or when they're already working for you and think you're an asshole, just serves to ram it home for how big of a screw-up Jerkass you are. Now, in Jagged Alliance 2, hire Raven and her husband, Raider. Have one die. How big of a jerk are you? The survivor will let you know all. The. Time.
 * Medieval 2: Total War encourages the player to be a jerk since gaining money is much easier when being evil. Being a chivalrous general has benefits since you gain a morale boost for your men when fighting the enemy which means they are less likely to rout, while dread bonuses for ruling towns have at times a negative effect on the population. Sadly, most people opt for the crueler option most of the time.
 * All Total War games have an experience mechanic for units, which encourages some players (those that don't just rely on Human Wave tactics) to try to keep their own armies' casualties to a minimum.
 * This can overlap with Video Game Cruelty Potential. "Hmm, the enemy are making their last stand in the city center, but I don't want to lose any more men finishing them off..." So what do you do? Wheel a crude cannon into place and go bowling. Or, if you're taking a castle and the last enemy units are all cavalry, get your archers on the walls of the keep and just execute the helpless horsemen with direct-fire arrow volleys.
 * It is actually ill-advised to do so if you're settling down for a long war, something which is especially likely in the limited-nations expansions. A high command, high morale general, with high valour high morale peasants? Those spearmen and militias are about to get chewed.
 * You should care for your generals and Royal family in all Total War games because the more battles they win the better they become at war, the more likely they are to win if you auto-battle and of course the men are less likely to run from the battle. Oh and at least in Medieval if you lose (or kill your enemies) all your generals and family then you get a non-standard game over.
 * Myth: The Fallen Lords and Myth 2: Soulblighter were some of the first strategy games to have veterans systems. The more kills a unit got the faster it would attack and the more damage it would deal. And since you don't start out with many units to begin with and are always outnumbered quite a bit, you do everything you can to make sure they stay alive.
 * Ogre Battle has several special characters that you can draw into your ranks as you move through the game. Some of them are likable characters and you can feel like crap for getting them killed. Even the generic characters make your heart wrench when they fall in battle. Although, this can be because you spent countless hours leveling them to reach a certain class and you hard work just died out.
 * Original War is built around this trope. Every human unit in the game is a unique individual with RPG-like stats, and when they die, they are Killed Off for Real. It is often better to deploy inferior remote-controlled or computer-controlled vehicles just to avoid risking your precious soldiers. (Honestly this is a lot like the use of military robots in Real Life.)
 * Played straight in the Warcraft clone/superior cousin War Wind, where veteran units may be kept until the next stage for a minor pre-game boost. You may even keep the 'epic' units with you, though most of the time you'll want something faster, or you'll want to bring an extra artisan for resource/build tier boosts.
 * In Halo Wars, it is common to become attached to units with stars, to the extent of not actually using them for fear of their deaths. Especially your starting scout unit.
 * Somewhat averted in CDV games, notably the Conquest series. Despite almost EVERY SINGLE UNIT having its own experience, morale, and even phobias! American Conquest is especially bad for this, as human wave tactics are pretty much the only way to take a fort due to the sheer number of defences. See, even though you have all these stats, non-hero units tend to take damage like the squishy pink fleshlings that they are... Just created or alive since the start of the battle, a few shots from a musket will ruin any militia or trapper's day. The damage indicator is more an indicator of how accurate their weapons are, as you may see if you watch the spot of the impact graphic closely. Bullet impacts seem to deal percents, not numerical, while high health only really helps in melee. Also, cannonballs can mow through troops ridiculously accurate for their time period. One of the largest reasons behind the human wave requirement is how deadly fort cannons can be.
 * In Fire Emblem EVERY character you control is named and has their own head-shot. Add to the mix a bit of Killed Off for Real (minus restarting the game), specific endings for every character, and lots of character interaction, you wind up with players wanting to restart every level multiple times so that no one ever dies.
 * Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon introduced a system whereupon the game will provide your army with generic units if your numbers get too low, and secret chapters only accessible if you have below certain numbers of units, finally providing players with the perfect opportunity to take the pain of resetting in earlier games out on their army... yet the overall tendency of players is still often to reset on every death.
 * The amount of self-inflicted butchery needed to hit the secret chapters is something that won't occur naturally to most players. In fact, most guides and FAQs for the game strongly urge you to do a separate play-through to see the secret chapters.
 * Knights in The Nightmare supplies you with 112 loyal knights (plus three additional recruits) whose tragic deaths you're forced to watch. They're your only available means of fighting demons, but if you don't pay careful attention to their vitality, they will die again, permanently -- and there is no afterlife for extinguished souls.
 * And because it just needs to be said -- you will grow to care for Maria and Meria, who are both built up as incredibly lovable, sympathetic characters. Their inevitably miserable fates lead some players to deliberately miss finding Ancardia in Maria's route so as to.
 * Probably because this is what Meria wants most, there's no way to get it for her. Thanks, Sting.
 * In Raiden Fighters, one of the stages has a tank boss firing at houses before proceeding to attack you. If you use your Attack Drones or bombs to block its shots, you'll get a "DEFENDED THE HOUSE!" bonus. Raiden Fighters 2 has a similar bonus involving defending friendly tanks from a medium-sized enemy tank.
 * Men of War is likely the best WWII RTS for caring potential. Let's review: All soldiers have their own names and inventories. The ability to loot gear off the dead means that a bit of effort makes soldiers much more effective. The ability to loot hats off the dead means personal touches. The AI is helpful beyond contemporary standards, e.g. when an enemy tank rounds a corner, a soldier throws an AP grenade, takes cover in the opposite direction, and tends his wounds. A lack of hand-holding means room for crazy plans. The option to switch to FPS controls for individual soldiers means opportunities for death-defying heroism. A fairly interactive environment means, for example, removing weapons from disabled tanks and adding them to the defensive lines, or some fool driving through a battlefield on a hijacked tractor, hauling machine guns and ammo. Playing the game means sending these people to die by the hundreds. Ladies and gentlemen, video games as a learning tool.
 * Mount and Blade: Your army is comprised entirely of recruits which are rather unique from one another, all of which are trained up by you to be powerful and fearless soldiers. It is not uncommon for even the largest player armies to have a troop that is the "odd one out", either by being a neutral faction troop that you rescued from another lord's captivity or the last survivor of a recruitment run you made while in another faction's borders. It is not uncommon for that specific soldier to survive months worth of fighting under your command only to be unceremoniously listed on the casualty report after a skirmish.
 * Total Annihilation: Kingdoms gives units bronze, silver, and gold ranks as they rack up kills. And, after awhile, you grow attached to them, to the point where one may send out their whole army of flying dragons of doom to incinerate the enemy if they dare to kill your 'pet'
 * In X-COM, it is extremely hard not to get attached to a few of your veteran soldiers. Sadly, since Anyone Can Die, your favorites will almost inevitably be killed off unless you keep them stationed on the dropship or your base by a blaster bomb into the dropship or an attack on your base.
 * You'll also become attached to your veterans because the rookies are so useless that soldiers who can shoot straight are worth their weight in Elerium.
 * In Sacrifice there are certain missions that reward you for doing good deeds. In one mission where your sent to slay a powerful dragon that's under the control of another wizard. If you spare her and defeat the wizard, the dragons goes with you throughout the game. Meaning you get a high tier unit in the earliest part of the game.
 * In Monkey Go Happy, you're tasked with making a cute, crying monkey happy on each level. It's hard not to feel for the little guy, sitting there crying and trembling. The sequels take it further, adding a second, smaller monkey in the second game, and a baby monkey in the third.
 * Welcome Grandpa in number 4!
 * The computer game Star Trek: Birth Of The Federation (think Civilization in the style of Star Trek) can occasionally invoke this trope. When the Borg assimilate a race you know and love from the series (or, you know, Earth), or they get subjugated by the Cardassians or there's a negative planetary shift, your heart aches a little.
 * Of course, this game has an equal, if not greater, amount of Video Game Cruelty Potential.