- Joined
- Jul 16, 2008
- Messages
- 26,348
- Points
- 113
Note : while this is a fictional case in a game, but remember that real life is always far worse than fiction. There are countless cases of such matters in real life, way worse than any fictional cases.
Summary of case in Cyberpunk 2077 game : A teenage girl gets killed by a woman driver on a deserted road at midnight. It was an accident, but the woman driver was not only drunk, she fled without calling for an ambulance. Consequently, the teenage girl bled out and died. The woman driver has money for a good lawyer and insurance, so the law lets her go with a fine, a slap on the wrist. The mother of the teenage girl is poor, but used her life savings to hire a killer to avenge her daughter.
As it turns out, you're the hired killer who gets assigned this case. The woman driver offers to give you all her money to let her go. She promises to vanish so no one else (ie. your fixer and the dead teenage girl's mother) will know you let her go, and your reputation (as a hired killer) remains intact.
You have 3 choices (the game doesn't present this as an MCQ, your in-game actions are what matters, just like in real-life) :
A) Take the woman driver's money and let her go. Your reputation remains intact and you get paid by both sides. But in doing so, you dishonor the dead girl's grieving mother.
B) Refuse the woman driver's money and kill her. You earn less money this way, but you honor the killing contract and don't disappoint the dead girl's grieving mother.
C) (Not every player will even think of this 3rd possibility, this opens as a possibility only on your own creative thinking).
Take the woman driver's money, pretend to let her go, but then kill her. Your reputation remains intact and you get paid by both sides, and you honor the killing contract and don't disappoint the dead girl's grieving mother.
Whatever choices you make, there may be consequences (both direct and indirect, both forseeable and unforseeable) consequences to your choices, further down the road.
Edited to add :
After I did a bit of exploring in-game, turns out this has the potential to go even deeper (although this would go over the heads of most people, who're too lazy to think more deeply), as there is a hidden, not-so-obvious alternative : after your conversation with the woman driver, whether you take her bribery money or not, if you grab her from behind (as opposed to killing her outright with a gun or with a blade), you get to choose to snap her neck and kill her, or choke her out with a rear naked choke. If you choke her out, and drop her unconscious into the trunk of your fixer's car, you get paid all the same and your job reputation is intact. But whatever happens after that (going beyond the fictional game, say this was in real-life) is still indirectly on your hands, karmically speaking. For instance, your fixer might torture her, or chop her up to sell her organs, or sell her as a sex slave prisoner for the rest of her life, etc (eg. fates worse than death and arguably worse than she deserves as a drunk-driver-killer), or on the other side of the spectrum, she might bribe your fixer for more money and go free to drink-drive and kill other innocent pedestrians and get away with those crimes too, etc etc. Like I said, this isn't just about the game, but how complex karma can get in real-life : you'd never know when your actions often have long-term and unintended consequences, you can only choose to hide away (ie. spiritual self-deception) or have the spiritual courage to live with your actions and their consequences, whatever they may be.
Which is the 'right' and 'wrong' choice? As in real-life, there is really no 'right' or 'wrong'.
Morality and objective 'right' and 'wrong' is a delusion.
There is only ethics and karma, actions and consequences.
Everyone is only doing what he/she thinks is the right thing to do for him/herself at that point in time. In a war between nations, the 'right' thing for a soldier of country A is to survive and kill soldiers of country B. The 'right' thing for a soldier of country B is to survive and kill soldiers of country A. Meanwhile, the politicians of both countries who send countless soldiers to their deaths profit safely in their luxurious homes.
There is no 'right' and 'wrong', there is only ethics and karma, there is only actions and consequences.
Summary of case in Cyberpunk 2077 game : A teenage girl gets killed by a woman driver on a deserted road at midnight. It was an accident, but the woman driver was not only drunk, she fled without calling for an ambulance. Consequently, the teenage girl bled out and died. The woman driver has money for a good lawyer and insurance, so the law lets her go with a fine, a slap on the wrist. The mother of the teenage girl is poor, but used her life savings to hire a killer to avenge her daughter.
As it turns out, you're the hired killer who gets assigned this case. The woman driver offers to give you all her money to let her go. She promises to vanish so no one else (ie. your fixer and the dead teenage girl's mother) will know you let her go, and your reputation (as a hired killer) remains intact.
You have 3 choices (the game doesn't present this as an MCQ, your in-game actions are what matters, just like in real-life) :
A) Take the woman driver's money and let her go. Your reputation remains intact and you get paid by both sides. But in doing so, you dishonor the dead girl's grieving mother.
B) Refuse the woman driver's money and kill her. You earn less money this way, but you honor the killing contract and don't disappoint the dead girl's grieving mother.
C) (Not every player will even think of this 3rd possibility, this opens as a possibility only on your own creative thinking).
Take the woman driver's money, pretend to let her go, but then kill her. Your reputation remains intact and you get paid by both sides, and you honor the killing contract and don't disappoint the dead girl's grieving mother.
Whatever choices you make, there may be consequences (both direct and indirect, both forseeable and unforseeable) consequences to your choices, further down the road.
Edited to add :
After I did a bit of exploring in-game, turns out this has the potential to go even deeper (although this would go over the heads of most people, who're too lazy to think more deeply), as there is a hidden, not-so-obvious alternative : after your conversation with the woman driver, whether you take her bribery money or not, if you grab her from behind (as opposed to killing her outright with a gun or with a blade), you get to choose to snap her neck and kill her, or choke her out with a rear naked choke. If you choke her out, and drop her unconscious into the trunk of your fixer's car, you get paid all the same and your job reputation is intact. But whatever happens after that (going beyond the fictional game, say this was in real-life) is still indirectly on your hands, karmically speaking. For instance, your fixer might torture her, or chop her up to sell her organs, or sell her as a sex slave prisoner for the rest of her life, etc (eg. fates worse than death and arguably worse than she deserves as a drunk-driver-killer), or on the other side of the spectrum, she might bribe your fixer for more money and go free to drink-drive and kill other innocent pedestrians and get away with those crimes too, etc etc. Like I said, this isn't just about the game, but how complex karma can get in real-life : you'd never know when your actions often have long-term and unintended consequences, you can only choose to hide away (ie. spiritual self-deception) or have the spiritual courage to live with your actions and their consequences, whatever they may be.
Which is the 'right' and 'wrong' choice? As in real-life, there is really no 'right' or 'wrong'.
Morality and objective 'right' and 'wrong' is a delusion.
There is only ethics and karma, actions and consequences.
Everyone is only doing what he/she thinks is the right thing to do for him/herself at that point in time. In a war between nations, the 'right' thing for a soldier of country A is to survive and kill soldiers of country B. The 'right' thing for a soldier of country B is to survive and kill soldiers of country A. Meanwhile, the politicians of both countries who send countless soldiers to their deaths profit safely in their luxurious homes.
There is no 'right' and 'wrong', there is only ethics and karma, there is only actions and consequences.
Last edited:
