For those of you who approached this game like me and viewed "War never changes" as a challenge, our assignment being that we're supposed to do our best to prevent, avoid or subvert warfare, what do you think is the conclusion this game led you to as far as WHY war never changes, or how we, as humanity, could go about actually changing war and doing our best to prevent it?

Mine is this:

"The pen is mightier than the sword."

What I mean by this is that while you can certainly kill the man with opposing ideals, you cannot actually kill his ideals. You can kill the flag-bearer, but not the flag. Even now, though many people may detest or disagree with, for example, the Nazi flag, the Nazi flag exists. We cannot make it un-exist, and we cannot kill off some of the idealogies that the Nazi movement embodied. Those exist, those are a fact of life, and it's very likely that someday those idealogies will arise once more, albeit under a different name and flag.

If you kill the man with opposing ideals, those still survive. They'll live on in the people who loved him, in the people who heard him speak and thought it rang true, or hell, it's simply statistically impossible for those ideals not to re-emerge from another human being in the future, thus rendering your solution moot, making it simply a short-term solution. Unfortunately, seeing as it's seen as practical, most humans would rather rely on taking that practical solution to save other lives short-term. Likewise, I think you'll struggle to find a person who can claim they've NEVER met someone who gave them the impression there was just -no- getting through to them.

I believe that for war to change and for humanity to improve, humanity would have to accept idealogies as eternal, and rather than focus on stopping the person carrying them, focus on figuring out how to tolerate and co-exist alongside those idealogies, given that those idealogies are simply "natural" in that they're bound to re-emerge, even if every living being of a generation that carries those ideologies is killed off.

It's a conundrum where the practical solution saves innocent lives or loved ones while sacrificing some guilty or distant ones. Doing nothing, on the other hand, may be the more long-term, "realistic" approach in that it'd force the country to try and accept and cope with this idealogy they oppose, figuring out how to make it work that both co-exist, but many innocent people will surely die as a result.

And of course, human beings are flawed and yes, sometimes wars do exist for no reason other than "your people have a shiny resource my people want." So alongside my above statement about how opposing idealogies constantly co-existing is an inevitability, ignorance, greed and other guilty parties existing is ALSO an inevitability.

Just as the world will never see a day where altruism doesn't exist within one human being or another, it will never see a day where greed does not exist.

Just as forgiveness will constantly exist within on person's mind, so will resentment and revenge.

Just as peace will constantly exist within at least one person, so will violence.

Ideas simply can't be killed, and we're statistically too many people on this planet for there ever to be a time that's free of conflict, because existing in a time where an idealogy stands unopposed is downright impossible. Hell, even as children, while we DO follow our parent's words and teachings as if those were law for a time, we eventually hit a point where, almost instinctually, we begin to challenge and question their words and teachings, JUST to test the waters for evolution's sake.

I've realized this after thinking on it, my only question afterwards is when one should act and when one shouldn't. For example, when Ulysses decided to carry through with his plan, what made him decide it was worth doing instead of simply not getting involved at all?

Sorry if I seemed to ramble a bit, I just was curious about what thoughts (more broad, overview thoughts about the game's moral issues in general) this game has provoked from people and thought it was thread-worthy.

I would actually have to disagree with this statement. You may not be able to kill ideas, because people will always know of them, but you can certainly kill the way in which the idea was meant to be used, thus making the idea effectively dead.

Ideals can be killed through knowledge, through teaching others that such an idea is something that you should not practice, and while the idea itself may be around, as people know of the idea, the purpose behind the idea, and thus all power of said idea, is dead.

Many ideals such a intolerance of people based on race, six, origin, etc. etc. are slowly being killed off in most of the advanced world, it does take time, a very long time, but it is possible, given sufficient force.

I kind of skimmed your post(I'll read it proper in time), but as to your point about ideas never dying, I think that's the reason war never changes.

Ideas never die and war is just a battle of ideas.

As long as humans and different ideas exist, there will be war.

Play Metal Gear Solid 4 now, and answer the question "War. War changes".

Interesting read none the less.

Because humans nature never changes.

The Romans waged war to gather slaves and wealth. Spain built an empire from it lust for gold and territory. Hitler shaped a battered Germany into and economic superpower, but war never changes."

"The end of the world occured pretty much as we had predicted; too many humans and not enough space or resources to go around. The details are trivial and pointless, the reasons as alway, purely human ones."

"Since the dawn of human kind when our ancestors first discovered the killing power of rock and bone, blood has been spilled in the name of everything from God to justice to simple psychotic rage"

I think mainly because people don't change - short term thinking, greed, inability to prioritise others needs above their own. I'm speaking generally here of course.

Individuals or small groups can look past their own needs but it takes a lot to move large groups of people to look beyond their own interests or interests of people who depend on them and there's a lot of pressure the other way.

Whether it's desire for profit, people in a position of influence or authority with a prejudice and little checks on their exercising their power, or just what seem like good ideals but which drive people to use some harsh means war is going to happen somewhere sometime somehow.

Ultimately it's a lack of mutual trust, an attitude of "why should I disarm when they will just attack me when I do?" Even if you plan for self defence this leads to defence through attacking.

Apologies for my rambling. One last word from Isaac Asimov, expressed by one of the characters in the Foundation series:

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent".

Moving to Fallout Universe since it's a lore question ...