Modern Warfare, of all things, did the you-personally-are-a-bastard thing very well multiple times. No Russian is downright...
Modern Warfare, of all things, did the you-personally-are-a-bastard thing very well multiple times. No Russian is downright excellent at that. "Oh shit, the terrorist group you're infiltrating is doing some actual terrorism" gives you approximately 0,5 seconds to decide whether you're a good guy or a bad guy, and it'll take you at least 5 to realise there are no good choices in this situation, by which point you've either already reflexively pulled the trigged, or just stood by and watched.
Separate Anon: I’d say Mass Effect 2 was one of the few effective uses of “Oh no, you chose to be a bastard”, considering you’re not choosing between adopting orphans or strangling puppies but between investigating the scene calmly and peacefully at risk to yourself and your mission or putting a bullet through a suspect’s brain before they can shoot you or anything of yours or just plain run away. Maybe not ideal, but at least it makes logical sense in a way that makes both options viable and relatable.
I liked No Russian, I didn’t play ME2.
Not that No Russian was art or anything - I only played it once (unlike All Ghillied Up which was fantastic and which I’ve played several times) - but I liked it, partially because the game doesn’t go out of its way to blame me for playing it. There’s two paths through that are really the same path so no matter what you end up with the same disastrous consequences that aren’t blamed on you, the player.
I appreciated that.
ME2, of course, has been wildly lauded the world over, so it’s easy to believe they got things right.
Honestly what I don’t think gets enough respect is the opening of MW1, where you first run through a plywood simulation of your mission at base camp, and it tells you your recommended difficulty is based on your performance and there’s a trophy tied to it, so of course you redo it until you get it perfect, smoothly gliding through this course shooting pop-up “bad guy” targets
And then you do the actual mission, and you’ve got such muscle memory for it by now it takes a bit to sink in that you’re just massacring these totally nonthreatening sailors calmly doing random jobs, or stumbling around drunk, or asleep in their bunks