The Cost of Our Mistakes

In many a video game plot, humanity is faced with some sort of conflict that threatens to destroy them. Without this conflict, there would be no story. However, many games, even ones with differing conflicts, have one thing in common: the conflict exists because of some grievous error on humanity's part.

One such game series is Gears of War. In this series, the human inhabitants of the planet Sera are under siege from an underground race of monsters known as the Locusts. They look like this:

 Don't they look a lot like humans? If you think so, you're right. In Gears of War 3, you find out that the Locusts used to be human. However, when humanity starting using a new fuel called emulsion, it turned out to be radioactive. Emulsion turned humans into Locusts. The Locusts were forced underground and are bitter toward humans and want to take over the surface world. All because humans gave in to using a "miracle fuel" without knowing its side effects.

Another game that has a good example of humanity causing its own predicament is Dragon Age: Origins. Dragon Age: Origins takes place in a fantasy medieval world. In the back story leading up to the game, some powerful mages or magic users desired more power and tried to enter "The Golden City", which is the game universe's version of heaven. When they do this, "The Maker", the game's version of God, is outraged and curses the mages to be darkspawn, embodiments of evil and corruption. In the game's plot line, the darkspawn have spread and become a hoard so to speak and are causing a blight upon the land. As a member of the Grey Wardens, the warriors sworn to fight the blight, you stand against a horde of these:

All of these situations could have been prevented if humans would just think before they act. But instead, some poor sucker, namely your character, has to come in and clean up somebody else's mess. Let's just hope we have heroes like that in the real world.