One big question: do the soldiers volunteer for it? Were they told of the insane risks involved?īecause if they do (and they likely could be persuaded to if not jump at the chance), then there is no inherent ethical issue. Now I have the DLC but I haven't played it yet (I want to finish Xenonauts first). If the aliens refuse to stop attacking humanity for anything less than a total surrender, you are not obligated to be nice to them. If nothing else, it would be necessary to work much harder to obtain informed consent for the procedure.Īnd to an extent, they are justifiable, especially if you made no real ethical commitment to not do the horrible acts you are to do. They also receive ordinary bionics for use while not piloting the mecha, but there's a variety of reasons why those artificial limbs might not be as good as the originals.

You're not just talking about finding a soldier who had their leg blown off and giving them a new bionic leg, but removing healthy limbs so that they can use the MEC. MEC soldiers are more problematic because the soldiers actually lose something: their limbs. As such, unless you are forcing your troops to be subjected to this medical procedure and not just asking for volunteers (and when you're basically offering to turn them into superheroes, finding volunteers isn't going to be difficult) or there is some kind of side effect which is not mentioned in the game, gene mods are not an ethical problem. You give someone the ability to jump two stories, and the only obvious downside is that they can't also have a bone marrow gene mod to make themselves even more awesome. The gene mods in XCOM are changes of the 'strictly better' sort.

Dominus Atheos wrote:Why do you think MEC soldiers would be more ethically objectionable then gene mods? Right now, genetic modification is considered way more controversial than cybernetics.

Xcom long war gene mods