AC4... Am I being overly sensitive?

[Carpenter]

People have guns and attack you, animals torture other animals for fun. There really is no valid argument for killing people but not animals.

Deer are not "helpless" in real life (I agree the game could have done a much better job of giving them some realistic AI) and despite what people say, hunting a deer is a pretty stressful process in real life unless you are doing "cheat hunting" like the rich guys do and shooting at deer in a fenced in area.

The challenge of hunting a deer comes from the fact that deer are much smarter than people realize, they are easily made aware of your presence and will dash away out of sight if you slip up and reveal yourself in any way.

On top of that, do you ever ask yourself why deer have fat strips of meat along their spine and throughout their body? Do you think it's all necessary to keep them warm? No it's because nature has developed these and other creatures specifically to be prey for other creatures.

I can understand feeling bad about it, that's part of the experience with real life hunting (you are supposed to have respect for the thing that's providing you with food) but it does seem a bit silly to be feeling bad about an animal in a video game. That's not to say I don't like it, I have certainly felt the same way in some games and I think it's kind of a credit to the designers, although as I said before they could have done better at least it felt real enough to cause an emotional reaction.

 

[TaboriHK]

I'm not sure why there's a moral distinction between killing animals and killing people. In my mind, killing people is far more wrong, but they're both killing. And neither are killing, because it's a video game.

On top of that, do you ever ask yourself why deer have fat strips of meat along their spine and throughout their body? Do you think it's all necessary to keep them warm? No it's because nature has developed these and other creatures specifically to be prey for other creatures.

This too, for what it's worth. Deer are born to die and be eaten. When they aren't, they flood an area with overpopulation and destroy everything. And if you try to ethically relocate them, they die from the trauma. It's really a no-win moral scenario, a deer's life.

 

[AdagioBoognish]

I'm often using the animal soothe shout in Skyrim to get past animals without killing them

That's why the issues like the option to kill animals should be in any game where you are able to immerse yourself as the main character. I'd rather my character had actual choices to make with the option of taking a moral stand.

 

[Carpenter]

No. If you find it troubling, don't take part in it, simple as that. When I played Sleeping Dogs, I avoided the cock fighting mini-game (but then again, I loved hunting as Trevor in GTA V); it all comes down to personal ideals. I know that, in real life, I'd never seek to hurt another out of spite, but video games provide some escapism I suppose. Besides, given the time period, whaling is a very historically accurate thing to include.

Additionally:

So you're fine with playing a game which is literally about murdering people as an assassin, but you find it hard to play because the Whales?
What about the people you kill?

I guess it's because we're kind of...used to killing people or seeing people die in video games and movies. They'll show the villain burning down villages, shooting his mooks for insubordination but you what really gets the emotional juices flowing? Kicking a dog. Just show the villain (or antagonist, whatever) hurting an animal and most of the audience will immediately lose all sympathy for him.

It's kind of a double standard, really...

Not really. Animals don't have a grasp on ethics and morals like we do, they operate on instinct. Animals won't just hurt you out of spite and cruelty, humans on the other hand...

I agree with most of that but to the last sentence, BS.

Not all animals maybe but humans are not the only creatures to kill or maim without needing food or territory. I understand you can argue that it's ok because they are "acting on instinct" but on that note, the only reason people kill other people or animals "for fun" is because we have those same predatory instincts and are hardwired to get pleasure out of violence. People hate to admit it and will often dispute it but it's true.

Animals will torture animals to death and then just leave them there. If you want to see the most extreme version of this watch some wild or feral cats. You know, cats not tamed and trained into submission and unnatural life by humans. They will all play with a mouse and rip it open and watch it drag itself around only to leave it there and look for another one if they don't happen to be hungry.


It's not that we are different because "animals are driven by instincts" the difference between us an wild animals is that we, like the house cat or dog, are trained into submission and taught to suppress our instincts.

 

[Carpenter]

I'm not sure why there's a moral distinction between killing animals and killing people. In my mind, killing people is far more wrong, but they're both killing. And neither are killing, because it's a video game.

On top of that, do you ever ask yourself why deer have fat strips of meat along their spine and throughout their body? Do you think it's all necessary to keep them warm? No it's because nature has developed these and other creatures specifically to be prey for other creatures.

This too, for what it's worth. Deer are born to die and be eaten. When they aren't, they flood an area with overpopulation and destroy everything. And if you try to ethically relocate them, they die from the trauma. It's really a no-win moral scenario, a deer's life.

I wouldn't call it "no win" but that goes into a bit of unpopular territory.

I have to say it though, we think of death as some horrible awful thing, fact is what if deer and other creatures are aware of something we are not? They have a sense of self preservation (to a point) but they don't have the paralyzing fear of death that we have, is it so hard to believe that they may know something we don't?
It's interesting to think about.

 

[TaboriHK]

I wouldn't call it "no win" but that goes into a bit of unpopular territory.

I have to say it though, we think of death as some horrible awful thing, fact is what if deer and other creatures are aware of something we are not? They have a sense of self preservation (to a point) but they don't have the paralyzing fear of death that we have, is it so hard to believe that they may know something we don't?
It's interesting to think about.

When the best case scenario is a bullet kills you painlessly, you're living a dark life.

We think of death as horrible because we have an investment in life beyond merely being alive. A deer aspires to eat and reproduce. I think what they 'know' is an utter lack of 'knowing.'

 

[Carpenter]

I wouldn't call it "no win" but that goes into a bit of unpopular territory.

I have to say it though, we think of death as some horrible awful thing, fact is what if deer and other creatures are aware of something we are not? They have a sense of self preservation (to a point) but they don't have the paralyzing fear of death that we have, is it so hard to believe that they may know something we don't?
It's interesting to think about.

When the best case scenario is a bullet kills you painlessly, you're living a dark life.

We think of death as horrible because we have an investment in life beyond merely being alive. A deer aspires to eat and reproduce. I think what they 'know' is an utter lack of 'knowing.'

That's easy to assume, we often see the things we "know" as absolute truth but the idea that we are the smartest species is based on nothing more than the fact that we can only communicate with our own species.

You are basing the assumption that it's a "dark life" on the idea that this is the only life we ever experience and that this life is all that matters. It's not a "lack of knowing" that they have, it could just be a lack of distraction and a connection to nature.

Nothing just dies, an animal that ceases to live is giving new life to countless other creatures.

This whole idea that death is just death and nothing good comes from it is a pretty nihilistic worldview that's based on faith and not reality. We know enough about our world now to know that death is hardly the end of anything. In that same sense, we are not one thing, we are a living ecosystem of creatures. Did you know you have skin fauna? You have organisms alien to your body that live on your skin and even inside of your body and without it we get serious medical problems.

 

[nyankaty]

Anyone who thinks a deer couldn't seriously fuck up a person, armed or unarmed, has definitely not lived in Texas! Our deer are mean and angry when they want to be; they'll charge a person for getting too close. One of the kittens that lives outside our house (someone dumped the mom on us, she popped out babies, boom, kittens) came home one night with a fatal head injury, probably thanks to a deer.

Just take a close look at how sharp deer hooves are and think how much power is behind a kick from one of those suckers. Add onto that that they're extremely fast and, as prey animals, they're already on edge most of the time and if you run into a deer on a bad day, you could get seriously injured or killed. And that's saying nothing of their horns!

That said, I love killing any and everything in games except cats if the options ever came up. I would also gladly kill and skin an animal if I needed it for my own use. I'm squeamish but I know that survival is key, and I also know that a game is just a game. Since I would prefer to not have to kill a deer in real life, I'll happily do it in games. I spend an awful lot of time in Skyrim just running around sniping deer. It's fun, it gets me leather, and it ups my archery while keeping me from having to hunt animals in real life since I don't have enough freezer space for a whole deer. It's a win for everyone, including the mean ass deer that live outside my house.

 

[michael87cn]

I just think of them as animated paintings, that's really all they are actually.

They're not real so there's no harm.

 

[Dogstile]

So you're fine with playing a game which is literally about murdering people as an assassin, but you find it hard to play because the Whales?
What about the people you kill?

This is exactly my thought. What the hell guys, it was something they actually did back then, why shouldn't they include it? The animals can definitely fight back or run. In fact, i'm pretty sure a lot of the people you kill in assassins creed can't actually fight you, they can just run. No difference, except one isn't human.

 

[Gronk]

Well, thanks for your feedback here boys and girls.

The reason I brought this up is not as a moral outcry or anything like that, but because I was a bit surprised about this myself. It's not like I bought the game not knowing there would be hunting animals and whales in it. I didn't think I would have a problem with it, it wasn't until I was actually going to do the hunting that I realized that it didn't feel right to me. And when I thought about it, it does seem a bit arbitrary doesn't it, thinking it's ok to kill virtual people, but not virtual animals? I bet there's a million reasons why, but personally it confuses me slightly.

So I thought I'd ask here to see if anyone else feels the same way (and apparently some do, and some don't) .

Now the hunting is voluntary, so it's not something I have to do luckily, or I might have actually stopped playing, which is a shame, because otherwise it's a great game.

 

[Soundwave]

If you're willing to eat the skin, muscle, flesh or organs of an animal, or wear part of its body, turning around and saying you can't stomach killing an animal is hypocrisy. It doesn't matter how many excuses you come up with or how "icky" you describe it. The willful ignorance and blindness is bordering on insane; to knowingly eat a dead non-human animal, but to turn in disgust at the thought of killing it yourself - ha. Yeah, sure, there's no logical conflict there.

Then you call yourself a mysophobe, which as far as I know, is not in the DSM, nor is it an actual diagnosis. So I'll file that under the stack of labels people diagnosis themselves with that have no valid medical reference.

Out of sight, out of mind, out of logic.

People probably wouldn't feel so upset about it if we still lived in an agrarian society. It's not a huge leap of logic to suggest that just as a person who has never killed another person would feel revulsion at the act would also feel the same way about killing an animal.

On that note, the absolute callous attitude you filthsy meatsacks have towards killing innocent robots is the real hypocrisy here.

 

[Thebazilly]

Hmm, do you suggest I maybe rent it first and see if I like it? The idea of playing as a pirate and sailing the seas capturing ships, building a crew, taking cargo, hunting on the high seas, capturing forts for your crew, it all sounds awesome.

Tell me, your crew, can you lose them in fights? Do they level up or anything like that? Can the Jackdaw be upgraded? What do captured forts do for you?

You can lose crewmembers when you board a ship, or they can sometimes get washed overboard by large waves in storms. They're pretty easy to come by, though. There's lots of random guys floating around in the ocean, and 'rescue pirates' sidequests in towns, or you can hire crew in taverns. They don't level up, and don't have much consequence other than contributing to how good you are at boarding enemy ships.

The Jackdaw has lots of upgrades, they've added a lot since the last game. There's cannons, fire barrels, different types of shot, armor, naval ram, cargo capacity, and harpooning boat upgrades off the top of my head. You can also change its appearance a little bit with different wheels, sails, and figureheads.

Capturing forts gets you money, and completely reveals the section of the map that the fort is in. You also get access to naval side missions and a few collectibles there.

Anyway, I'm getting off-topic. I think you should definitely try renting it and seeing if you like it.

 

[Gottesstrafe]

I don't really know why people are so sensitive towards animals but can be bitches towards other people.

OT: Strikes me as odd that you would get worked up over killing animals, but not humans.

It's about innocence. Animals are almost always innocent. They don't plot. They don't scheme. They don't go out of their way to hurt or persecute or destroy. Human beings do.

I'm not saying there are absolutely no cases of animals being "evil". I know there are cases - those bizarre male lions in South Africa that were essentially serial killers spring to mind. But it's really, really abnormal.

Now do I think the death of innocent civilians is less tragic than the death of animals? Of course not. But if we are comparing killing the "bad guys" in AC4 to hunting a whale minding it's own business - then I certainly would rather kill the people.

BTW a deer could fuck you up in real life even worse than an armed person would.

That's ridiculously untrue. Did you mean to say "unarmed"? Because I could go with that. But there is no way a deer possess more danger to you than someone armed with a knife or a gun.

Not really.

Primates are known for premeditated murder. Even prostitution.

Giraffes and other animals have raunchy gay sex.

Dolphins gang rape.

Penguins are known to rape corpses, the injured, and pretty much anything.

Otters have pedophilia for non otters.

Zebras can be pretty vicious and very dangerous.

the list goes on. animals aren't really innocent or driven by primal rage. They really do know what they are doing. This is commonplace.

And yes deers can be very dangerous. Their horns aren't just for show, and can kill you. Hell, there are cases of deer shadowing people to attack.

Don't forget about elephants intentionally stepping on smaller animals for no apparent reason (eg. not in self-defense), and ducks engaging in (sometime homosexual) necrophilia sex. There's also female mantises eating the heads of male mantises during copulation (partially for nutrition, partially because male thrusting becomes a reflexive action once initiated and won't stop once the head is taken off until the male literally wears itself away).

There's also the wonderful world of infanticide and filial cannibalism. Males (eg. primates and lions) will kill the offspring of females so that they won't waste resources on young that they had no part in siring, or simply just to put the females in estrous again (with no young to care for, they become horny again). Gerbils and other rodents will actively hunt down the young of other Gerbil families when they aren't busy raising/rearing their own (for nutrition and to free up resources). Some male birds that instinctively know how long it takes for their species' eggs to hatch will kill any infants that hatch before/after that time period. Some female birds belonging to species where the males raise the young will attack the chicks of neighboring nests so that they can steal the males for themselves. And then there's killing the runt of the litter, which occurs across several species.

 

[Sizzle Montyjing]

its got whale hunting? wow thats disturbing. think they just lost a sale with that

...They're not killing a whale in real life for every whale killed in game y'know.
The sad truth is that such things were commonplace in those days, but it would be weird to ignore that.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

I have absolutely no feeling for animals that I do not personally know.

That doesn't mean that we should not keep animals form going extinct. Biodiversity is still a thing.

But in the context of the game, your small dingy is no where near enough to take a chunk of any sgnifigance out of the whale population, so I'm fine with it.

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

Why does it matter, they are not real. This is kinda a problem people don't seem to grasp, these things are not real.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Why does it matter, they are not real. This is kinda a problem people don't seem to grasp, these things are not real.

It's called imagination. Things that aren't real can still influence you; make you happy, sad, shock you, whatever, because they do represent something real. Why else would you play a game, or watch a movie, or read a book if you couldn't imagine it as being real?

Sure a game is just 1's and 0's, and a book is just ink on paper. But sticking a dozen virtual harpoons into a virtual whale still seems nasty to me.