Video game murder has no value anymore

[SenseOfTumour]

Yeah, I found I could murder repeatedly in Fallout 3 without much guilt, yet selling someone into slavery was actually quite hard for me. Strange that murder isn't as repellent an act as slavery, perhaps there are diminishing returns, as killing has been around in games since before Space Invaders, slavery, I imagine not before something like Civilisation.

 

[Michael Hirst]

Newsflash killing in videogames has never really shocked people. In fact it's more shocking to discover a game where killing isn't in the equasion, we're so used to physical conflict being the only type of conflict protrayed in videogames that it's the norm, we rarely care about anybody who isn't a named character because much like the goons from a James Bond movie all you know about them is they're trying to kill you and personally when someone is trying to kill me I'll take a similar approach with them.

I think the closest a videogame has ever come to making me think about the nameless/faceless goons I've been killing is the original Deus Ex once I realized that the NSF were actually part of a just cause and that UNATCO was corrupt yet I'd dropped several dozen of them in the past few missions but then Deus Ex is also the same game that offers non-lethal takedowns as an option, this of course helps put the guilt on the player because there is an active alternative to just gunning everybody down.

In other words it isn't the murdering of enemies that could shock a person but more the idea of being given a choice to murder them, okay the direct killing approach can help you in your objectives much faster but will not killing the enemy also bring benefits?

I'd like to see a game where your non-violent choices have effects on factions in the world, for example you get captured by the enemy and while they still don't like you they can actively see that you've tried to spare lives and might be reasonable in some way whereas if you murder everyone you've come across they decide to torture your ass for some payback, making your escape from them more difficult.

 

[Scizophrenic Llama]

Metal Gear Solid 3 had the most effective way of making you pay for killing a ton of people due to the fight with The Sorrow, makes doing that no kill run that much more rewarding when you can just coast through that section.

 

[Sectan]

I assume this thread is about emotional value, but gameplay wise I see it. Especially in Assassin's creed. 20 Guards come along "Oh that's nothing they're already dead." It'd be a bit more difficult and satisfying if the enemies you encountered in a game were difficult to kill.

 

[Falseprophet]

Actually, killing guards in AC2 did have an impact on me. In the first Assassin's Creed, the Crusaders were foreign occupiers who'd try to kill Altair for walking funny. I could empathize with Altair's desire to murder them.

But in the second game, the guards were mostly just guys trying to earn a paycheque. They generally left you alone if you passed them on the street, and readily flirted with the courtesans. And when you fought them in groups, they'd call upon their past military experience ("Together, like that time in Perugia!") and try to rally each other. I felt like I was killing all the regulars at the pub down the street.

 

[DrunkenElfMage]

I think the type of discussion this thread brings up brings two gamer ideals in direct conflict with each other. One gamer ideal is that we want our games (at least some of them) to become deeper and give the player a sense of purpose the things they do while they play the game. They want a better reason to play a game besides scoring another point and beating a level.

The other gamer ideal is that ultimately the ultraviolence in video games doesn't matter and there fore can not be ethically wrong. When you kill some one in a video game, they are often shallow and flat, and are cartoonish exaggerations of real life people, giving the player no moral dilemma at taking their life. If the player has any empathy toward the people they are killing, then that immediately detracts from the fun of the game for them. Very few games actually let the player realize just how terrible their actions would be if they were actually hurting real people. The best example of this is Grand theft auto. Besides the NPCs that you receive your missions from, every other character in the game is selfish, rude, and stupid. At the begining of the game you might have some moral quandary about driving on the side walk, but once you hear how the people talk about you behind your back, you realize that they are not human.

I'm sure there is more than one game that has made me feel bad about killing an enemy, but the one that comes to mind the most is Bioshock. I remember one time that I found a way into a locked room and there was a splicer sitting on the couch, crying her eyes out. I knocked the grate out of the way, and then she looked up from her hands and said something like "Whuh?". I didn't even change back to my gun to kill her. To me, she had just become another victim of Rapture, a woman hiding out in a locked room. But then she suddenly screamed in rage and in a panic I pulled the trigger and she fell to the ground dead. I remember searching the room frantically, trying to find an audio diary to know more about the person I just killed, but all I found was some standard loot. I will probably remember that woman for the rest of my life, but according to that game she was just another enemy.

 

[DarkPanda XIII]

Let's face it, I don't really like to kill, Mostly love to sneak around and attack the main enemy.

Saints Row 2...I guess you can call it removing the ones that would win a Darwin award.

Seriously, I had to flinch when an entire group of people in that game dove......directly into the path of my car and not *away*, but had to shake my head at the sillyness of it all.

 

[Kilroy17]

Um..... Never.

Don't think it's even had any effect on me, really.

This^^

 

[Zantos]

I don't really murder in video games. If you kill someone that's trying to kill you that's just self defence (even if they don't know it yet). I usually feel bad if I do accidentally hit a bystander during a shootout in most games. Last time, I accidentally hit my horse in Red Dead and decided to sacrifice about an hour play time to the load gods.

 

[jboking]

So when was the last time you felt an impact by murdering a nameless character in a game?

It's hard to feel bad about killing the nameless simply because they are nameless. If they had a backstory or you knew anything about them, then it might have a little impact.

I do have one story, though, of when I did feel a little bad about having killed someone. There is more to it than just the game though:

I used to do volunteer work at a soup kitchen. There was a police officer who often came in to help and in one of our conversations he mentioned how most of the people there are so down on their luck that they often turn to crime or substance abuse, if they haven't already. The sad reality of that hit me something fierce. I went home that weekend and played Fallout: NV. At Camp McCarran you can talk to any of the soldiers and one of them asks for some help with a gang of murderers/rapists/generally awful people called the fiends. If you talk to the soldiers some more you find out that most of the fiends are just kids who, with nowhere to turn, fell into substance abuse and crime to get what they needed to survive. I still went and did the job, but there was this one random fiend who went charging at me with a tire iron or something and I just shot her once in the head and she went down. I didn't have bloody mess, so she didn't explode or anything. I went up and realized for a moment that she was probably just some young homeless kid, like the ones I try to help, who fell in with the fiends for shelter. I felt a slight pain, and then had to move on.

That's about it, though.

 

[EternalFacepalm]

Stop ruining video games hipster.

Please be joking...

OT: At the very end of Half-Life 2, when you kill the giant sparkly bubble, as I like to think of it. That felt like it mattered, sort of.

 

[Something Amyss]

Killing people in video games doesn't bother me and never has. I'm not sure where the "anymore" comes in, since nameless characters have, generally speaking, had a life expectancy of a Spinal Tap drummer.

 

[Radoh]

Story time? Story time. Story time!

Alpha Protocol, first playthrough. Now as a rule there are two playthrough styles for me when it comes to stealthy games, there's the Galoan playthrough where I kill every person I can, and the Tarryl playthrough where I do the opposite.
This time I was rolling with the Galoan playthrough, knifing random guards left and right with no remorse in my body, until I got to this ship where I had to kill some Russian guy. So I get on, knife a guy, go upstairs, knife two guys, then work my way down where I encounter three dancing ladies, they didn't sit well with the whole knifing thing, but whatever I'm playing Galoan what do I care? So I off the guy and leave to go upstairs where I encounter Sis.

After a small boss fight (since I know the secret to ending bosses in that game) I get the option to talk or to kill, being that I'm playing Galoan I have to kill her.
That was the most painful thing I've ever done in that game.

Captcha: edureiv excelled.
So you feel that Edureiv's met expectations? Good.

 

[Juventus]

Concerning Assassins Creed 2:

Spoiler

About assassin's creed 2, I was mostly annoyed by the lack of murder at the end. How is it acceptable to murder dozens of Vatican guards on the way to the Pope, fight him, but leave him alive. Are we to see Ezio as someone who showed mercy? Why couldn't he have shown mercy to the guards? If Jacobo is too pathetic to bother killing (wtf? he's the friggen pope!), then why bother with murdering the guards?

Of course, I've always disliked the AC storyline, but that annoyed me most of all.

read up on the pope borgia reign and how he dies.

assassin's creed is based around real life history and events. if ezio had killed the pope then, it would have contradicted what happened in real history, both where he died and the timeline of his death. that's the main reason he didn't get killed.

 

[Lunar Templar]

only one time, ever
Demon's Souls, the Maiden Astraea. i felt bad after she died, cause she wasn't actually evil.

other then her, no, nothing comes to mind, 'blood for the blood god' tends to be how i roll

 

[Double A]

I only feel it in Oblivion and sometimes Morrowind (as well as a few others) due to the characters all actually having names and a daily routine. It's more of me trying to uphold my morals whenever possible than actually feeling anything for the nonexistant people. Kind of like in movies and books, I'll feel a little bad if they're innocent in context but they still die.

 

[ShadowsofHope]

Only with cats (D'AWWWW) and civilians (unarmed) in game. Anyone else, and they are just targets for my digital bullets.

 

[Zeema]

i think its fun killing people

in games