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.
SOMA makes you feel progressively worse and worse about “killing” robots.
When I had to chase down and “kill” that one little robot that kept trying to escape, I felt bad enough. When the other little robot that had been friendly with me up to that point saw me “kill” it and started acting afraid of me, I felt really bad.
I haven’t played the whole game, I stopped after encountering the robot who didn’t know he was a dead robot and would scream in pain if you turned on the electricity, which you had to do to progress. It was very disturbing.
The whole situation made me uncomfortable, which is by design. I like how subtle the information is given to you as you meet robots. The whole “saving humanity” is an interesting concept, because that’s exactly how a computer system would save something, with safety protocols being turned off.
The obvious truth of it all as you progress through the experience shows how much both the protagonist and the player don’t want to believe the truth of your own existence in the game.