Current Events > I hate when fiction treats ANY killing as immoral.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Even when it's a clear act of euthanasia, or when the villain is so beyond evil that it is absolutely clear that sparing him will result in some kind of genocide or mass killing spree.

Bioshock 2 spoilers. Why the hell is choosing not to kill Gil Alexander the "good" act?. Even putting aside his awful legacy of oh, I dunno, torturing and murdering actual children, he's not even human anymore. He's a toxic growth in a laboratory. His last wish before descending into insanity and turning into a giant pulsating blob of hatred is to put him out of his misery. And yet if you do that, you've done an evil thing, according to the games mechanics.

The worst part about this trope is that usually this moral dilemma is presented after the hero has already killed like 200 canon fodder henchmen. As above, how many goddamn splicers did you mow down on the way?


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Video game writers are low-tier brah. Couldn't cut it in the real biz.
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Clearly, the morally right thing to do was to let him suffer.

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Good guys not murdering people in cold blood isn't a problem IMO.

Killing is fun! That's how I know it's bad because fun isn't allowed.

In games I mean. Killing in games is fun.

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lilORANG posted...

Video game writers are low-tier brah. Couldn't cut it in the real biz.

This isn't unique to videogames though. Like, think batman.


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Batman enables The Joker, let's not pretend otherwise.

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pinky0926 posted...

This isn't unique to videogames though. Like, think batman.

Comic writers are also low-tier.
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Slayerblade11 posted...

Good guys not murdering people in cold blood isn't a problem IMO.

I think it's bullshit to deliberately work your way through the villain's territoriy mowing down hundreds of low tier thugs only to suddenly decide right at the last second that you can't go through with putting the actual baddie in the dirt.

If all it takes to change your mind is that it's gonna be an act of defense, why put yourself in that position?

And to be honest because of that nonsense it's exactly how a lot of these encounters end. Good guy only kills him when bad guy is about to do something violent again. Like...duh?

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lilORANG posted...

Comic writers are also low-tier.

Bad writing is bad writing and I could find you examples across the board. Hell I bet if I was motivated enough I could find an example from Neil Gaiman or someone.

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Neil Gaiman is low-tier tbh.
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If I recall, (Bioshock 2 again) "sane" Gil from the past is the one asking you to euthanize him. The current state of Gil pleads for his life.

Also, you can totally get the best ending if you rescue all the Little Sisters and spare even one of the three people.

Not that it doesn't make it questionable writing of course.

Oh also, all the sparing/killing bad guys thing does is affect Eleanor's choice to spare or kill her mother. A choice that is also morally ambiguous given the shit she's done.

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It is really lame like these stories are written by pacifist types who were overprotected in life.

And Batman media's problem is the logic of the state not wanting to give the death penalty to the Joker and others. Plus, how has a cop not "feared for his/her life", which would be totally justified, and just shot and killed one of the villains at some point? Or some citizen who finally got tired of all the BS and went vigilante?

I can buy Batman being mentally ill and still being scarred by his parents' deaths and hates any kind of murder, but what about everyone else?

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Not really the same thing but I always found it funny how in Red Dead Redemption you can be evil as fuck while in the story John is trying to redeem himself

Southernfatman posted...

It is really lame like these stories are written by pacifist types who were overprotected in life.

And Batman media's problem is the logic of the state not wanting to give the death penalty to the Joker and others. Plus, how has a cop not "feared for his/her life", which would be totally justified, and just shot and killed one of the villains at some point? Or some citizen who finally got tired of all the BS and went vigilante?

I can buy Batman being mentally ill and still being scarred by his parents' deaths and hates any kind of murder, but what about everyone else?

More like the writers don't wanna keep creating new villains when the old ones work fine. The Joker is too popular to kill off permanently.

Southernfatman posted...

Plus, how has a cop not "feared for his/her life", which would be totally justified, and just shot and killed one of the villains at some point?

I'd fucking read that story.

Batman against a C-grade villain, punching and jumping around a warehouse and shit, and one of Gotham's finest shows up and the villain turns on the cop, who then shoots him dead and Batman's got a whoooole new element of his modus and character that needs exploring.

And while the cop might not have necessarily been "morally" right in shooting the villain, the threat was justifiable.

That's got to have happened at some point, right? I couldn't believe that's never happened. And I don't mean in a "turns out the cop was dirty" scenario either.

It can't just be "Gotham police let Batman do his thing" on one side and "dirty cops who Batman would go for anyway" on the other.

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It's actually a good thing it's counted as "immoral". Since it makes having Sofia Lamb die in the ending easier. It only sucks that you have to kill ALL THREE characters for her to die if you don't harvest any Little Sisters (which you absolutely shouldn't) since Grace doesn't deserve to die even though she's ready for it
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It's also kind of funny in one of the worst endings, (Bioshock 2 again) where if you harvest all the Little Sisters, yet spare all three villains, then Eleanor legitimately interprets this as the cruelest of mercies and "forcing them to live and suffer", so she lets her mother live to see the horror Eleanor will wreak on the world.

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Southernfatman posted...

Plus, how has a cop not "feared for his/her life", which would be totally justified, and just shot and killed one of the villains at some point?

Well you see the joker isn't black so....

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Its just pixels and nit real ignore people that say killing in gamevis immoral, its not teal and they dont know any better

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