‘I can’t kill a wolf but will happily watch a Sim drown’: murder and morality in video games

I can kill foxes but I can’t kill wolves. Not in real life, obviously – in real life I send emails eight hours a day – but in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, where every animal is an arrow away from becoming a fortifying meal. Shoot a wolf and you’ll be rewarded with a thick red slab of raw prime meat, but I can’t do it, I just can’t do it, even though they often attack me in packs. They look too much like dogs.

I can kill a fox – even though they never attack me, and they often let out sad little yelps – but many other gamers can’t. One post in the Tears of the Kingdom subreddit is entitled, “I can’t shoot the foxes” and has almost 500 upvotes. “They’re so sweet and