Long ago when I dreamed of writing a game, something that bothered me was that people kill characters they shouldn't and the flavor of the game never changes. In games where NPCs try to escape, they forget that you just tried to murder them. If they catch you skulking, they don't become vigilant. If they hear someone being killed in the next room, nobody comes, nobody hides, nobody runs.
When the mayor of a town has been killed 500 times maybe the townspeople should be deeply xenophobic. Maybe the shops stop selling weapons, etc.
Pardon the tangent, but this was particularly blatant in World of Warcraft. Because of the quests, you basically spend half your time committing genocide (wiping out some species or group). For some quest lines you have to murder your way into a place and then murder your way out of it. The irony of this is that the quests turn rogues into the least murderous class in the game, by far. They are the only ones that can reliably sneak in and out instead of murdering bystanders. This is disturbingly backward.
The other irony is that many of the main storylines are about preventing genocide. If a genocidal maniac goes around killing all the other genocidal maniacs, is it because they are good or because they are eliminating the competition?
When the mayor of a town has been killed 500 times maybe the townspeople should be deeply xenophobic. Maybe the shops stop selling weapons, etc.
Pardon the tangent, but this was particularly blatant in World of Warcraft. Because of the quests, you basically spend half your time committing genocide (wiping out some species or group). For some quest lines you have to murder your way into a place and then murder your way out of it. The irony of this is that the quests turn rogues into the least murderous class in the game, by far. They are the only ones that can reliably sneak in and out instead of murdering bystanders. This is disturbingly backward.
The other irony is that many of the main storylines are about preventing genocide. If a genocidal maniac goes around killing all the other genocidal maniacs, is it because they are good or because they are eliminating the competition?