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.
This right here… I know the game is literally called Monster Hunter, but my brain just goes “That poor beast just wanted to eat and fuck like anybody else, and just because it’s big and barfs acid, we deem it a monster, slay it slowly and brutally, invade its only safe space, and proceed to make hats from its skin.”
I love the gameplay, but I genuinely can’t deal with that.
Dude this is exactly why I can’t even be bothered to play this game. I just don’t see a compelling reason to hate these ‘monsters’ enough to kill them.
I mean, it’s just basically a gameplay vs story thing. Canonically you’re technically only going after monsters that are a danger or terrorizing people off screen the vast majority of the time
Gameplay wise we kill so many monsters. Lore wise it’s a nuisance control program where only problematic or surplus are hunted.
There are of course the quest like hunt it because I want the feathers, but those are rich people paying off the right people at the guild.
Lore wise though it’s done to prevent nature from becoming unbalanced. For the most part they only hunt as needed, and the parts are all used for crafting, food, and the like.