Red Rage of Compassion · 9:08pm May 3rd, 2016
comic by Gray--Day
Did you know that it is possible to play through Fallout: New Vegas without killing anyone?
The above comic is by Dan Shive, a webcomic artist whom I have praised before. That comic is the beginning of a fun little story following the pacifist-leaning character Grace as she attempts to play through Fallout: New Vegas doing a no kill run. (The story was inspired by Many A True Nerd's playthrough on YouTube.)
If you haven't yet read this story, and you are at all interested, I encourage you to do so before reading this blog. The story concluded last week, and I want to both showcase and talk about it. I will be posting many of the comics from the story (although not all), so this blog will include spoilers for Grace's Fallout: New Vegas no-kill adventure. The spoilers begin below the break.
Later this week, before the next episode airs, I will be posting my Afterthoughts on "No Second Prances".
vector by OutlawedTofu
<--------------------{ Spoilers Below }-------------------->
Of course, as Tedd points out in the second comic linked above, there is a significant problem with playing a pacifist in a Fallout-like setting. In the post-apocalyptic wasteland, there are times when you should kill things. Playing as a strict pacifist requires engaging in levels of moral compromise that only come easy to a completely selfish and self-absorbed individual. Someone with a good heart and/or sound moral compass will quickly find themselves forced to do things that they know are wrong in order to hold to their pacifist stricture.
Pacifism itself is a virtue. But it is one that easily comes into conflict with other virtues that are just as noble. What do you do in a situation where two virtuous choices are at odds? When virtues clash? Not all conflicts are between right and wrong. Sometimes, good people will disagree with both sides having merit, and even heroes will clash.
Your choices when no road seems good or neither choice is inherently bad define the sort of person you chose to be. The real world doesn't make it easy (much less the post-apocalyptic one), and no matter what you choose, you will fall short according to somebody's moral god-stick.
I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading Grace's non-violent playthrough. I don't think I could pull off something like that in a game. No character that I created would be able to avoid intervening (or at least fighting back) in all of the dire situations that a game like New Vegas throws at you.
People break.
The concept of the stalwart, unwavering hero who faces everything and never falters is as unrealistic as it is boring. No matter how strong a person is, there is only so much that they can handle on their own. This is true in real life, and it is magnified in larger-than-life tales. In a hero's journey, there will inevitably come a time when what the hero has faced is just too much, whether it be from the psychological impact of the fight, what the character must do to push forward, the horror of what is being fought against, and/or the loss -- personal or collateral -- that the fight entails.
Characters who never reach this point never feel like they have been really pushed to their limit. The challenges that they face are less than they are. But as anyone who has reached their limit in real life can attest to, once you break, it takes the world in effort to pull yourself back up, brush yourself off, and push back into the fray. In stories, solo heroes do this all the time, getting back up after a short period of defeat through the power of their determination and awesomeness. Real people usually have to rely on their friends to help them get back up and put themselves back together (or, at least, glue enough bits together to press on). Friendship strengthens, bolsters, heals and helps carry the load. Friendship makes the worst less bad. Friendship saves.
I'm not willing to bet that nobody has written a "Chapter 20.5" of Grace's adventure.
Littlepip broke several times and to varying degrees.
At least in stories, heroes tend to break in one of two ways: red vs blue. They can lose the ability or will to press on, or even just completely psychologically collapse. The "blue screen of death". This happened to Littlepip twice, and each time one of her friends stepped in to help. The first time she collapsed was when faced with the attack on Stable 2, and it was Velvet Remedy who stepped in. Velvet's method of rescue was to take Littlepip's burden for her. The second time was at Friendship City, and Calamity snapped her out of her "blue screen of death", giving her just enough resolution to continue on. "Hurt tomorrow, help today."
The second common type of break then can be described as the "red screen of rage".
One of my favorite roleplaying games is a game called "Exalted". In that game, you play powerful, larger-than-life characters imbued with a spark of divinity. In Exalted, characters have virtues and associated virtue flaws -- enough exhaustion and moral stress will cause the character to break, temporarily suffering the related insanity. One of these virtue flaws is called "Red Rage of Compassion", and it embodies when a compassionate character witnesses suffering and explodes in violent rage against the perpetrators.
And yes, Littlepip was more inclined towards this sort of breaking. The first time she did so was very early in the story, upon entering Twilight's Library. This was a fairly controlled break, yet still transformed her from an innocent Stable pony to an avenging mare of death. There was, of course, a much less controlled instance in the fourth volume of the story. And that event, and her attempts to recover herself from it and be a better pony set her character's course through the rest of Fallout: Equestria
art by Countess-Amie
Likewise, Velvet Remedy had her own Red Rage of Compassion chapter.
Character breaks are in the very least moments of great catharsis. Within epic stories, they are defining moments, and should act as cornerstones of great transition for the character. These are transformative events that can either strengthen or weaken a character, but should never leave them unchanged. The impacts should be felt for a significant portion if not all of the story to come.
A word of warning for authors: for this reason, character breaks should also be invoked sparingly. Too many and the impact is lessened -- the significance is muted and the character development that grows out of these events easily becomes muddled.
art by FiosCrasher
Well this is cool.
No wonder: I totally agree.
I'd love to say more about what you said, but I'm just sitting here, nodding with a smile.
So...UnderTale?
This is the best Blog post in my memory.
Heh, playing 'Pip'-a-boo with Velvet.
At least she finally got in her bush... I'll go now.
Very well aware of New Vegas' ability to not kill anyone, and yes, it does tend to lead to moral choices that are technically worse than it would be to kill another.
Fun fact 1 - your alignment in a no-kill run hovers towards evil, whereas your alignment in a kill-everything run hovers towards Good in the early game.
Fun fact 2 - You can complete almost every single quest going through the NCR route (1 is literally impossible, another 2 or 3 are more murky as far as no-kill goes, such as Boone's loyalty quest
Good little series on the whole no-kill bit.
>Can beat NV without killing anyone.
Not really. In House's ending you have to kill the Brotherhood. In every other ending you have to kill House; either immediately or via a slow but certain death directly due to your actions.
Huh. Can't say I was expecting a blog about Fallout, El Goonish Shive, and Exalted today, but I'm very glad I read this one.
To be fair, maybe intervening in a Deathclaw attack at such a low level isn't a great idea. Just let nature take its course... and see if they drop any good loot.
This is really helpful. I'm going to be applying this to my best extent.
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That's a little bet different. In Undertale, you play as a child. Your natural response is innocent joy from friendship and running away at the sign of danger. You were also in a world where literally no one but Flowey wanted to kill anything but you. You are a character in a world full of enemies who are all unified in a single purpose.
The description for Red Rage of Compassion goes as follows.
To paraphrase Josh Scorcher in his review of "The Mysterious Mre Do Well",
Then there's the ones who never, ever, ever break, ever, like Batman, who is depicted as so "right" it's painful to read.
3916947 Admittedly, this is the only MATN series I haven't watched yet, but are you sure it wasn't referring to a gecko?
Wow.. just..... wow... this is..... just... I really do not know what to say to this it is just.. so perfectly worded.
You, yeah we all know how much I love FOE and, this whole blog post illustrates exactly what one of those big reasons is. Just how complex the characters are, and for these reasons. Littlepip does not kill because she likes it. She hates it. She kills because she would rather suffer the self harm that doing so causes her, then allow those monsters to go on hurting other ponies. Because she cares enough about.. ponies she has never, and likely will never meet, simply because they are other ponies, to sacrifice her own feelings, her own sense of morals to keep them safe.
Just...... yeah such a spot on, perfectly worded examination of something... I really don't see a lot of talk about. Thank you.
3916895 Yep. That's the first video for the playlist I linked in the blog. It's an interesting series.
3916877 That was bad and you should feel bad.
3916947 I believe that comic referred to the gecko attack outside of Goodsprings.
I still love the design of Sunglasses McGee, which is the unofficial name I have to that legionare the first time I saw him. Best character of that story arc.
Really good post. One of my favourite moments in FoE is when (spoilers) Littlepip shoots Autumn (or, the enclave general, I don’t remember the exact name) after he helped disarm the explosive collars in Red Eye sacrifice bunker. That kill at cold-blood after lying to him (which I really wasn’t expecting) was totally out of the “pure hero” stereotype (and welcomed), and showed the level of maturity and complexity that the character of Littlepip had reached at that point, and how much she had changed with her experiences in the wasteland, specially since, (like in real life), it didn’t had an immediate moralist “bad karma” attached (like shooting that megaspell in the Hellhounds base ended with the death of Steelhooves by a Hellhound). All that sequence, in my opinion, gave the fic a level of depth and realism (in a “sociological” meaning more than “scientifically” realism) that I just loved.
Hemingway did a quote about this... sort of.
"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
I believe another danger of the red rage of compassion is that that individual may afterwards begin to 'slide down the slope' as it were, before eventually hitting the point of no return (search:moral event horizon).
What's the old saying? "They who fight monsters should see to it that in the process they do not become a monster, and know that when one gazes long into the abyss, the abyss gazes long back into you."
(forgive the use of quotes, I feel pretentious, but it does fit... kinda)
hi hi
Hmm, this is a complicated topic. Depending on your definition of pacifism, there's a lot that makes sense or doesn't make sense, but Grace's attempts a pacifism don't really have much in common with the ways that pacifism has been employed in real life. I won't try to guess what Dan Shive does or does not know about pacifism based on some fictional characters, but the idea that pacifism = passivity is a common false equivalence that many people make, when it is usually very much the opposite. Even for Ghandi, nonviolence was considered a form of asymmetrical warfare, which sought to remove the power that someone has to cause suffering by accepting suffering. In the end, the method that pacifism uses will inevitably depend on the goals and methods of the opponent.
Another common misconception is that pacifism is about touching the heart of an opponent and leading to a conversion. Vastly more often, the impact of self-sacrifice is about affecting one's friends and neighbors, and forcing them to stop being passive, and to provide proof that it is possible to face hardship head on. It is about weakening and eventually removing the apparatus that supports your opponent, while building a different apparatus of your own.
Part of the problem with video games, is that the characters within are not people, and you only have a very limited number of possible actions you can accomplish, while at the same time, the violent solutions often end up being much more lenient than they would be in real life. (Most people would not survive being shot quite so much, so it usually ends up being a power fantasy of kicking flanks and taking names.) One can, for the most part, only act within the scope that the game designers had imagined ahead of time.
When people break down, it is certainly a serious event. Oftentimes in literature, I would wager, it is not portrayed seriously enough. Having friends will definitely make a difference, but even then it can take a long time to heal such trauma, if it ever heals. And usually, in real life, catharsis ends up leaving people worse off than before. The thing is, Catharsis doesn't work, at least not the way pop culture likes to portray it. (Aristotle and Freud's hypotheses about emotions building up and then being released have pretty soundly been discredited by contemporary psychology.) As a catalyst for change, someone might choose to take a different path after reaching their limit and realizing that isn't who they want to be, but as the saying goes, practice makes perfect. ((And it is also those times when a friend can help show someone the way.))
Having a character that is challenged to the point where they have to make a choice about whether to compromise or not is going require some interesting events, but I don't think an interesting story necessarily requires a character to reach the breaking point. I would argue that having an incorruptible character is only boring if the high road they take is the geographical equivalent of a Mary Sue, which gets everything without having to work for it. If taking the high road every time means hardship and conflict, then it doesn't have to be boring. Some of the most fascinating, and true, stories that I've read don't have a breaking point, though they have plenty of hardship. (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement comes foremost to mind, but another less morally charged example that comes to mind is Ernest Shackleton's failed attempt to cross Antarctica.)
Conversely, in survival situations about 75 to 85% of people reach their breaking point immediately when a disaster happens, without any buildup or journey. (John Leech, military survival instructor, University of Portsmouth) Which to me, doesn't sound all that interesting. I think the journey is really the interesting part, but there are lots of ways to make it interesting. That includes the ways mentioned in this blog post.
On the plus side, when it comes to actually going through personal struggles, it is a very personal thing and you can draw on your own experiences and be pretty confident that there will be some other people out there who can relate, regardless of the hows and whys of it.
I recall my Hardcore New Vegas playthrough.
No allies, totally off the rails, and like any Bethesda title, completed the main questline in under 3 hours. Totally used a ballistic fist like boss on that wimpy Legate
Oh sure, I've gotten through NV without killing anyone
I let my Companions do it instead
Yeah, I read that EGS sub-comic a few weeks ago, and pretty much had the same reaction to the things in the game as Grace did. Try to be good, try to make things okay, and then I got to the Legionnaires crucifying townspeople. I think a little part of me broke, because I started using Stealth Boys to plant live grenades into every Legionnaire pocket I found along the road to Vegas.
I think I might have gone a weeeeeeeeeee bit
crazytotally normal, rational behavior.Also, I can only imagine what the guys would think when they found all their comrades exploded throughout a camp with no sign of fighting from spent shell casings or enemy corpses.
becauseican.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Im+Not+Crazy.jpg
I hadn't thought of just how important breaking points can be in writing, but looking back it's one of the things that really provided some empathy with Littlepip.
I have never and hope to never be in such stressful situations, but there is something universally relatable in someone facing a challenge bigger than themselves and struggling with it, perhaps breaking with it.
In which chapter does Velvet break? It's not when she forces Little Pip to get her addiction treated, is it?
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Where she kills another pony after witnessing them doing something horrifying.
Gotta love Many A True Nerd :3
It just amuses me that I only found EGS last week, and have read the entirety along with the side comic since then, and then here you go referencing it.
Small, strange world. Regardless, pacifism, like anything else, is something to be used in moderation. It's fine as a standard way of life, but in most People's lives, and especially in a setting like FO:E, situations will come up where it's morally reprehensible to NOT act. If your nonviolence is worth more than the lives of people you could have saved by setting it aside, you're probably following that path for the wrong reasons.
Sadly, pacifism isn't an option for fallout 4. Not true pacifism, at least. You can get through gaming it by having other things kill the enemies, though.
In New Vegas, though, I showed the legion mercy and with no regrets. Granted, it was the unique weapon that launched 40mm grenades, but that's just semantics, right?
Hoover dam is best with all the factions and sub-factions at your side, an arsenal in your inventory, and the finest of power armors on your back.
i.imgur.com/iCdiHaL.png
A screenshot from my third time at the Dam.
Well, I cheated to get the NCR power armor (since you would normally have to nuke the NCR to get the NCR power armor—poor design imo), and the helmet isn't in-game (it wasn't fully completed so they excluded it; I found a mod that completed it).
3921193 Just an FYI: imgur has blocked FIMfiction, so images linked from that site don't work. I recommend Imgbox as an alternative.
ohnoe! the bully talk again! everypony is a pretty pony, no exceptions!
sorry for the puppy talk. actually, in the roots of this article i see the reason why i love fallout equestria. morally challenged heroes are way more interesting to read and have a lot of stories to tell.
Another aspect I've considered with the morality of No kill runs is sometimes killing someone might actually be the more merciful thing to do. I remember when Benny escaped the Tops and was captured by the Legion, and Ceasar left me with the decision to either kill Benny myself, or leave him to be crucified. While that never happens in game if I decide to leave him to the later fate, he'll stay tied up in Ceasar's tent indefinitely, I realized putting the machete in his head right then and was the quicker and cleaner death. This is largely why I always kill the crucified Powder Gangers in Nipton. Not because I was roleplaying as a kill crazy lunatic, can't say any of my Couriers were like that, but rather I was putting them out of their misery. And then of course there's the big one: killing House or leaving him in his open pod, which by his own admission is a fate worse than death. All I'm saying is it's hard to say pacifists runs are necessarily the moral choice.
I know Pip never had a mercy kill situation in the story, but if she was put in the situation, would she mercy kill someone?
Hehe. Many A True Nerd's playthroughs are awesome. For his "no kill" playthrough he did adopt a rule he called the "Shepherd Book Loophole", after the priest in the series "Firefly", who, when helping the gang pull off some crime or another, and asked about his stance on killing, responded that while the Bible does not condone killing, "it is, however, somewhat fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps"
In other words, in the game, assists were fine, as long as he didn't deal the killing blow. Near the end, this interestingly led to a tendency to shoot weapons out of people's hands, snatch them off the ground, and run for the hills with the loot
That guy's done a bunch of odd challenges, like no guns, no food, you only live once... really fun to watch
I still think and the "FO:NV: kill everything" playthrough is the most hilarious thing he ever did, though
I really thought Grace would pull it off, when I started reading... alas, looks like the Legion put a stop to that. Of course Grace has been shown to be like that in real life too; complete pacifist mindset, but don't pull her over that line, or you won't like what you get
But at least she's working on that, heh
3931951 Actually, Littlepip did have a mercy kill situation early in the story, in the passages under Shattered Hoof. At the time, she decided she couldn't take the life of a helpless pony, even if it was a mercy kill. She ended up morally regretting that decision. Much later, during the battle at New Appleloosa, Littlepip chose to give a merciful death to ponies who were burning alive.
Oh, there was a 1-shot update to the side strip of EGS, starring Grace wandering the Commonwealth and encountering some of the local wildlife.
egscomics.com/comics/1463438949-np20160516-A16A-01.png
Honestly, Panels 2 & 3 are valid reactions to finding such a weapon. Same as Panels 1 & 4. Honestly, it reminds me of the time I found a 10mm Explosive Pistol. I had to stop myself from using it all the time merely because I was RAPIDLY running out of 10mm ammo.
But on the plus side, I'm going to Maine tonight, and my Exterminator's shotgun is gunna help me make so many mur-things dead. Good times.
3917046 The thing is Batman is BATSHIT CRAZY. And he KNOWS IT. He's also had little breaks, moments where he questions his path and his actions. And those times when he doesn't, they COST HIM. As Batman Forever pointed out, Bruce Wayne ends up alone and friendless because he doesn't give in, even when he should. That's why Batman is allowed to come off as an 'Unbreakable Hero', because it perfectly shows the DOWNSIDES to such a person.
I remember when I first picked up the Fighting Fantasy books and faced with how they treated killing "enemy characters" as a triviality. This was my first encounter with what later movies and games would gradually inoculate one against to the point where it becomes "normal" in those genres.
And of course, I also do need not introduce RPGs where the "good" path involves lying and robbing for the cause, or where "evil" and "good" are properties of things and mercilessly slaughtering a "bad" NPC somehow raises your GOOD meter?
I think it's not that decent morality is NOT different than this type of fiction-morality; but rather that game tropes have went in a different direction and accepting their "rules" becomes part of the suspension of belief. Which of course means that VG behavior/ethics does no carry on to IRL, even if we're talking Fallout-like RPGs.
I'm still not buying - probably never will - this use of "people have limits" by you to glorify a mass murder. Especially since, even tho it calls it a "breakdown", it still secretly believes that it wasn't "wrong"...making "it was a breakdown" a moral excuse. (There never seems to be a point where the character truly changes her ways, and heck, the delusions of grandour peak in the ending where is treated as a legend , all sins forgotten & forgiven.)
I'd say we must also separate an "idealized hero" - one who never does wrong, but exactly because s/he's a role model; and the slightly more realistic struggling heroes (who may fuck up a few times before they get things right).