The option to letting some of your opponents live might be a good thing, but might as well be very bad.
For example: Let's say you are a 'good' guy and you're pissing off some of the powerfull bad guys. So they hire an assassin to get you.
The assassin will attack you...and let's say you beat him.
You can either think like: "Hey that guy tried to kill me, why should I spare his life".
Or you could decide to let him live after you've proven to him that there is no way he can beat you. The game will have some moral dilemmas in it and this could be one of them.
Now there have to be consequenses based on your choice (else it wouldn't be much of a choice imo).
Maybe that assassin could prove to be a powerfull ally because you spared his life. (and because he can't go back to the bad guys after failing a mission)
Or maybe you could even capture him and torture valuable enemy information out of him. (Would you torture someone to save another man's life ?)
Or he could teach you a trick, a skill or give you some information about where you can find a treasure or valuable item.
This information could be true or false and that would lead to a next dilemma (if the information was false).
Do you kill the assassin after all ? Will you go find him and just give him a beating ? Or maybe you will tip off the bad guys about his whereabouts and offcourse the option to just ignore him and think: "good for him that he fooled me but I don't really care".
So there really could be good things about sparing someones life, but it can't happen too much else you will just be worrying if the game wants you to save his life or not.
I wouldn't want scenario's where I have to save the game go in the fight and try what happens if I kill him or not.
Or sparing everyone's life just for the possible benefit they could give you.
(That would take out the moral issue and would make you base your decision on greed)
Unless there is a good way to counter that with let's say a reputation system.
But that's hard with the option to spare someone's life, will people think you are soft for sparing them (and very soft for finishing the game without a single kill, except maybe some random encounters) Or do you earn respect because you never lose a fight and still you have never killed a man.
I'm getting tired now and my post is getting long enough so maybe I will edit it or make a new post tomorrow.
