R P G A M E R . C O M   -   E D I T O R I A L S

In the Name of Justice

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Mike "JuMeSyn" Moehnke
FAN EDITORIALIST

Enter into combat with an antagonist possessing a personality. It doesn't really matter which game this is from: Vigoro in Skies of Arcadia, Saturos in Golden Sun, Baigan in Final Fantasy IV, the Yasha trinity in Shining Force III, Nergal in the first English Fire Emblem, Borgan in Lunar: Eternal Blue, Dalton in Chrono Trigger, and many others I shouldn't list for fear of overloading attention spans. After fighting each of these antagonists one of two things will happen: either they will live or die, as dictated by the script.

So what would happen if the player had that choice?

Determining who lives and who dies is an interesting pseudo-moral dilemma to throw into any RPG. If an adversary has been particularly infuriating during the game thus far, kill him/her off and have done with it. If the player feels like letting a defeated antagonist live on with the risk of retribution later, so be it.

The intricacies of this can be extended, naturally. Should the player's actions up to that point in the game have an effect upon how conciliatory an antagonist will feel upon being spared? Sure the enemy could just be set to either aid the player in some way or come back with vengeance in mind later on, but that feels like a waste of an opportunity. Something like Skies of Arcadia's Swashbuckler rating might best gauge how amenable an adversary would be to forgiving a defeat - or some other standard of player conduct.

Naturally how many opponents the player kills/spares also will factor into subsequent plot machinations. If the player has an unforgiving reputation the story would probably take longer, because numerous characters within the game could take this course of action as something to fight against. And the sparing of everyone possible could result in a reputation of being weak, again influencing characters in-game to try their luck at challenging the player's forgiveness. Ah, the possibilities inherent in killing or not.

So - to be a killer or not? That is the question.

*I am not suggesting any of the titles in the first paragraph need remakes to incorporate the player (not) killing their antagonists, I merely listed them as a very brief example of how many times the idea could have been applied. No, I do not necessarily advocate another version of Lunar 2 in which Hiro can kill off Althena's guardians.