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.
In Sniper Elite when you tag an enemy it gives you their inventory, alertness, and weapon type, but also gives you their name and a sentence or two about them from intercepted mail.
Sometimes they’re real bastards, but many of them are not and the intel is just mundane, funny, or sad.
There’s one guy in a level during the D-day invasion that’s planning to surrender to the first American he sees. I packed him in a shipping crate to keep him safe until the fighting had passed.
These games are humanizing your targets. Turns out regular humans don't enjoy killing each other. If its just a random NPC in GTA you know its not anything like a person. We might be an aggressive species, but when it comes down to it we have an aversion to actually offing each other.
War is hell, and all that.