Well I'll be, GM4Him, you must be the first genuinely Lawful person I've met.
Originally Posted by GM4Him
How does this relate to the topic? Moral lines need to be drawn somewhere. My question is, where do we draw the line? When do we step into the realm of something being too messed up? There is a reason why most video games don't have children in it. The reason is that by nature we humans don't typically like to butcher children of any race.
So, has bg3 crossed the line? Should they just remove the ability to kill any children from the game so players don't have to have that moral dilemma? Should they make it so that you can kill all the children? What is too far? What comes after this? Shall we allow players to be able to beat up, abuse, and torture children? I mean, after all, if some smart butt kid taunts my evil drow sorcerer, wouldn't he retaliate by kidnapping them and dragging them into some sort of dark place and then torturing and killing them? If I'm playing my role correctly, wouldn't that be what he would do? Is that really something they should build into the game just because my evil drow would do that?
It's very simple; you say lines need to be drawn – no they don't. There isn't any reason to draw any. There isn't such a thing as "too far", "too messed up" when it comes to fiction.
Murder, rape, torture – all of these are bad because to perform them it's necessary to hurt another person. Describing these things in fiction doesn't inherently hurt anybody. Some people might find some things too distasteful, disgusting, edgy, whatever – that's their prerogative. It's not wrong of them to think that, we can't help our tastes or how we feel, but it has nothing to do with the fiction itself. It's a purely personal, subjective response, and the responsibility to regulate it is on the person themselves. We are responsible for our own media experience, not anybody else. If a piece of fiction doesn't align with a person's tastes to an extreme degree, or touches on a subject that is too sensitive for them, it is their own responsibility to stop consuming that piece of fiction (if they want to).
What that person doesn't get to do is dictate what can and can't be depicted in fiction based on their personal tastes or sensitivities. Someone might find, let's say, any depiction of violence or gore deeply uncomfortable, but I don't, and their feelings on the matter don't hold more weight than mine. Any hypothetical line that can be drawn will by necessity be putting some people's feelings over other people's feelings for no reason other than "but I'M obviously right, MY line is obviously the correct one!". Very self-centered, I think, and unproductive. We've had book burnings, satanic panics, videogame violence hysterias, and more, all due to that line of thinking. Because somebody decided they were going to draw a line for other people. I say, no thank you. The only person allowed to draw a line on a piece of fiction is the author.
As for more options, well, that's up to Larian. In the end, a video game can't accomodate every kind of character players can think up – I often find that none of the options on offer align with what my character would say or how they would react. Larian can only give us a pre-determined number of discrete options, as opposed to tabletop, where the options are only limited by the player's imagination. It has more to do with the limitations of the medium. If Larian ever feel like including an option to kidnap and torture a child for murderhobo reasons, they should be free to do so. Or not to include it, if asked to. They're the ones making the game, after all.
