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.
For me it was turning away a starving orphan. A kid came to our place and my friend naturally was immediately “well of course we’ll take you in” and I’m like “no the fuck we aren’t, we are literally in the middle of dying of starvation and we can’t even keep proper watch at night or get more supplies due to injury.” “So we just heartlessly tell the kid to hit the road?” “If she stays with us she is 100% going to die, we will give her what is barely keeping us one foot out of the grave, then we will die, then she right after. Ironically she has a better chance staying out there” and then I realized how fucked up having to even have that conversation and that people probably seriously had to do that in real life.