>A man chooses
>A slave obeys
>Choose to kill the frickface who has been trying to murder me not thirty minutes after I wandered into his city
Yep, I'm a man, b***h
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what are you mumbling about honey, playing that pocketmen game?
You don't choose to. If you want to and you do as a consequence of him using your command word which you are incapable of refusing, you may have done what you WANTED to do, but it wasn't a choice on your part. You're still a slave.
However, he's dead, so frick him, but still.
So choosing to do even what you want to makes you a slave? Then we're all slaves to our impulses
No, being physically incapable of walking away when he orders you to kill him makes you a slave because you have no choice but to obey, even if the order you're obeying is what you would have wanted to do.
But surely you wouldn't forgive somebody who has been trying to kill you since you arrived
But you see batman, if you kill me that makes you just like me because killing bad and one bad makes you the same as someone who has done a million worse bad things, even if the person you're killing is the one who did those bad things and promises to do more!
What deep and insightful morals these are to have!
It's not about forgiveness. It's agency.
You did not kill Andrew Ryan. Andrew Ryan committed suicide, commanding you to kill him. An action you have zero influence on.
He is the man, you are the slave. It's not a hard reading.
But what's the separation of you, Jack Ryan, and the mind controlled Jack Ryan? Your goals are the same. There's no reason not to kill Andrew Ryan. He has not stopped his murder attempt until you broke in to kill him
By the story's own details, the Jack with free will does not exist. He is essentially a advanced bioweapon made to kill Andrew Ryan. Even when the mental conditioning is gone you're still led around like a stray dog until you either become Tenebaum's little girl savior or the new feral leader of the splicers. There's nothing to indicate Jack had any free will at all save for the players' ultimately meaningless choices.
The funny thing is that those are his definitions, they don't have to be yours. The man tells you his rules for his worldview, and you go "oh shit, that means if I do x I'm a slave because he said that's what defines a slave" but that's his fricking definition. And by playing by his rules you are by his rules being the slave. You are obeying his worldview that he's imposing on you.
If you simply don't fricking care what this egotistical idiot has to say about why he thinks he's better than other people, then just like magic you win.
You have no agency in the matter. Most people would agree that a person with no personal agency, who entirely at the whim of the agency of an outside influence, could be considered a sort of slave.
If you want to go "I reject your definition or idea of what makes someone a slave and even if I am a slave I don't care if I'm a slave" then whatever, man.
true freedom lies in the mind
his own worldviews are not reality, they're just excuses for his actions and a cheap copout. Him believing them and preaching them doesn't make them have value. He's a deconstruction of the failures of libertarianism, and the core issue is that it's all just projection of a selfish ego. He's the only free man in his definition and he can die by that belief if he wants, doesn't change anything. By that point even if the player did have free agency after the shit they saw it would only be reasonable to want to beat the man to death.
>it would only be reasonable to want to beat the man to death
But Andrew Ryan did nothing wrong.
I'm sure by his own personal and self-serving morals that's true. But to anyone else his faults are self-evident in the hellscape that surrounded him in the end.
>the hellscape that surrounded him in the end
wasn't that the fault of Fontaine's bullshit?
He's just the one who picked at the scabs on the diseased and dying creature rapture was quickly becoming. There were a lot of problems that were rearing up and growing and Ryan kept trying to stomp at them to keep them from ruining his fantasy world, but it was just reality seeping in. Shit he didn't account for, holes in his philosophy, and Fontaine was only one of many who took advantage of that.
And taking advantage in those ways were literally part of the philosophy Ryan built his city around. Its doom was inevitable, either slowly and horribly on its own, or by the hands of individuals acting on the encouraged actions of the society.
Ryan tried to build a utopia on a very stupidly flawed philosophy that mainly served his own ego, and it was such a fragile system it was never going to outlive him.
But what really is objective reality but one's own individual worldview? By that logic your idea that Andrew Ryan's beliefs have no value, also have no value themselves because all ideas are fueled by one's subjective perception of reality.
Andrew Ryan's idea of Rapture may have fallen but those very same ideas gave action to the rise of the underwater city in the first place, and at least 10 years of boundless prosperity before the civil war broke out. To readily denounce those ideas as worthless is nihilistic and hypocritical, as if to say Ryan should've never tried if he did not objectively know if Rapture would succeed or not. There's always a certain amount of risk to reality so who's to say anyone's thoughts or actions are guaranteed to be successful in the long run?
>choose to play a better game
I am beyond man and everything is going to be ok
Rather than making some stupid dramatic point by letting the protagonist fricking murder him why didn't Ryan just shoot him with a gun and then continue his war with Fontaine?
How effective was an assassin that will kill himself if told 'would you kindly have a nice day' supposed to be?
I really hate to spoil it but since it's been out quite some time now and you haven't put in the thought yet, I'll give you a quick rundown.
The player character is living breathing proof that his ideology is wrong. Andrew Ryan did not start the Fricked-In-The-Head madman when he started Rapture. He believed the invisible hand would iron out all the kinks if just left to do it's thing, which relies on free will, and it did for a while. But long story short, human nature crept back into the system, in a variety of ways (addiction, extortion, the threat of violence, ect.) by which free men were made slaves to greater or lesser degrees. You can track his stoicism in the face of these clear flaws in his plan through the audio logs, sticking to his ideals while he is proved wrong over and over again.
Finally, he's confronted by a man who literally has no free will, the antithesis to his worldview that depends on men having full free will, makes a full commitment to his worldview. Finally pinning his life to his ideology, and loses.
And all of that because Fontaine is a better conman
>Andrew Ryan did not start the Fricked-In-The-Head madman
I'd argue that he was never a "Fricked-In-The-Head madman". He was just a guy who really believed in his principals. More of an obsession thing than a crackhead crazy thing.
This thread has given me an existential crisis
those are good for your growth as a person. I wouldn't trust anyone who makes it to 30 without having at least one or two.
Fricking israelites
You can smell the cope coming off this thread
Imagine believing the would you kindly lie when you literally do everything a logical, non brain washed person would do
Why did Fontaine make it so anyone could use the mind control phrase? Ryan could have easily told you to first deafen yourself and then go kill Fontaine. Of course he didn't because he was being an autist, but it's still a huge oversight in the plan on Fontaine's part.
Games about agency are a bit too meta for me
Dab