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.
Occasionally in Cyberpunk 2077, you'll end up scooping up datashards from the gangoons you've just mowed down. Sometimes, this validates what you'd done, especially scavs and Maelstrom.
But sometimes you just get a bit of squabbling between a guy and his girl who is fussing at him for letting his friend drag him into trouble because she's worried he won't be around for their kid or a guy and his elderly grandfather who's had an accident and is pleading for his grandson to come home because he doesn't want anyone to see him like that.
And then you look down at the chunky meat salsa that the shotgun created and feel awful.
And then sometimes you turn a corner too fast and accidentally mow down a block or 2 of pedestrians and have to live with what you've just done
I just go oops
Whoopsie doodle.
I made the wrong decision on songbird I think. Feels bad man.
Yeah Cyberpunk really made me feel for the guards. Remember one time a guy was shown chilling on a railing, kinda shirking from his post but he was on the phone like calling his kid. Like I was about to put a knife thru that phone and his head, and it just made me feel like such a pos. Hell even the name of a enemy class, whenever I see "recruit" for any of the gangs I go non lethal just cuz they're probably kids too dumb or poor to be elsewhere.
The more shards you read the more you just don't want to kill anyone besides the scummiest, like you said Maelstrom and Scavs mainly.
Me who never reads them:
I don’t normally voluntarily kill in that game, except for scavs and vdbs… but I was playing a mission to retrieve a BD from a scav den and I found the father/son editor team, and as I walked up, they were commenting back and forth about how good one of their edits was. Then you find out they edit so many videos of little kids getting killed that they don’t even know which BD I’m talking about… once they told me where the BD was and they were telling me to just leave, I popped em both in the head. Felt very content with that one.
I killed all the scavs who augmented the two monks and they got really upset with me about it. I actually felt pretty bad about that one.
Cyberpunk does a really impressive job of making you walk the thin line of morality.
The ones that augment the monk and protect the BD editors are Maelstrom not Scavengers.
Oh, then they really dead. Fuck them guys.
This is why I always ran the eye mod that made all damage non-lethal. Then if I came across someone who was rally fucked, I could come back and hit their body to actually kill them.
Non-lethal sneak takedowns and non-lethal modification for guns have largely avoided this guilt for me, and if I do end up killing someone I didn't want to, I reload. Like when I accidentally blew up Ozob's nose, I reloaded and took him down by punching his shins.
My V may be a "straight edged princess", with a penchant for vengeance, but she ain't a monster.
The grandfather one got me so bad I’m pretty sure I reloaded it and let the guy live. I know reloaded the save when I took out a bunch of valentinos that I thought shot down a medi supply transport. No they saw it go down and needed the meds for their people.
This is one of those games where I recommend reading the datashards/lore/optional text for this very reason. It is so so good
I kill them with mind bullets, execute the ones that survived, and then toss the corpses in the dumpster.
I am not a fan of littering.
I personally just shoot everything unless I’m purposefully going for stealth, I find the game more fun this way
I love that you can scan people's crimes when fighting most of the enemies. I always tried to give people non-lethal damage when they had only smaller crimes.
Yeah - I remember one that was talking about raising the eddies for a family member's medical bills...