The First Kill
Through the first few hours of the game you are exploring and hunting as well as fleeing the strange cult/paramilitary people on the island. You do not kill anyone. Then in a very powerful and dramatic scene Lara with you controlling her makes her first kill. She is visible ill and shaken by the ramifications and implications of taking another persons life. This was interesting and different and it made an impact on me as a player.
A few minutes later you are mowing down dozens of nameless faceless enemies and I'm figuring out if I hit an enemy with a flaming arrow if it will kill them in one shot or if I will have to pull out my firearm to finish them off as they are being consumed by flames... The juxtaposition was comical and it made me wonder if there's any point in even addressing the impact of taking the life of another in a video game or if it should just be ignored as not to give an artificial value just to have it wiped away by ensuing game play.
This is obviously not an issue unique to video games, I once joked that the end of expendables should be a two hour shot of the all families of the nameless peons killed in the film attend their funerals.
The agency that players have in video games does put an interesting twist on the moral dilemma present. Many games relish in the death and would be hard pressed to take a moment to stop and think about the actions the players are taking, such as the Call of Duty series or many similar titles (although Spec Ops: The Line proved a first person shooter can discus killing and war in a serious and thought provoking manner if you haven't already check it out).
Other titles like the Dishonored series much of the fun is in killing the guards in outrageous and unique ways. However Dishonored is an interesting case because it has brutal first person violence and gives players some of the most diverse and entertaining tools to carry out the deadly deeds(slow motion, mind control, teleportation, various steampunk weapons), but the game encourages you not to use many of these weapons. I recall on the first real level of the game taking out a guard and hearing a nearby guard yell as he rushed me, "You just made widow and an orphan out of family". Also the game has a system where the more you kill the darker and more dangerous the world becomes. The dead bodies you leave behind further spread a plague that is ravaging the city and further plunges the world into chaos. You can even see the results of you action in the type of drawings that the young empress paints. This created a serious incentive for passivism and made me feel the weight of my decision to mow down the guards that stood in my way.
To my knowledge the best any game has ever tackled the ramification of murder is Undertale. Undertale gives you the option to chat with all of the "enemies" in the game and befriend them instead of attack them, making the choice to kill deliberate and completely avoidable. I don't want to get into how the game handles your decision, as not to spoil it but, I would highly, highly recommend picking up and playing through Undertale.
This is not to say every game should address the fact that you are killing hundreds of digital people throughout the game. Goodness knows there are countless amazing titles that don't think twice about the player's murderous actions and many of them are probably the better for it. I just think it is interesting and important once and while to sit back and say wow if this was real life this would be pretty fucked up. Also when properly executed a game being reflective of the the death you dealing out can create a thought provoking and rewarding gameplay experience.
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