Today, some people were murdered and their families are mourning. Are you shedding a tear? No?
The reason we don't care about the hundreds of people is they are faceless and we know nothing about them, just like those very real people who died today. But, we do know quite a lot about Satsuke (I assume you just made the character up), and as such we actually care about that character and their feelings.
I didn't murder those people, tho. It doesn't reflect on me, cause I had nothing to do with it, nor was it on me to prevent it. I'd expect it to reflect on whomever it affected.
You missed my point. I am more concerned about the latter (feelings, emotions etc etc) because I am emotionally invested in the character. I am not emotionally invested in the faceless "Hundreds of people" mentioned earlier, and as such am pretty happy to mostly ignore that, because its not interesting to me.
I want relatable, not realistic.
And regardless, most JRPG's I can think of have you murdering generic monsters most (sometimes all) of the time, or the "soldiers" were the aggressors. To take an extreme example, how many soldiers did you kill in To The Moon?
In jRPGs you often kill soldiers. Basically people doing their job as ordered by their country, often under threat of execution or other punishment. People who aren't necessarily doing it out of malice, greed or similar, just out of fear or obligation.
Don't be so judgemental, those bandits could be bandits because they are desperate and need to provide for their family. It further demonstrates that games (not just RPG's) are just using "bandits" and inhuman cannon fodder and building unrealistic characters out of them. Your still a horrible person for killing them.
That soldier could be very much down with the kings plan to destroy the world, or just going along for the pillaging. Why is killing soldiers worse when the only difference between a "soldier" and a "bandit" is the label the game gives them, when the soldier can be worse than the bandit?
It's actually the opposite, I believe. If you focus on the characters, then they'd better be redeemable and act like people.
JRPG characters are less defined by their actions than western RPG characters. So the fact that you "killed 100 soldiers" (an action) is more significant to a character in a western RPG, as they don't have much else to define their character. JRPG characters are defined primarily by other aspects, and these actions are generally less important.
The combat heavy gameplay leading to mass murder tends to break tone with anything other than total grimdark or absurdity.
Please, no more grimdark! It basically implies an absence of colours and characters with the emotion of a cardboard box. Absurdity is sometimes fun, but not always.
I am more than happy to overlook any minor "realism" issues to avoid having to stomach another "grimdark" game.