Ever feel sorry for the enemies you've killed in a game?

[ZZoMBiE13]

I find the question worrying to be honest. They're polygons and pixels. No, I don't feel bad about using them as synaptic stimuli when I'm getting my Batman on. "They" do not exist and for the purposes I need them to fulfill (i.e. nice squishy things for my digital fist to pummell) that is all they are.

I'm all for immersion and escapism, heck that's why I chose this hobby. But once the machine is turned off I will not give "them" a second thought. That's why games are so great. You get to live out your fantasies. But once the call of the real world takes me out of the digital one, that's that, end of story. They'll all be there waiting for me to beat up when I turn my Xbox back on.

Sorry if this sounds like a downer, but when we're concerning ourselves with the hopes, dreams, and problems of unreal people who have no sentience, then I start thinking we're taking it too far.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Virtually every single person in Bioshock 1 and 2 gets to me. I hate the thought of killing them, but they aren't giving me much choice even as I can plainly see that the Splicers are just pathetically out of their minds and the bosses, not that much better.

Bioshock, overall, was a very sad experience for me. That feeling that you're the only sane person in the room with people you have no other choice but to put out of their misery? Truly saddening. Sander Cohen, particularly, strikes a chord with me. Here's this artist with a bit of an ego problem but honest dreams of success, and a combination of plasmids and intrigue drive him past the breaking point. What's more, he sends poor, impressionable and distressed people after me.

Virtually any game where I have to contend with something that *was* formerly human gets to me. Even Left 4 Dead 1 and 2. The game's engine might not allow for a realistic diversity of sprinting, frothy quasi-undead - but it doesn't change the fact that they were all people, before the Green Flu hit. You see evidence of their former humanity all over the place.

 

[scorptatious]

Well there's Shadow of the Colossus. In which in reality the colossi themselves aren't evil. And the only reason they attack is that you either attacked them first, or you've invaded their terrirory. Hell, there's even dramatic music that plays every time you kill one of them.

There's also Valkyria Chronicles. At one point in the game:

Spoiler

Welkin and Alicia hole up in a cabin after being separated from the squad. In the middle of the night, an imperial soldier walks into the cabin and falls over wounded. Normally, Welkin and Alicia fought these guys, but this one was gravely wounded, so they did what they could to help him out. As he was dying, he was crying out to his mother. In which Alicia replied by telling him that everything is going to be alright. He then died in peace, believing that his mother was there for him.

This was the moment in the game that shows that the imperial soldiers weren't just generic enemy soldiers you had to kill. Like the Galians, they too have a home they need to fight for and protect. This moment, along with the conversation Welkin and Alcia had after, helped humanized the enemy. Making them easier to feel sorry for.

And lets not forget Selvaria. She was deeply in love with Maximilin, a man who only saw her as a weapon and even told her to use the last of her power to create a powerful explosion that would end up taking her life, as well as the Galian soldiers caught in the blast.

 

[Doodle Chase]

I feel bad for just about every enemy I kill unless it is something that is unavoidable. Its common for me to run from or just straight up avoid a fight all together unless I absolutly have to kill them.

 

[Your Fearless Captain]

In Ultimate Spiderman I felt bad for killing the soldiers in the Venom levels. Who where they? Do they have families? Why don't they run away?

 

[AlphaEcho]

MPF in Half Life 2. The are humans who joined the MPF because they wanted to protect their families or they wanted better food.

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

I mean yeah they allways attack you but you're the fucking batman, they must be scared for their lifes.

Boo-hoo. Should've stay at home.

This is their home. I could leave at any time, they're trapped here.

 

[Generalissimo]

i feel kinda bad about all those NOD militants i've killed over the years, they were fighting for their cause and didn't understand why I being pro-GDI thought differently. i couldn't talk it out with them, so there had to be blood.

sad thing is, i've never lost a skirmish with NOD, and i've been doing so for 3 years now.

 

[TheLoneBeet]

Yep. Especially human enemies. The colossi from SotC are the only non-human enemies I can think of that make me feel bad.

I thought of this recently while playing Battlefield 3. You kill a bunch of cops in one of the earlier missions and I felt awful considering they're just police officers trying to keep the peace.

 

[Aeshi]

I begin to feel rather sorry for the enemies in RTS games when they have no chance of beating me whatsoever. They're doomed to lose but fight on anyway.

 

[Rayansaki]

Some characters from Oblivion or Fallout or Deus Ex sure, since they are very detailed and you can learn a lot about them before or after they die. But random_spawn_npc_3 no, don't really care.

 

[kortin]

The first few splicers in Bioshock. Most of them terrified me out of my mind the first time I played (part of that was the circumstances under which I was playing it. Trust me, you had to be there.), but then there were the ones who just kept crying... like that one crying over the baby carriage where you find the pistol... and every time I had to kill a Big Daddy, I always feel a twinge of guilt when I hear the little sisters crying. And that one in Bioshock 2 when the little sister whose protector you just killed looks up at you and says "Mister B! You're all better!" I almost cried. (don't laugh. I have a strong natural paternal instinct. I said don't laugh! It's not funny!)

I agree 100%. I always save the little sisters. Less ADAM, but I could never get myself to harvest it. Ever.

 

[Tohuvabohu]

Spoiler: These things

[/spoiler]

I knew nothing about these creatures when I first saw them in HL2. They just seemed like some barely-living entity not really worth caring about when you blow them away for shooting their pesky lasers at you.

I forgot how I learned about it, but I eventually learned that these were in fact at some point, regular humans who were horribly disfigured and repurposed by the combine for humdrum activities, or probably just to demoralize/punish people.

It's probably one of the most nightmarish things I can think of. And here I was picking fights with these poor miserable things and blowing them away out with much glee. Once I learned the truth behind the Stalkers, I felt [i]very[/i] dirty.

 

[Andrew_J_Drake]

Anything that had a back story meant to make them seem human, I didn't kill Jhon Marston... but I still feel like I failed in that last second.

 

[madeleinehatter]

A lot of people have already mentioned it, but Shadow of the Colossus was probably the first game where I really felt bad about killing my enemies. Since then, assassinating Dante Moro in AC2 probably takes the prize for "holy hell, I feel terrible." Seriously, his backstory is tragic enough, then you kill him and the last thing you learn about him comes from a love letter from his wife. Thanks, Ubisoft.

 

[Vault Citizen]

Sometimes but such scenarios are almost never fighting generic goons.

 

[Grayjack]

In GTAIV, I always feel bad when I see people lying on the ground in agony. Same with COD.

 

[Sordin]

I feel sorry for the koopa's and goomba's in mario.

 

[RipRoaringWaterfowl]

Killing the fleeing guards in Assassin's Creed II. The way they cry sometimes as they run makes me feel sorry while I run them through with a rapier.

 

[999realthings]

Why would I feel sorry for a bunch of 1s and 0s