User blog comment:Traditionalfire/Killing in games/@comment-3450019-20120919114126

I get where you're coming from, but since every video game I've every played cast me as the protagonist (except for Lamers, which was the objective and moral polar opposite of Lemmings), when I start shooting at enemies I chalk the acceptability of 'killing' them up to "they made their choice." I'm not gunning down helpless civilians or anyone who doesn't take up arms against me; I'm killing armed mercenaries who-- insofar as they can be assumed to have background stories of their own-- chose to become hired guns, willing to kill me to line their pockets.

Whether it's a video game or if it were real life, if someone-- even someone with a family and friends and a love of the arts-- decides to make their living by the sword, practicing violence against their assigned 'targets,' then it's their own fault if they die by the sword. If they didn't want to risk death in a gun fight they should have become bankers or something, not joined the Blue Suns or Cerberus.

(I did appreciate, though, how in ME2 a *lot* of the enemies were mechs. Zero moralizing necessary shooting the heads off VI-driven robots.)