I remember back with Borderlands 1, there was an optional mission/quest line mid-way through the game called "Alter Ego: The New Religion".
It was the second of a three mission quest line in which apparently a concerned citizen or a preacher or something had become suspicious of a growing cult of bandits who were posting fliers around town promoting their new religion. What they wanted me, the player character, to do was head to their compound and kill members of their church to get more fliers off their corpses so they could further investigate.
So, I got into a Runner and drove to the compound and started killing off bandits left and right as usual. Because my character of choice was Brick, I came equipped with both corrosive and fire rocket launchers and killed off all the bandits outside the church until I had forced the remaining ones to take cover inside the church so I could kill large numbers of them with the rocket splash damage.
Essentially, I had concentrated them all into a small space they could not escape or shoot back at me and began killing them off with fire and acid weapons, which made them all start screaming, smoking, and melting simultaneously.
As I was doing this I was becoming increasingly uneasy about it, but couldn't put my finger on it until I recalled this scene from Come and See in which the nazis force all the villagers into a barn, barricade the doors, and then set fire to the barn as they watched, laughed and drank while the women, children, and old folks trapped in the barn screamed and tried to hopelessly force open the doors in a desperate attempt to escape.
I then realized that I had just committed a miniature genocide. My targets were of a specific religion and class, I created an impromptu gas chamber/incinerator, and had them all die in the most agonizing manner possible for the sake of profit and hate (on the NPC who assigned the quest's part). By any other context, what I had done and the methods I did it all in would constitute as a hate crime.
Granted, in the next quest it was revealed that the bandits were up to no good all along and that the cult I had just holocausted the Hell out of was indeed trying to summon a monster. I can see someone interpreting this as a very Spec Ops-esque manner of making a point about "following orders" and how easy shit like what occurred in Nazi Germany could happen, but I think it bothers me so much because I think my experience was all unintentional. I don't think Gearbox intended for this kind of experience to crop up, given all the slapstick and humorous tone all the missions were given out with - I usually recognize when Gearbox gets intentionally dark, especially with some of the better parts of Borderlands 2, but I detected none of that in "Alter Ego" and that if I had done something like this in real life for similar reasons, I'd be considered a war criminal - up there with Geobbles, Himmler, Mengele, and all the other monsters who ran the death camps back in WWII.
I guess that one bit shook me so bad was because I was so unaware of it up until I was almost done killing them. I guess this was what you could call a 'Moment of Sobriety' for gamers.
It was the second of a three mission quest line in which apparently a concerned citizen or a preacher or something had become suspicious of a growing cult of bandits who were posting fliers around town promoting their new religion. What they wanted me, the player character, to do was head to their compound and kill members of their church to get more fliers off their corpses so they could further investigate.
So, I got into a Runner and drove to the compound and started killing off bandits left and right as usual. Because my character of choice was Brick, I came equipped with both corrosive and fire rocket launchers and killed off all the bandits outside the church until I had forced the remaining ones to take cover inside the church so I could kill large numbers of them with the rocket splash damage.
Essentially, I had concentrated them all into a small space they could not escape or shoot back at me and began killing them off with fire and acid weapons, which made them all start screaming, smoking, and melting simultaneously.
As I was doing this I was becoming increasingly uneasy about it, but couldn't put my finger on it until I recalled this scene from Come and See in which the nazis force all the villagers into a barn, barricade the doors, and then set fire to the barn as they watched, laughed and drank while the women, children, and old folks trapped in the barn screamed and tried to hopelessly force open the doors in a desperate attempt to escape.
I then realized that I had just committed a miniature genocide. My targets were of a specific religion and class, I created an impromptu gas chamber/incinerator, and had them all die in the most agonizing manner possible for the sake of profit and hate (on the NPC who assigned the quest's part). By any other context, what I had done and the methods I did it all in would constitute as a hate crime.
Granted, in the next quest it was revealed that the bandits were up to no good all along and that the cult I had just holocausted the Hell out of was indeed trying to summon a monster. I can see someone interpreting this as a very Spec Ops-esque manner of making a point about "following orders" and how easy shit like what occurred in Nazi Germany could happen, but I think it bothers me so much because I think my experience was all unintentional. I don't think Gearbox intended for this kind of experience to crop up, given all the slapstick and humorous tone all the missions were given out with - I usually recognize when Gearbox gets intentionally dark, especially with some of the better parts of Borderlands 2, but I detected none of that in "Alter Ego" and that if I had done something like this in real life for similar reasons, I'd be considered a war criminal - up there with Geobbles, Himmler, Mengele, and all the other monsters who ran the death camps back in WWII.
I guess that one bit shook me so bad was because I was so unaware of it up until I was almost done killing them. I guess this was what you could call a 'Moment of Sobriety' for gamers.
", but, oh well.
