Games trivialize murder far too often for my taste, even when it's necessary.
So very much agreed. Don't get me wrong, context is everything, mind you - if there are actively-hostile targets coming my way, I'm gonna do my damnedest to get them before they get me, but in other situations...
I feel that the more humanized the violence is, the more it should be optional in the game. Basically, the less the opponents are "faceless mook" types and the more realistic the violence, then the better the game is if there's a way to avoid a lethal encounter.
For example, say one of the objectives in a mission involves entering a guarded and locked room. There are two guards, each with a pistol and a key.
In scenario 1, they are generic nameless-and-voiceless stormtrooper types, identical helmets and gear, etc. I'd have no real concern about going in guns hot, blamblamblam, take the key.
In scenario 2, they have visible faces and nametags, but the game has Mortal Kombat style "cartoon gore" bloodsplatters and other exaggerated stuff. Here I'd be a bit hesitant to just open up, but it's funny seeing them spray crimson everywhere like walking sacks of spaghetti-sauce, so again, blamblamblam, key get.
In scenario 3, same as 2, but the two guards are idly conversing and the game violence is lifelike, with ragdoll physics and pained cries and such. Now here, I'm not too keen on a headlong confrontation, so time to consider an alternate route or some means of distraction and hoping my lockpicking skill is high enough.
Violence, in most situations, should always be the player's choice, not a forced thing. Think of the Metal Gear Solid series - in most games, it was entirely possible to go the entire game and never actually kill a single person, bosses included. Alternatively, you could be a psychotic little gun-monkey and hose down everyone and everything with so many bullets you could melt down the spent casing, build a boat with the recycled metal, then sink that boat with the weight of more spent casings. Both styles have their difficulties and challenges, but they both can work, and you are rewarded either way.
The drawback to that is that, even the "no kill" way is just avoiding otherwise-guaranteed lethal encounters, because the enemy goons only function in the way of "player not found"/"attack player". Which isn't the most easy sort of thing to mesh with the potential of a "pacifist playthrough". So the enemy needs some adjusting too, in at least some situations.
I mean, say I come across two slacker minions playing a game or something while trying to think up excuses for why they're not hunting me down with the others.
One of them shouts "Hey wait, don't shoot! We don't have to even admit we found each other, maybe we can just walk away...."
And then the other one rushes me shouting about how they found me and now I have to die.
What could be awesome here would be the two guys actually start fighting each other. The 'lets walk away' guy might want to fight his partner because he's obviously trying to get in the way of things and making things worse. Then, you, as the player, could make the choice to either:
A. Go ahead and shoot them both while they're distracted and take the target loot and run
B. Help the 'cool' dude by shooting the crazy guy and then maybe actually help each other, or
C. Take all the loot in the room and leave them to kill each other.
Why am I so much in favor of steering away from the tunnelvision'd "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" method?
The more I think about the violence thing, the more it interests me - because back in the day, it was the parents and the 'moral guardians' who were criticizing it - now it's the reviewers and the gamers themselves. Partly because many of us have become the parents. Truth is, a lot of people are complaining about violence in video games they themselves play. I think what we're seeing here is pretty similar to the Iron Age of Comics in that there's only so far you can go into "Darker and Edgier" territory before it ceases to be any fun.
We have killed literally billions of people in video games and even the most peaceful of us likely has slain tens of thousands of people personally. In Metal Gear Revengeance alone, the killing of just cybernetic people can measure in the hundreds. Even if you don't believe that video game violence is harmful, there's plenty of argument it can get BORING after a while.
Likewise, it can become uncomfortable or even flat-out tasteless as video games become more and more photo-realistic. Take the new Tomb Raider game's controversy over Lara Croft being groped by the Russian guy (I don't use the word "attempted rape" because he strangles her no matter what happens and seems to just be eyeing her). Throw in also the fact that her deaths in animation used to be fun and now just seem gratituous.
We're passing over the Uncanny Valley where we don't care what happens to these pixels. In Ninja Gaiden, I wiped out hundreds of mooks because they simply popped out of existence when I stabbed them. Now, in video games, you have it so that mooks talk about their wives and children back home or how afraid they are.
The personalization can get a little uncomfortable.
