What have you felt when Kilrah exploded?

Sorry LOAF but who is this Kevin Smith you speak of?

....whhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaat???????

Kevin Smith - a.k.a. Silent Bob. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Smith

Ahhh! right no i get you! lol I know of Silent Bob

To the best of my knoledge there where no families on the Death Star. Can't say there where no civilans but I don't think there where any children. That said the Death star had a crew of over a million souls and I am reasonably sure there where still some slave labors on board left over from the groups used to build it.

First off a good intelectual debate is never a bad thing. Thats what we are having; not a fight. Second I agree with you that people who blame games and TV for there childen's actions are crapy parents. I don't blame games for our countries problems. I firmly beleive in personal resoniblity. That said as a parent there are some ideas and concepts that I think childern should wait till they can fully appreciate the importance of them before they go diving headlong in. Apparently at 10 you were and still are more mature then the average. But your right this is starting to get off topic.

A very good point however its the first time anyone has said "intelectual" when im involved so thanks for that! by the way I never did welcome you to the great bunch of people here so welcome!

not to mention all those contract workers who were building the second death star. and of course those ewoks who died in a radioactive fire after a SMALL MOON blew up right in their upper atmosphere.

That was no moon. It was a space station.

Your welcome

Yea it's likly that there would have been some serious long term ecological repercusions of the Death Star II's destruction.

Hell, there were likely ecological repercussions of the Death Star II's construction. Given the size of the thing (the size of a "small moon"; listed at 160 kilometers in diameter by some sources), it would have had a mass on the same orders of magnitude as a small moon (at 160 km in diameter and assuming a density of 1 kg/m^3, the mass of the DS works out to a little over 2x10^15 kg, a little more than the Martian moon of Deimos). That's high enough to cause gravitational effects, which causes tides, which causes all kinds of climatological fun. And of course, if the Empire followed its normal (semi-canonical) pattern, once the DS2 was complete they probably would've just blown up Endor to test out the superlaser. Blowing up a planet tends to cause significant long-term ecological repercussions to said planet.

I'd say the Death Star can't be compared with Kilrah, because it clearly was a military target.

My reaction when I blew up Kilrah: "Woohoooo, more kitty litter!"

I guess WC was primarily an action game for me, didn't think much about ethics. Until WC4 when they made it a major topic.

I felt like "It's afterburner time" then when I got tractored I figured I was dead for sure. Then I remember Maniac died and thought "well at least he died too." And then the Kilrathi proposed their surrender and then I was disappointed because I thought it would be the end of the Wing Commander franchise.

Hm, I actually never thought about it as "genocide", since the Kilrathi weren't even close to "extermination". Even Blair says in the temblor-bomb briefing video that just destroying Kilrath alone is pointless, since they have colonized so many worlds. (or something like that). The real point was to destroy the Kilrathi culture. Maybe this can be counted as genocide, don't know.

I saw in it more something like a Hiroshima kind of action, still extremely terrible, but destroying a city is not genocide. And if you're in a future where you have colonized many dozens of planets, the relative scale of destroying one planet is probably comparable to destroying a large capital city.

From an ethical point of view I view something like Master of Orion to be more problematic. Over the course of a gaming session you can destroy dozens of planets and xenocide the whole galaxy. And because of the cutesy presentation the whole affair feels very undramatic. Worse, you get points for each species you "dodo-ized".

Culturally speaking, using the Temblor Bomb on Kilrah would be equivalent to the A-bombs being dropped onto Kyoto and Tokyo instead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

That's very interesting - I seem to recall reading that Hirohito was particularly worried about this and the legacy it would have on Japan.
I understand Truman personally contacted Emperor Hirohito demanding the surrender of all Imperial forces. Hirohito declined until Truman threatened that Tokyo was next. I'm not sure how powerful he was by that point, but I wonder what kind of a psychological blow it is to lose ones capital and hierachy.

Well the lose of Tokyo; while wounding Japaness national pride; wouldn't likely have been crippling. However the loss of the the entier royal familywould have likly had 1 of 2 outcomes. either the Japaness would have commited mass suicide to remove the shame of the loss of the Emperor or they would have fought to the last man woman and child to avenge his death.

I was in my early-mid teens when WC3 came out. I was heavily invested not only in the action gameplay of the series, but in the story lines. Hobbes' betrayal hit me like a ton of bricks. Maybe to some it was obvious, but it's obviousness is why I never suspected it. I mean, I escorted that kitty way back in Secret Missions 2. And of course I bonded with the furball in WC2, since we were both outsiders aboard the Concordia. I was PISSED off during WC3. I thought that, while by today's standards there was a hefty dose of melodrama and cheese, that at the time, the game really effectively roped me in. You lose the Behemoth, you lose your trusty wingman, and you lose one of your oldest friends all at once (at least, Blair isn't aware of Angel's fate until that moment). It left me feeling hollow and angry.

By the time I was ready to drop the Temblor on Kilrah, though, I wasn't so angry that I felt GOOD about destroying an entire planet. I was certainly aware of the fact that this was the last ditch effort to win the war, and that tactically, Confed was sure that the whole "cutting the head off of the chicken" strategy would work on the cats, but up until that last mission, I think I was hoping not to have to blow up a planet. I knew what kind of effect that had on that Wiggin kid, and here I am getting ready to do it, fully aware of what's going on. But I gritted my teeth, fueled up my bird, and cloaked for that final leg of the journey.

And then... the game tosses one of the longest, most boring, infuriating missions at you. If you keep battling the ground forces or air force, you'll never get to the target, but if you just cloak yourself, then you're flying around for like a million hours in some REALLY UGLY GRAPHICS. The trench run isn't exciting, there's no real sense of speed, no impressive graphics, just tedium, until such time as you drop the bomb. I remember feeling pretty ambivalent about it. And then watching Kilrah break apart. I was excited for the cool cutscenes (which were sooooo awesome at the time), but I remember feeling a little mixed up. I kept telling myself it was us or them, but I just didn't like having to destroy a species home planet. Who knows what existed on the planet that the Kilrathi didn't take with them to their colonies? I was certainly responsible for the extinction of millions of species of space-bugs and plants and fish and rodents and whatever. Us or them... but now that we've done this, what makes us worthy of being the victors in the us/them debate.

As I played the game, I really got into it. I allowed myself to be transported to that world, to fill those shoes. And the game was clever with the scripted events that stood in stark contrast with the standard mission-tree progression. As one discovers the mechanics of the game, one realizes, "oh, I failed that mission, lemme go back and try again," but here the game presents events that are beyond your control. Puts you in your place. Keeps you from getting too big an ego, even if you are The Heart of the Tiger. I was in it. And as such, I had very mixed feelings about the end of Kilrah.

In my opinion, a game has really done it's job when it gets its players feeling what the characters would feel, wondering what the characters would wonder, discussing what the characters would discuss. I grew up on Ultima, as well, and those games (at least the games starting with Quest of the Avatar) required you to have a conscience. Or at least they did before you sussed out the game mechanics at work. But as a kid, I simply learned, "wow, killing villagers is not keenly looked upon by this apparition of Lord British, and stealing shit is not helping my stats at all." So, I had developed a sense of morality I took into my games. Sure, part of the thrill of WC is taking out as many Dralthi as you can, not letting that one get back to the base to warn his hrai or whatever. But I still played the game as though I myself was in it. As a side note, I think I always tend to skew towards goody-goody while playing games, because I try to be ME. I mean, if I'm specifically supposed to be somebody else, I'll try to take on that role, but frankly, carjacking and beating up prostitutes just doesn't really strike me as narratively or even mechanically that fun, so I've never been a huge fan of the GTA series. Um... sooo off topic at this point.

The point is: The destruction of Kilrah was pretty poignant for me.

I'm not sure, I think (as in Nazi Germany) it was in the public conscience that acting in this way could not continue forever. To a certain extent, people were brainwashed into following ideology - especially in Germany's case, where after the death of Hitler and the invasion of the Allies from the West and Soviets from the East, the mindset of the populace became 'the game is up' - suddenly shame descended and ensured generations of Germans would find it hard to accept or justify the actions of their nation.

I can't second guess whether or not the Japanese people would act in the same way, but I think after the devastation of two atomic attacks, then a hypothetical third on the capital, would likely leave the nation on its knees - perhaps not in surrender, but in no way to fight.

Ha! I just downloaded San Andreas from Steam to fill a rainy , broke weekend for less than £10. Funnily enough, my first action in the game I haven't played for five years, was carjacking, and beating up prostitutes.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess! My favorite element of the GTA games was I thought the attention to detail was really nice. The names of the cars, the radio stations, I really liked those elements. But I've never been a huge fan of mob movies, so the whole crime aspect never really appealed to me in a game. Also, too many people in my family have been incarcerated, so, I sorta grew up not really romanticizing crime as an escapist fantasy. Although, jacking a patrol car does give a sense of satisfaction, I won't lie.