The Revenant Problem: Deep Ethical Quandaries of Doom

Husky_Khan

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
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I just stumbled upon this effort by a level designer who has made 32 maps detailing numerous ethical questions regarding Dooms fiendish adversarial occupants as he explains succinctly in this video...



What is the more ethical choice?
 
What a fool. In seeking to create an ethical quandary for an outside observer he has merely stumbled into a philosophical question!

Do Revenants posses free will? Are their actions sans the presence of the outside actor the result of a deterministic world of their own from the get-go (which may persist even when not being observed) that they exist within? Or do they possess the capacity to choose not to fire a rocket? If so, if they never choose not to do so, can it really be said they possess free will? If demons always default to killing what is before them, regardless of any agency we might pretend in the problem then they may be safely assumed to always make such a choice--and at THAT point you just have a boring ol' trolley problem with demons in it!

In which case I suppose we'd probably (your moral system may differ) want to maximize the number/amount of demon-ness removed from the world with each problem. In a best-case scenario the observer would, of course, be capable of chainsawing through the barrier and subsequently any remaining demons.
 
on the one hand. bravo. he created an actually kind of funny map for people who didn't get the point of the first two.

on the other hand... every ethical question becomes VASTLY simpler when Demons are involved...
 
ShadowsOfParadox said:
on the one hand. bravo. he created an actually kind of funny map for people who didn't get the point of the first two.

on the other hand... every ethical question becomes VASTLY simpler when Demons are involved...
Click to expand...

The questions do become rather simple to answer.

Question 1: Is it trying to kill you?

Answer 1: Yes.

Kill it before it kills you.

Answer 1: No.

Kill it before it starts trying to kill you.

Question 2: Is it trying to communicate with you.

Answer 2: Yes.

See answer 1.

Answer 2:

See answer 1.

This, of course, holds true for succubi, vampires, orcs, skaven, chaos worshipers, and various other creatures of ill repute across the multiverse.

Follow this simple chart and you to may survive the onslaught of evil long enough to give your life in a way pleasing to the Emperor. :p
 
ShadowsOfParadox said:
on the one hand. bravo. he created an actually kind of funny map for people who didn't get the point of the first two.

on the other hand... every ethical question becomes VASTLY simpler when Demons are involved...
Click to expand...

Sadly @StormEagle beat me to it as I was going to invoke WH40K as the solution to this moral quandry. "They're demons, don't think about it, just declare Exterminatus."
 
To further discussion, we have sadly unilaterally decided that in fact that these Demons are beyond redemptions... simply because we have no ethical dilemmas in exterminating them. While this maybe true in many (all) canon respects, I would be remiss if I didn't postulate a much beloved counter theory that the Doom Demons are merely "aliens" who are indistinguishable from the Demonic hordes that predominate much of our religious and supernatural imagery of "Hell" and other negative afterlifes.

Now I know what your saying... get that Doom 2005 nonsense out of there... but I'm not even referencing that Hellbound abortion of canon. I am speaking of the less well known (but still somewhat well known amongst nerdy grognards) quartet of Doom novels penned by Brad Lineaweaver and Dafydd ab Hugh (a pseudonym for another author) where it is eventually established that the Doom invasion of Phobos and then Earth is actually formulated by a race of advanced aliens who decided to use Demonic imagery as the template for which to base their invasion off of, hence all of the demonic, undead, fiery and in some cases... Nazi imagery that populated early Doom video game canon.

But I get what your saying... so what if they are aliens... they're still dedicated murderhobo aliens. What's the ethical dilemma of slaughtering them. It's like slaughtering Tyranids… or Zerg or Robocallers for Collection Agencies.

But the novels (in their eventual descent into an absolutely divergent storyline almost wholly divergent of Doom, particularly the fourth novel... the two main characters have their personalities copied/cloned into an extremely advanced computer simulation and during their adventures realize that they can influence the 'Demon' host to the point they can actually convert them from their previous murderous ambitions and instead embrace an alternate path (which at its distillation seems to advocate more free thought and being less beholding to ripping and tearing everything non-demon). They manage to convert Imps, Mancubus, Cacodemons (tricky since whenever they opened their mouths they spit out fireballs) and a plethora of zombies. Notably I don't think any Revenants (or Demons or Hell Knight and their derivatives were open to alternative points of view). So clearly... at least in the simulated environment based on the novels setting, there was a capacity or potential for good.

What if... however unlikely, that was true here as well.
 
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