Gagyi: You're exactly the type of gamer I'm trying to help have fun without role-playing you as a blood-thirsty psycho. If I have to make sure all of the bad guys are zombies and human-eating aliens, then so be it. It's that important that the killing is fun.

Quote:Original post by Alpha_ProgDes

Quote:Original post by JimDaniel

Quote:Original post by ROBERTREAD1
THOU SHALT NOT MURDER.

I don't know why the incorrect biblical translation (TSN Kill) crept into common use.

But where do you draw the line betweeen "murder" and "kill?" I know you think bringing up that technicality eliminates the problem, but it really doesn't, because the line is not clear between the two.

Accident or defense. I believe that where the line is drawn between the two.

There are also more complicated situations, like death row executions, killing someone to save many others, abortions, and puting someone out of horrible misery, but none of which have much to do with the topic.

Quote:Original post by Kest

Quote:Most games already do give you a justification for why you're fighting if you're a good guy

Well go ahead and list some of them if you get some free time.

Well I hate to turn it around, but really I'm wondering what are these games that make you kill innocent humans without reason? Most of the games I can think of fall into these broad categories:

a) You're fighting monsters. This is a vast, vast majority of games, from Mario to Halo to Final Fantasy.

b) The humans you're fighting are already dead, so no big deal. Resident Evil, Doom, etc.

c) The humans you're fighting have had their minds replaced with some sort of demonic mind control, alien symbiote, or whatever, so you're doing them a favor by killing them. F.E.A.R. for example.

d) The bad guys are just hopelessly, irredemably bad. The Sith in Star Wars games, Nazis, dark cultists of an evil god out to destroy the world, etc. This, I guess, could be questionable; you could theoretically talk to a Sith or Nazi soldier and change their mind, but they are usually in the process of shooting and/or light-sabering you as soon as they see you, so you don't have much choice really.

The only games that I've seen that let you kill innocents are games where you're either roleplaying a bad guy (Grand Theft Auto and Hitman), or you purposefully have been given the option to roleplay evil if you want (Oblivion, Fallout). In most of those games, you can still choose not to attack innocent people if you don't want to.

Quote:Original post by makeshiftwings

Quote:Original post by Kest

Quote:Most games already do give you a justification for why you're fighting if you're a good guy

Well go ahead and list some of them if you get some free time.

Well I hate to turn it around, but really I'm wondering what are these games that make you kill innocent humans without reason? Most of the games I can think of fall into these broad categories:

...

The only games that I've seen that let you kill innocents are games where you're either roleplaying a bad guy (Grand Theft Auto and Hitman), or you purposefully have been given the option to roleplay evil if you want (Oblivion, Fallout). In most of those games, you can still choose not to attack innocent people if you don't want to.

Why does it matter if there are few games that have the problem? I'm working on something new, not fixing something old. My purpose is to avoid "kill innocent" situations by finding methods to make my NPCs less innocent. If it seemed like I was bringing up a traditional gaming issue - something that caused negative problems in games of the past - that needed addressed, I wasn't. Few past games have a civilized environment like the one I'm working on. Two of them you just brought up with GTA and Hitman.

What would it have taken to make the GTA character less anti-hero? What would have made the random city-wide slayings and berserk escapades feel more necessary? A zombie plague? An important quest to save humanity while the whole of humanity misunderstands you and is trying to stop you? Those are the types of things I'm looking into. My game's environment needs more natural enemies, and I'm trying to limit the number of monsters and aliens running about. So that means humans. But vampiric humans would work. Or zombified humans. Or terrorists. Or other such things. I'm looking for ideas.