Shooting the faceless in the face

We only do this to support our families! D:

The enemy in games and movies today are too often just faceless canon fodder for the hero to cut down without remorse. Isn't it time to push the limits of what our entertainment is? Sometimes it works, but lets not overdo it, eh?

I see how it was necessary in the past to have the enemy be a faceless goon, with perhaps a balaclava to hide any kind of identity or just have weird monsters coming at you. But you know, I think it's time to put a face to whoever you have to shoot in the face, let it have an impact. Of course I know that you can't be forced to get to know every single person you waste in a game about wasting hundreds of people but it could be a nice change of pace to take the Die Hard-way, not many bad guys all in all but all of them have had other stuff going on than being killed by the hero. Would it not work to have a game with fewer bad guys but instead make it a bigger deal when you have to take one down?

I don't mind all the time, many games work very well with just having faceless cannon-fodder. It just seems to me that far too often they do the Rambo-thing and just put a lot of "evil" Russians or terrorists between you and your ultimate goal, often killing the main evil Russian or terrorist. So, while I don't mean that games like that have to cease to exist, I would ask for some more mature stories where killing people isn't just something you have to do to proceed forward. It makes it weird when you're in a situation when you're like in a team and someone in that team dies, I always think that how is it that these psychopaths care about the death of one of their guys, often a guy who's not a very prominent part of the group, when they slaughter hundreds of people on a daily basis.

Seriously, every "evil agent" you kill is a part of a group, he has friends, family... I find it funny when there's a guy out for revenge for loosing his brother to some thug, and he goes through an army just for this one guy, an army of family member with their own brothers and sisters, shouldn't everyone of them have their shot at revenge as well? Ah, many would tell me to "lighten up", but then you're missing my point here. I've said I don't mind such games, killing virtual people is fun! But I'm big on stories, I'm a huge fan of MGS, LA Noire and Max Payne, games with really entertaining and at times touching stories. Sometimes the killing of anonymous people is a part of the story, like MGS, and LA Noire did actually try to do much more than killing random people, but is it too much to ask for something... More?

Of course, I also have to acknowledge that a game where everyone you kill have to "mean something", that every bullet is personal wouldn't fly over well with the dudebro-CoD-audience. But you know what, horror games could be successful even before they became shooters and you didn't kill everything that moved, why couldn't a game more heavy on story get away with it? Yes I know Heavy Rain might be what I'm looking for, haven't played that game yet actually, perhaps I should, but I kind of what my games to still feel like games, not quick-time-event segments. 

Would it be possible to humanize your enemies? I say yes, I think every kill can mean more than being a necessity to proceed through the level, one game that so far is looking to do this is The Last of Us. By showing enemies in a different light, being that they're survivors just trying to get by in their own way just as you, pretty much so since the protagonist Joel says at a time that he's been at both sides of ambushes. Even the "zombies" have some level of conscience at the early stages, when the fungus have just taken control the person still exist on the inside trying to fight it, trying not to mindlessly kill you, the player. I am impressed that someone even attempts to blurr the line, that not everyone you kill absolutely deserve it. No matter if Naughty Dog succeeds or not in such an endeavor, the thing is to show that you don't always have to be an American superman fighting the devil disguised as an middle-eastern terrorist.  

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