Protecting video game dogs and the silly lengths I go to

I don’t know how I finished Far Cry 3. Luck and perseverance, I suppose. It’s hard to play when you’d happily take a bullet for a dog, though. The island paradise is full of them, and for some reason they are extremely aggressive. But I refused to harm a hair on their precious little heads.

Dogs are frequently used to evoke empathy in games. Even gloomy Call of Duty has used them to try to make their grim and boring heroes more human. It’s a bit of a trope, which makes it all the more jarring when other games are determined to make you shoot them. I’ve made it my mission to look after them all.

Here are some of things I’ve done to protect awesome puppers:

• I served myself up as a tasty snack in Far Cry 3.
• I allowed my Rimworld colonists to starve when I used the last bit of meat to make kibble for a good boy.
• In GTA V, I created a car fort in the middle of a gunfight to protect a random dog. Then I took selfies with it, before dying.
• I stood in front of an enemy tank in Metal Gear Solid 5, lest it spot my buddy, D-Dog.
• In WoW, I forgot all about my friends who were fighting The Lich King because I was too busy taking pictures of my pug scooting across the ground.

Dogs are pure and good -- be nice to them.

RPS is out of office today. We asked our friends to write short posts like the one above on subjects of their choosing. Read them all here.