Then do you have near death starving experience?

Our moral judgment is base on our faith.

Btw, for me that desire and action definitely is evil no matter what. But if someone eat existing corpse( which not kill by him/her ) base on emergency survival instinct where no other choice left, that is forgivable.

"I'm starving, all I have to eat is a dirty, disgusting, shot-up corpse, or some 200 year old fancy lad snack cakes."

Cannibals, are usually seen as murderers... Since people just don't willingly carve flesh off their forearm so you can cook up some bacon. Well, some have done this, all in the name of science.

I mean, would you really eat the corpse of someone you had just killed out in the middle of nowhere? Especially if showers haven't been rediscovered yet!?

It should definitely give bad karma, if the system is still there. Cannibalism is quite heinous in almost every culture, beyond some tribes.... and the odd serial killer. It is an act typically done when one is in a situation quite dire, like The Donner party.... but actively going out of your way to kill and consume a person.... when there's food to be had, animals that can be hunted, crops that can be planted, etc.... is beyond messed up. It takes a person severely demented to do such an act, or incredibly desperate. Would I consume human flesh if my life absolutely depended on it? I can't really say for certain as I myself have never been in a situation so bleak. My thoughts on it as a whole? I'll shoot a raider in the head and kill them quick, but I'll shoot a cannibal in the stomach so they die slowly.

I think you lost the moral high ground with your closing sentence.

I wasn't looking for a moral high ground, I hate cannibals...and would sooner see them suffer as their victims suffer/ed.

But we are talking about morality / karma.

Anyway, I just found it funny reading your post, thinking "yep, true, good point, true again, WHAAAAT??!!!"

My avatar disagree but that is a bit off topic

And yes long pig should give bad karma / reputation. Its not like its an lack of food as other says.

Now we don't know if it would be an karma system or reputation but eating long pig because you have to would be rare and would have close to zero impact on total karma, same way as stealing an few items had no impact.

Going around clearing out towns for items will make you an bad guy.

Yes it would work with an reputation system too. Say BoS bunker in FO:NV, they might be a bit suspicious against me: the same day I enter all the guns, ammo, chems, caps and other valuables disappeared from all the lockers.

It might not be random.

At first I was thinking "not if you're starving", but then I figured that stealing is still a crime if you're poor/hungry/thirsty/unarmed (even though NPCs LITERALLY NEVER USE said items), murder is still bad if your target is an ass (MORIARTY I'm looking at YOU) and sleeping in untouched, yet owned, beds is completely disallowed.

Yes, it should still lower karma - it measures what choices you make, and under what conditions. IIf you only ever eat while absolutely starving, the occasional karma loss means nothing anyway (compared to someone who starves instead, who gets to die feeling noble).

Karma is intended to represent your overall choices so that individual characters can respond to the representation you've built up. If anything, karma changes should only occur with witnesses, like the Skyrim bounty. That way you can have a reputation of being a stand-up fella while having a basemant full of butchered raiders (and that one woman you murdered for her outfit).

It would also mean that being 'good' required more than simply not rocking the boat. People had to notice you were a well-to-do as you help them out with quests and such. (The downside is that it means stealing wouldn't affect your karma unless people observed it, under which conditions they would attack you.)

If I need to eat someone, I'd avoid filling the guy with bullets first.

Ever eaten freshly hunted quail and gotten a piece with shotgun spread in it...? Not good eats.

I have. Great flick.

IMO, cannibalism shouldn't be a perk, it should be a choice. As far as any bonuses, that would be interesting, if there was still some survival..perk still available that gave certain bonuses to certain foods, and human meat, ghoul meat, super mutant meat, all being options.

On a side note, I really hope they did make changes to cannibalism and it is still in the game, and perk free. I think it would be great to cook up human flesh, setup a merchant stand in your town/village, and sell it to travelers.

''Mhhh, what a delicious meat pie! You're truly a skilled cook!''

It's all in the meat.

Well, since Fallout is post-post-apocalypse, and people usually get by, it's a definite "no good"! Therefore negative karma, as it's probably done by choice by now.

If it was shortly after the war and surviving the major issue for most people, then I'd give some leeway.

Is it wrong to kill someone with the intention of eating them [ie murder is wrong] or is the act of cannibalism wrong in and of itself?

But their dead, they won't mind, just a little nibble.

I really want to watch this ravenous film now.

In Fallout you'd probably gain goid karma for killing cannibals... they just wouldn't die right away if I were to be the one to shoot them . I can see how one might find it funny though. Just imagine what a victim would feel like, what if the cannibal wanted to keep the "meat" as fresh as possible? They'ed cut off bits of you while you were still alive. I think that'd justify them receiving a slow death in return.

Hehe Like I said before (elsewhere about Longpork) Jane Cobb is correct.

"Hell I will kIll a man in a fair fight, or if I think hes going to give me a fair fight. Or if he bothers me, or if there's a woman, or if I am getting paid. Mostly if i am getting paid. But eating people, wheres that get fun."

To be honest I would think all the crap disease should make people shudder not just that Kuru or whatever its called( laughing sickness as mentioned allready it causes permanent nerve damage and makes you shake or face spasm ) but stuff like Hepatitis of all kinds and many social diseases almost assured transfer, ehhh nasty man.

Still for a good read check out "Liver eating Johnson" and see who a certain enclave remnant was based on. (real american old west cowboy/mountainman).

You can get all sorts of disease and rads from eating 99% of wasteland food anyways so wouldn't a possible small health issue be irrelevant?

So it is barely acceptable to kill and eat cannibals then?

If I'm a superior being and I consume their flesh and soul to gain their strength then it should be good karma as I'm allowing them to be a part of a greater being. They should be thankful that they get to digest inside of me.

There are real-life tribal societies that are constantly on the brink of starvation yet refuse to eat humans. Hell, the few tribes that allow cannibalism only do it in ritual context. If they saw a random person eat another random person, they'd think something was seriously wrong with that person.

Simply put, cannibalism is not a normal human behavior. If someone prefers being a real-life cannibal, that person is seriously messed up.

It might be a wasteland, but things aren't really cannibalism bad anymore. Besides, iguana and squirrel apparently abound.

Unless that isn't really iguana and squirrel ... I've never actually seen either.

While I find the whole idea of cannibalism totally repulsive, we are talking video game, right? Also it is most probably true what 2-Caps and Eddo36 said about all of the diseases you could contract ...

Speaking of movies, I recently watched the movie "A Boy and His Dog" (no link, it's NSFW) that some say Fallout was inspired by. I think I see where they got the idea for adding it to the game.

I'm not sure about negative karma for eating corpses, except maybe if someone sees you eat the person. I would think maybe a hit to Charisma if you are in that faction.

Just stay clear of the brain and spinal cord, otherwise you're asking for a case of CJD.