The moment that inspired this question:

A long time ago I was playing an MMO called Voyage of the Century Online. A major part of the game was sailing around on a galleon ship and having naval battles in the 1600s.

The game basically allowed you to sail around all of the oceans of the 1600s world and explore. The game was populated with a lot of NPC ships that you could raid and pick up its cargo for loot.

One time, I was sailing around the western coast of Africa and I came across some slavers. This was shocking to me at the time, and I was like “oh, I’m gonna fuck these racist slavers up!”

I proceed to engage the slave ship in battle and win. As I approach the wreckage, I’m bummed out because there wasn’t any loot. Like every ship up until this point had at least some spare cannon balls or treasure, but this one had nothing.

… then it hit me. A slave ship’s cargo would be… people. I sunk this ship and the reason there wasn’t any loot was because I killed the cargo. I felt so bad.

I just sat there for a little while and felt guilty, but I always appreciated that the developers included that detail so I could be humbled in my own self-righteousness. Not all issues can be solved with force.

  • @TheDoozer
    18•1 year ago

    In Final Fantasy XIV, the Shadowbringers expansion (HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD). Through the vanilla game, and then two expansions, you’re either directly or indirectly fighting the Big Bad Guys, whose motivations, history, and abilities are largely unknown to you.

    But in Shadowbringers, one of them just kind of… hangs around. Not in the nefarious cloaked form, but as a hyper-powerful sometimes companion that you’re not strong enough to fight, and you can use the little help he gives, even if you don’t understand his motivation.

    Then, over the course of the expansion, you learn more about the guy, learn why he and his group are doing what they do, and as horrible as it seems, it makes perfect sense. And from an objective, 3rd person view, he’s right. He even takes you to the Final Day of his world… and the beginning of yours. But even though he’s existed for thousands of years and has seen the entire history of your world, he’s finally at the point where he can see your side. But he can’t stop, because he’s fighting to fix his world. And you can’t stop, because you have to save yours. And the irony is that both are trying to save the same people, the same world, but either of you winning means the end of one or the other’s version of it (think a reverse Tuvix situation).

    It was just such a deep feeling to know the other side was right, but still having to fight against them because it would be wrong not to.

    Also the music slaps. Especially after summoning 7 other “fragments” of yourself to give Big Man a smackdown.

    • @Stovetop
      7•1 year ago

      Agreed.

      !I find myself in the “Emet-Selch” is unredeemable camp just due to all of the mini-apocalypses he causes in pursuit of his goal and all of the lives he took, but he is absolutely sympathetic and I understand his perspective.!<

      !He believes that mortals are not alive in the way that he is alive, and therefore killing mortals is a mercy. It means restoring their souls back to the true state of being in their utopian society. But I think he decided that he must believe that to be the case, otherwise it would mean accepting the horrible things he’s done, which would utterly break anyone who believes themselves to be good.!<

      !And I think that’s why he is in the state that he’s in. Part of him has, deep down, accepted the value in mortal lives, even though he denies it. He loved his family in Garlemald, at least to the extent that losing them caused him grief. His whole reason for helping the Warrior of Light in Shadowbringers was his last attempt to prove that mortals deserved to live after all, and his final confrontation was effectively suicide by WoL, because he could never accept that and continue living with the burden of that sin.!<

    • @[email protected]BEnglish
      3•1 year ago

      Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

      music

      Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

      I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.