Kids

Well?


  • Total voters
    56
In Dragonrealms, I imagine killing kids would be more offensive. I mean, you swing your sword at the kid and you get a wonderfully explicit description of their gory death. People could even aim their blows and completely mutilate the kid NPC before finally killing it off. That, I admit, would bother me.

In a graphical MMO, however, a child's death will simply be a pixelated character falling over and bleeding, right? You might get a window where the kid says his last words and cries over not wanting to die, as part of the story. It would be no different than killing a deer or something. I could do it all day without blinking.
 
In Dragonrealms, I imagine killing kids would be more offensive. I mean, you swing your sword at the kid and you get a wonderfully explicit description of their gory death. People could even aim their blows and completely mutilate the kid NPC before finally killing it off. That, I admit, would bother me.

In a graphical MMO, however, a child's death will simply be a pixelated character falling over and bleeding, right? You might get a window where the kid says his last words and cries over not wanting to die, as part of the story. It would be no different than killing a deer or something. I could do it all day without blinking.

That's scary... Just because you can truly see it, makes it less emotional? Graphics now of days can be really detailed. If this thinking were entirely true, then killing a real child wouldn't be as hard as reading about a child dying.
 
That's scary... Just because you can truly see it, makes it less emotional? Graphics now of days can be really detailed. If this thinking were entirely true, then killing a real child wouldn't be as hard as reading about a child dying.

For me, words are often more descriptive than visuals could ever be. In DR, you swing your sword at a critter and you get a description of bone fragments and blood flying, heads being lopped off, guts spilling out, and what have you. In a graphical MMO, you hit attack, the character falls over, and often times disappears soon afterward, with little to no blood. I don't know about you, but that's a huge gap between the two.

Now if you could get a graphical representation of DR's combat messages in an MMO, then I could see the point. Seeing a child butchered like that might dull the impact of children dying in real life. I'm not sure though. I play some pretty brutal FPS games where you can chop people up, nail them to walls, and literally coat the walls in blood, but I really doubt I'll be able to look at mutilated corpses in real life without losing my lunch any time soon.
 
To me, it mostly depends on the Suffering shown.

In Games you usually have Blood, and sometimes also Mutilations, but in most Cases Victims say "Ugh !" and die. That takes the Atrocious out of the Kill, and makes it look cool or even funny. I played Sacred last Week and when I blew someone to Bits for the first Time - totally unexpected - I actually burst out laughing. For some Reason I actually like Games to show Blood and allow Mutilations (Blade of Darkness for Examlpe) - but once the Devs add Screaming, i turns absolutely disgusting all of a sudden.

In a Textdiscription on the other Hand, the Scene plays out in my Mind, as it would in a Movie, and my Imagination fills in what's missing or bends it to what i think realistic. So a horrible Act always ends up horrible, no matter how it's discribed - a graphical Display manages to suppresses the Imagination, though.
 
An excerpt from The Soul of Anna Klane, by Terrel Miedaner, describing a robotic beetle programmed to recognize danger and flee from it.

Dirksen picked up the hammer again, quickly raised it and brought it back down in a smooth arc which struck the helpless machine off-center, damaging one of its wheels and flipping it right side up again. There was a metallic scraping sound from the damaged wheel, and the beast began spinning in a fitful circle. A snapping sound came from its underbelly; the machine stopped, lights glowing dolefully.

Dirksen pressed her lips together tightly, raised the hammer for a final blow. But as she started to bring it down there came from within the beast a sound, a soft crying wail that rose up and fell like a baby whimpering. Dirksen dropped the hammer and stepped back, her eyes on the blood-red pool of lubricating fluid forming on the table beneath the creature. She looked at Hunt horrified. "It's... it's-"

"Just a machine," Hunt said, seriously now. "Like these, its evolutionary predecessors." His gesturing hands took in the array of machinery in the workshop around them, mute and menacing watchers. "But unlike them it can sense its own doom and cry out for succor."

"Turn it off," she said flatly.

Hunt walked to the table, tried to move its tiny power switch. "You've jammed it, I'm afraid." He picked up the hammer from the floor where it had fallen. "Care to administer the death blow?"

She stepped back, shaking her head as Hunt raised the hammer. "Couldn't you fix-" There was a brief metallic crunch. She winced, turned her head. The wailing had stopped, and they returned upstairs in silence.
~Dune~
 
I finally figured out where it was that I made Arthas kill townspeople in Warcraft 3.. The very first campaign, hehe. That did upset me, and was graphical, mainly because the people WOULD run if they got a chance, but at first they would be all like "Hello, Lord Arthas!" before his mighty hammer fell.

Actually..The greeting him with happiness and then him killing them hurt me more than them getting the chance to run.
 
In Warcraft III, I really didn't start to truly and fully enjoy playing until the third chapter. The first campaign, the Human one, was a nice intro into the game but I got annoyed by whiney boy Arthas and all the other characters tromping around like a bunch of ninnies. I was actually glad that Arthas turned evil, because he stopped being a sissy and became really awesomely evil, at least in terms of looks.

Then the Undead campaign. Harder by far, but enjoyable and detailed a lot of the back story. The real meat of the game's storyline. Nice.

But at last, the Orc Campaign rolled around... and there was much rejoicing. I'd always liked the Horde aesthetic, but Warcraft III is the game that cemented them as one of the coolest fantasy factions ever because they made a huge leap from "Blargh we're crazy demon worshipping ne'er-do-wells!" to "Hey, we're actually a really deeply honorable and yet badly troubled tribal grouping with a dark past and hopes of redemption."

There was a fourth campaign, but it was something about a bunch of silly elves, and who cares about them? *winks*

~Dune~
 
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