So just a heads up, this has starfield spoilers. You have been warned.
Anyway, I just got to "that part" of the campaign, where the game got strangely philosophical. We're talking the hunter and the emissary. I havent completed the campaign yet, but at a certain meeting, you meet up with two members of the "starborn" who seem to be the main antagonist of the main quest. Both of them have attacked you at different points in prior quests, and both have different motivations.
Essentially, the goal of the campaign is to acquire all of these artifacts in order to join "unity", which basically throws you into a parallel universe and where you go into new game plus in the game itself. Starborn are people who have passed through unity, and are looking to do so again. And people will fight over the artifacts.
The hunter and the emissary are two of these starborn who have passed through, and quickly learn they don't see eye to eye. if anything, they very much are enemies. The hunter is the more violent of the two. He will point out that all morality is just human opinions backed up by force, and he just does what he wants to do. he also has no compulsion about killing people in order to acquire artifacts and does kill other people in the campaign.
The emissary is a bit more complex. They (gender can vary based on choices the character makes) basically believe that the unity should be protected from those who are unworthy. And this actually does set up an interesting dilemma that I feel like I should run my moral system though.
In some sense, the hunter is right. The hunter admits that all morality is fake, it's just peoples' opinions backed up by force, and he sees it as hypocritical. he's the ultimate libertarian and anarchist. he rejects all laws, all rules, all morals, and just does what he wants to get to his ends. He effectively rejects the social contract and says that the emissary is just doing what they do, but they're less forthcoming about it.
In a sense, I guess all morality and all rules are just collective opinions backed with force. However, that does not mean they arent useful. The hunter is right about morality, but at the same time, there is a flaw in his thinking. That the point of establishing morals and enforcing them with force is to create cooperation between humans. it's to come together in safety and security, so we can enjoy the rest of our freedom. A statist would see the hunter as dangerous since his lawlessness leads to him just killing as he sees fit. The hunter isnt wrong, he has a point, but at the same time, I do have to say that the point of social contracts and human cooperation are to protect us from people like the hunter who want to violate our "rights" like life, in order to achieve their goals.
Still, the emissary....they have a point in saying they're doing the same thing. The emissary is one individual who simply says that they want to protect the artifacts, and also use violence to protect try to take them from people and acquire them. They tell themselves they're doing the right thing, trying to protect other people as others can be too dangerous with this power, but in effect, they're doing the same thing the hunter is doing, using violence on others in violation of their will in order to sieze the artifacts for themselves.
Even if you can sympathize more with their civility, the hunter is right in that they're both the same.
However, here's the thing. What makes the emissary no better is, in my opinion, that they act alone. They just decide no one else is worthy. They are willing to use violence to get their goals. They basically act similarly to the hunter. Their morality isn't based on a sense of collective defense against violence, it isn't based on some sort of mutual contract with others. They dont represent some sort of larger group or society. You are the third party, and you are given the choice to side with either.
I guess if you decide to side with the emissary against the hunter, recognizing the hunter's wanton violence (and admittedly, he is more violence prone, being honest about his intentions) you could somewhat justify their morality and basically form a social contract against the hunter. But you can also side with the hunter, who will say that they will never tell you what to do, and that they're more honest and straightforward here. Either decision works, because of the weird both sidesism that comes into play here. And that's the thing. The one weakness of this whole dilemma is that in the context of only a few people, it really is a matter of them both being similar, one acts violently for selfish interests and is up front about it, the other acts violently for high minded principles but basically isn't much different than the hunter in practice.
If we had a much larger social contract to form with more people, we would see a much stronger case for the emissary, but the emissary didnt introduce themselves pointing out what the artifacts were and saying this is why you cant have them, they just decided to give cryptic warnings that didnt make sense and then open fire on you. I mean, without full knowledge of the situation, the emissary and the hunter are the two sides of the same coin. Of course, the emissary is more moral and principled in theory, but again, does it matter here? This is why i see this debate as interesting.
For as much crap as this game gets, i didnt expect it to get so philosophical, and I don't even know what choice I'll eventually make, although I'm leaning toward the emissary as I'm more a fan of social contracts and banding together against psychos like the hunter who just wanna do what they want even if it hurts others.
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