Do you think people become "grim" when they kill people? The effects that killing people has on people is very complex and varied, its on no way implicit that someone should become grim for murdering anyone.
Some societies made killings a form of entertainment, sometimes criminals, sometimes people who had committed no crime. Grim these events were not! We can totally have a character who kills and isn't a grim piece of cardboard or some absurd. Tweak how the society views the value of a human life, done.
Ok, grim is the wrong word. But the sort of behaviour I tend to see exhibited by jRPG characters I can only describe as overly innocent, immature, or naive for someone who deals in death on a daily basis. I don't think it's realistic for someone to continue acting like a child when doing these things. Even an actual child is gonna get their attitude screwed up by seeing death all the time.
Also, societies making use of blood sports tended to dehumanize the sorts of people sent into the arena unwillingly. The Romans would shove slaves and convicts onto the arena. They wouldn't shove in a free citizen.
It can come up, but its not very common, certainly it does not define the genre. Its a different flavour.
I beg to differ. I keep seeing this in jRPGs.
Making a statement about this without knowing anything more about a character doesn't seem right to me at all. I could say that a bandit is *probably* more morally wrong than a soldier, but declaring this for an individual character is wrong to me.
This is where it starts to become unrealistic. In real life, that bandit and soldier have a history, complex personality and various motivations I can use to judge the morality of their character. In a video game, these elements disappear as bandits and/or soldiers turn into game play elements. It becomes impossible for me to properly judge the morality of killing either one of these people.
This is where the realism starts to break down, where my character is judged to be good due to actions I can't determine to be good. I am supposed to accept "bandits", or other mooks as inherently and unambiguously bad. Although this is incredibly simplistic and entirely unrealistic, I ignore this when killing bandits because banditry is not the focus of the game, there are more important and interesting things to concern myself with.
Ok. What does your or my judgement have to do with the judgement of a game world's society, though? Do you really think societies made these labels for no reason and they actually mean nothing to most members of those societies?
When has this happened in video games? I can't think of any situation. That's my point. What I described is not unreasonable in the real world, but is in the video game world. These games present a false and unrealistically simplistic view of evil and morality.
I did not intend to imply that you are wrong to project your own ethics onto characters. I am projecting my own ethics too, I fully accept this. This is the reason why we can relate to different characters. My issue was that you seem to think that ignoring this soldier murder is some objectively bad writing. The banditry examples are to provide counter-examples to the video-game idea that these bandits are the bad guys, and soldiers are the good-guys, and to demonstrate that morality in the real world is very complex. The banditry example is to demonstrate that you are happily accepting that these people are bad with nothing more than a title, it is to demonstrate that your judgement of these characters is not based on real world ethics, but rather assumptions you make about these characters that you hold to be true.
It has, tho. Chrono Trigger you fight your way out of jail and kill guards along the way. FF13 you kill a bunch of guards just escorting you out of their city.
Also, please stop making insulting assumptions about my ethics. I'm talking about character ethics relative to the world they're in. If I played a character raised among vikings, I'd try to judge the realism of their behaviour according to the ethics set up by their society, not my own (as horrendous as they might be to my own sense of ethics).
I don't find that realistic. What I can find realistic is a society that'd consider it fine to kill or maim outlaws as punishment, especially ones who took someone's life. That's a thing that's been common in history since forever.
You are projecting your own ethics. Most modern societies do not consider it fine to kill or maim outlaws. That is why torture, lashing etc is no longer a punishment. That is why (most) western countries have abandoned the death sentence because it is no longer viewed as ethical to kill or maim outlaws. In fact, many places specifically have laws protecting outlaws against these cruel punishments.
I have a feeling you are assuming RPG's are inherently medieval. Even then, the ethical system of the time period, and the treatment of criminals is quite complex.
Nope, not projecting anything. I think you forget that up until the 1900s, people were more than happy to dish out harsh punishments to criminals. People were still being shot by firing squad for mere insubordination/desertion during the first world war. That was not medieval (well, not literally at least). And this sort of mentality extends well beyond into ancient times as well (like cutting off someone's hand for mere theft). Millennia of human history have been like this, we're only now beginning to be more humane towards criminals.
So it's not that irrational to think a fictional society might not be as respectful of human life as real life modern Western society is (which is just a fraction of the world). And even Western society still has fairly large numbers of people that'd be more than happy to form lynch mobs against merely accused individuals to satisfy their sense of justice were they not likely to face punishment in turn. People are a lot more presumptuous and contemptuous towards (sometimes unsentenced) criminals than you think they are. The same cannot be said about soldiers, as most societies hold patriotism in pretty high regard.
One off mugging? Only a few muggings? Luck (there's a hell of a lot of bandits in video games)? There is some ethical questions here regardless. If someone mugs you for your wallet, and you try to stab them, some systems will still punish you for escalating a situation to a potentially lethal one when a non-violent solution is possible. Some places put the life of a mugger above your wallet.
I assume your thinking of just a medieval RPG. My point here is that the systems presented by video games are shallow and incredibly simplistic, but this is just accepted and ignored. Ethics is complex, even in medieval times.
If someone can go around and dish out justice by murder and be totally cool with it due to the ethical environment, can the same not apply to any soldier murder scenario assuming a different ethical system?
The problem is an ethical system where anyone can just murder a soldier has never existed, whereas ones where the killing of condemned violent outlaws is allowed have been around for a good part of human history. Ever heard the term "wanted dead or alive"? People didn't have tazers and rubber slugs to bring unwilling people into justice back then. If someone was on the run and known to be armed and dangerous, then they were fair game.
Really? I can think of quite a few societies which view killing as simply that. Killing. Killing weak or strong is killing. What makes you come to the conclusion that any society view killing the weak and the strong differently? How do you even define strong? A peasant conscripts is not exactly what I would consider strong, and they certainly don't become stronger by being labelled a soldier.
Regardless, Many portrayals have bandits go after rich people, or large targets. As above, you can't really judge how "honourable" they are without information the game does not give you (and expects you to fill in yourself).
Really? You're gonna try and talk about how some society doesn't see the difference between killing combatants and killing the helpless? Like children and elderly people as well? On what planet?
And video game bandits tend to go after whoever, usually with superior numbers, not just some rich barons or whatever. You can approach them looking like the least fortunate vagrant in the world and they'll gang up on and cut you down without blinking. And guess what, most real life muggers are gonna go after the ones that look least capable of fighting back.
Media omits parts all the time, you fill in the rest yourself. For example, without knowing anything about this character who kills soldiers, you assume with no other information, they are a war criminal. If that character is a soldier themselves, they are not, by most definitions, a war criminal.
All media does this in order to make an interesting plot. It is particularly common in video games, and particularly common in RPG's, as killing is most of the game play.
The "war criminal" thing was a hyperbole, but sure, if you say so. I do assume a person is a psychopath if they kill people with a smile on their face, though.
Good point, enemies are being dehumanised, and our protagonist is the good guy for killing these sub-humans. Doesn't sound like a character I can relate too.
I can try to relate to any character that's at least somewhat realistic in their universe.
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Topic: Gaming Pet Peeves (Read 525777 times)