Bit of an explanation as to what prompted me to make this post: I recently played through Sniper Ghost Warrior: Contracts 1 and 2 and I just felt off. I’ve slaughtered hundreds of innocents for my amusement in games like Fallout and TES, I play through No Russian with a grin, but for some reason, I refrain from killing bad guys in SGW? The first one has you hunt down Russian oligarchs and war criminals, while the second one is about Middle Eastern terrorists and this is the game where I feel bad about killing? There’s just something about the soldiers talking about their daily problems like making no money, uncomfortable boots and sweating too much, or showing eachother pictures of their dogs, not to mention the absolute horror when you’ve got a knife against their throat or when they find a body. I hope this isn’t weird, but I’ve never experienced remorse for killing a video game enemy, and I’ve played a lot of different games. I’d like to hear about your experiences, and which games do a good job humanising common enemies, the concept intrigues me.
In Elite Dangerous Odyssey, there are mission wherecyou have to kill people. Sometime they are high bounty criminals. Other times, the corporates want you to assassinate people like unarmed scientists and engineers. Not my cup of tea.
In Skyrim, there’s a quest to kill a fluffy harmless Dragon. I didn’t do it.
In Fallout New Vegas, there’s a whole town with Ghouls in there in NCR (military like faction) clothing. Turns out… That the opposition, who are based on Greek Legionnaires, had released radioactive substance into the town which had burned the skin of everyone and drive them mad, a. K. A. Ghouls.
I felt really bad to kill them, but it was mercy killing. Still felt bad.
Also in the same game, at one point I had to kill a slave mother and daughter because their fate would’ve been far more worse than what the Legion would do to them. Basically they were for breeding. You can either buy and free them, or persuade them that the girl is sick in the private areas so they let them free. But I didn’t have money first time I was there, nor did I have adequate speech skill.