The Unbeliever, Oblivion's moral issues Options

[DoomedOne]

So a tiny thing brought up in the main forums are the ideas of moral values.

In The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson the main character chooses not to accept this dream world as reality and therefore finds it okay to rape a young girl.

In the main forum this topic was slashed and flamed in all three threads it made an appearance because people did not understand the idea. It's simple, if you accept a world as fake, whether you realize you're dreaming, or you're in a video game, do the moral laws you would usually uphold yourself to still stand? Would you suddenly find it okay to exercise the most evil, atrocious side of your personality and find it pleasurable, to your character, at least, to murder and mutilate?

This question has a bigger purpose, but first I'd like some people's opinions on where they stand when it comes to morality and video games. If they created a video game where the suffering of your victims looked parallel to if you were performing the act in real life, would you still be able to go through with it?

This post has been edited by DoomedOne: Sep 8 2005, 12:37 AM

[DoomedOne]

No it's okay, it has been touched, and you did bring up a good point and phrase an argument better than I could.

Kindred- Yeah, everyone has their own morals. You seem to me like an INFP. It tends to be the INFPs and INTJs that try to have clear principles. It's hard, like trying to describe what life is in scientific terms, to be able to phrase exactly what your ethics are. Mine are similar, I have mannerisms that get in the way but like many people I have spent a lot of my life trying to figure it out, and ethics is one bug chunk of "it."

I respect acting however, but whenever I play a character who's different from myself (take Wred from WoH) who's also technically a villain, I make him extremely human and relatable. Wred has been haunted with guilt for like five years because his betrayed his legionnaires. He despises himself and everyone who rules him. He just wants to break free, but he also feels he chose his path, and can't turn away. As a writer, I love picking apart people's systems of ethics and seeing where they differ from my own. I'm one of those guys that just wants to smack Wred in the face and tell him today is the first day of the rest of his life, bu alas, I'm not there.

Trigun was great at that, as each character was sort of an ideologue, and I see the main characterization between Vash, Wolfwood, Legato and Knives. You could use as much logic against Vash's means to accomplish his goals, and Vash could probably never argue against it, nor even try. It's like me trying to explain to Channler that Peace is possible, I couldn't find the words. However, he would wear his smile and do what he needed to do anyway, despite criticism he couldn't fight back against.

I could say I agree with your ethics or what problems I see with them except that ethics is a life journey, you can't figure out what your ethics are by picking and choosing them out of the bible or by being conditioned by authority, you have to seek them out.

Same thing will go for my oblivion character with differing ethics. I really want to do the thieves guild and assassins guild because they seem really interesting. I plan to do them at first and start with a character who's a pretty horrible person, then once i finish them I'm going to go through a 180 and change my ways.