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.
Played Nier Gestalt as a late teen and the twist in NG+ made me feel bad a bit.
When the generic enemies go from seemingly mindless ghostly apparitions to the original souls of all the dead humans separated from their bodies, and all the extra cutscenes you get before boss fights really leans into a 'are we the baddies?" Moment. Obviously you, the player, isnt an evil baddie, but finding out alot more about the state of the future and realising half the boss fights are just spirits trying to survive while being hunted and tortured by the seemingly good still living humans (which technically aren't still living humans as we know them anyway), it was just a pretty good twist.
Suddenly having subtitles to understand what enemies and bosses are saying during combat and half the time it's just like 'leave me alone' 'stop hurting me' and things like that. Added alot of feels