Dead bodies

[Mikhail_Reign]

Being able to starve to dead in a room with a perfectly good source of meat seems strange. I mean they are frozen so other then needing to use my hatchet to cut them up, they should be a good source right? Even if there was some in game mechanic preventing you from doing it in all but the most dire of circumstance, it should still be an option.

[alone sniper]

Nope ! 
Cannibalism discussed a lot. but it may be bad for game (e.g can cause higher rating in ESRB .)

[Mikhail_Reign]

Then they should take dead bodies out - or make them look uneatable, because if I'm starving to death in a survival situation it seems strange not to eat something that would save your life.

[Wastelander]

Cannibalism is, unfortunately, a realistic option in extreme situations, so you're not wrong on that account. However, as @alone sniper pointed out there have been numerous discussions about the topic and the general consensus is "Yes, it's realistic, but we don't want it" - realism in gaming has its boundaries. These boundaries are set by technical problems, laws and moral implications, this question falling into the latter category. Sure, it's realistic and there's numerous accounts of people resorting to cannibalism in survival situations. However, Hinterland can put as many disclaimers that they do not condone such behavior into the game as they want, it'll be held against them if it's implemented, which would hurt corporate image and even the personal reputation of the developers and any other employees associated with the game. That is because cannibalism is a very extreme measure - in fact, it is so extreme that the very act can drive humans insane. There are a lot of psychological inhibitors associated with it. It's considered the heinous crime that it is because it reduces a human to a mere food source, a thing with which to gratify an urge. We call that dehumanization, and the implications of such are very severe - war propaganda, for example, doesn't rely on dehumanization for no reason, it's geared toward making indiscriminately killing the enemy easier.

However, and in this you're right, humans do wish to survive and people who have been forced into cannibalism are oftentimes not charged for a crime because noone can be expected to kill themselves over not desecrating a corpse. However, in a game, there is no human life at stake, just your savegame, so real-life morals do take the upper hand above realism in this example. Some games do get away with it, Fallout and Rimworld to name two - Fallout didn't take itself very seriously and cannibalism was more of a grim joke. Whether or not this is compliant with the morals mentioned above is up to you to decide - I, personally, never took that option. Rimworld gets away with it because of the level of abstraction and the fact that the game is relatively unknown.

Laws are also of concern here - The Long Dark has a T-rating right now, and as I have understood, Hinterland Inc. want to keep it that way (maybe @Patrick Carlson can clear this up for us?) and the addition of cannibalism - realistic as it may be - would surely drive it up to M, which limits the available userbase and thus, pool of potential customers which, for a studio as young as Hinterland, could severely mess with finances.

To sum it up, you're not wrong in terms of realism, but both laws and morals prohibit the idea of cannibalism in The Long Dark.

[Patrick Carlson]

We don't have any plans to bring cannibalism to The Long Dark. But I would say this has more to do with our overall vision for the game and its world, than specific concerns about ratings. Hope that helps!

 

[Mikhail_Reign]

Wow. I gotta say I in no way would put the same amount of emphasise on it. To me - once a person is dead, their body is just meat. Anything we do after that is purely for the living. Even looking at it from my side, once I'm dead it doesn't bother me what happens to my body - I'm dead. And if it got to that, I'd like to think that even dead I could still help.

 

I understand from a 'game vibe' point of view, by from a physiological view point I find the idea of a starving, suffering human a lot more distressing then eating people meat. Diving mildly off topic, I don't even think cannibalism is inheriantly linked to dehumanising the person - the survivors of flight 571 rationalised it as a the dead performing one last great feat of love for their fellow man. Many tribes that did it as a custom, didn't do it to dehumanise their enemy, but as a form remembrance - they would eat the flesh of their deceased family members so that their spirit might live on. Cannibalism is cultural taboo - meaning it has no inheriant right or wrong, simply how it is viewed but the society in question. And I gotta say it's screwy as hell that its perceived as 'better' to slaughter a living animal, rather then eat an already dead human. I'd vote for Soilent Green (obviously from natural sources), in the same way I vote for recycled sewage water. 

[Wastelander]

7 minutes ago, Mikhail_Reign said:

Wow. I gotta say I in no way would put the same amount of emphasise on it. To me - once a person is dead, their body is just meat. Anything we do after that is purely for the living. Even looking at it from my side, once I'm dead it doesn't bother me what happens to my body - I'm dead. And if it got to that, I'd like to think that even dead I could still help.

 

I understand from a 'game vibe' point of view, by from a physiological view point I find the idea of a starving, suffering human a lot more distressing then eating people meat. Diving mildly off topic, I don't even think cannibalism is inheriantly linked to dehumanising the person - the survivors of flight 571 rationalised it as a the dead performing one last great feat of love for their fellow man. Many tribes that did it as a custom, didn't do it to dehumanise their enemy, but as a form remembrance - they would eat the flesh of their deceased family members so that their spirit might live on. Cannibalism is cultural taboo - meaning it has no inheriant right or wrong, simply how it is viewed but the society in question. And I gotta say it's screwy as hell that its perceived as 'better' to slaughter a living animal, rather then eat an already dead human. I'd vote for Soilent Green (obviously from natural sources), in the same way I vote for recycled sewage water. 

Hey, you're not wrong and while my 'no' has been validated, it has been validated for entirely different reasons as outlined above. You and I have different understandings of morals here, and this is fine - only through dissent can thought grow. Still cool? 

[Dirmagnos]

Id say 2 main obstacles in putting cannibalism into tLD is possible rating issues and lack of actual need for it. There is plenty of food to go around.

Pretty much any other reasons are simply nonsense. As already mentioned its simple case of cultural taboo, that has pretty much no basis to it. @Mikhail_Reign is right on that part. Generally speaking, no human, who havent truly starved, can make even remotely accurate assessment about nature of cannibalism.

[mystifeid]

17 hours ago, Mikhail_Reign said:

Cannibalism is cultural taboo - meaning it has no inheriant right or wrong,

Once established, cannibals apparently start to have a disturbing tendency to eye off living humans as well. Cannibalism can quickly become associated with murder but I suppose you could argue that murder is not inherently right or wrong either.

"For the Term of His Natural Life" (1874) is based in part on a convict called Alexander Pearce and may help to further develop an opinion on the subject of cannibalism.

[Mikhail_Reign]

Working on that logic - shouldn't working at an abattoir turn you into a cow serial killer? It seems like it would be more likely correlation than causeation - given the taboo that it has, it would generally only be encountered in high pressure situation (eg survival) in which murder would be more likely then normal anyway. I imagine it could harden you making it easier to kill if pressed (because of the steps normally involved), but I feel that it wouldn't on its own make you a killer.

[mystifeid]

Quote

given the taboo that it has, it would generally only be encountered in high pressure situation (eg survival)

Well, there does seem to be quite a few cases of murderers eating their victims outside of a survival situation. It is also a little unsettling that a distinction is made between necro-cannibalism and homicidal cannibalism. And I like this quote: "Cannibalism has been said to test the bounds of cultural relativism as it challenges anthropologists to define what is or is not beyond the pale of acceptable human behavior."

Quote

If you eat pork, do you start to develop disturbing tendency to eye off living pigs ?

If you are responsible for slaughtering your own animals then probably the answer is yes.

[Dirmagnos]

9 hours ago, mystifeid said:

Once established, cannibals apparently start to have a disturbing tendency to eye off living humans as well. Cannibalism can quickly become associated with murder but I suppose you could argue that murder is not inherently right or wrong either.

If you eat pork, do you start to develop disturbing tendency to eye off living pigs ?

Statements like that are completely empty, they have no actual meaning nor any factual proof to support them. At very best evidence is empirical.

And yes, murder is not inherently right or wrong. And if you would just look around then you would understand that in modern society murder is "justified" to achieve political of financial goals. There is a reason why US wages its imperialistic "War of Terror", that cost hundreds of thousands lives by now, in the center of Middle East, not Africa(where endless civil wars has been raging for decades and where UN peacekeepers are nothing more than placeholder). And apparently its justified in some way. Because person cant say that killing in general is bad, while doing exactly that and claiming that what hes doing is right.

And thats just the tip of of the iceberg. What about things like euthanasia ? It is merely a point of view.

There is joke in russian: There wont be any war, but struggle for peace will be so intense that no stone will be left standing...

[cekivi]

1 hour ago, Dirmagnos said:

There is joke in russian: There wont be any war, but struggle for peace will be so intense that no stone will be left standing...

Oh those Russians

[Mikhail_Reign]

1 hour ago, mystifeid said:

Well, there does seem to be quite a few cases of murderers eating their victims outside of a survival situation. It is also a little unsettling that a distinction is made between necro-cannibalism and homicidal cannibalism. And I like this quote: "Cannibalism has been said to test the bounds of cultural relativism as it challenges anthropologists to define what is or is not beyond the pale of acceptable human behavior."

If you are responsible for slaughtering your own animals then probably the answer is yes.

I use to work in poultry, specifically chickens. I love animals, but I'm also practical. Without getting to far into it, I've killed ?thousands? of birds. Not in a 'I sent them to KFC away' but in a 'I broke their neck way'. I friggen love birds - I stopped to Rescuse a injured duck in the way into work just the other day (different job now - I'm not that much of a walking irony) and newrly got ran over in the process.

people are responsible for their own actions. There are tribes that practied it as a cultural norm. If it caused you to kill uncontrollably, how would those tribes have survived? Shouldn't that all have uncontrollably killed? 

 

Ahah anyway this is all getting pretty off topic, and dark. I figured THIS is partly why it isn't a thing - the other reason being that is you made it a resource ingame it would get treated like one (why I originally suggested that it only be an option at already dire times).

[cekivi]

And since it seems the conversation has run it's course I'll lock the thread. @Mikhail_Reign: message me or another mod if you'd like it reopened.