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.

  • Interface-@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    I played a flash game once on Kongregate, where you are, I believe, a dwarf, and after falling off a cliff you’re going around trying to find things as guided by some kind of voice. It was a 2D platformer and a pixel-art style. I vividly remember getting a power-up that allows you to hold a button to electrocute living beings nearby until they vanish (die), and I would simply do that for the hell of it.

    Come to point where I completed my quest, the voice turns out to belong to some super powerful entity that I just either freed or summoned, and while it was talking to my character, it said that I was more of a monster than it. On a black screen, my character reminisces on events that happened, specifically saying, “He’s right, I am a monster; I have taken [30 or 40 something] lives.” I don’t remember the exact count, but I killed everyone on the map that I could find, especially the guys on the mountain I fell off because they were mean to my character for being a runt.

    I, unfortunately, couldn’t bring myself to replay it for more endings.