No Sin Goes Unpunished

[Electric Jesus]

As I mentioned in another thread (titled "lesser of two evils") every character in zombies is evil in some way. Dempsey killed lots of people as a marine presumably. Takeo killed his family for their dishonor. Nikolai killed his wives. Richtofen was... well, you know. Maxis caused the earth to be destroyed. Samantha ravaged the earth with zombies. Even the TranZit crew have helped Richtofen / Maxis in all of their dirty deeds, albeit blindly. The MotD crew were, well, mobsters.

They've all done some bad stuff. Does that make them bad people? not necessarily. They could make up for it if their efforts to repair the damage outweighs their own evils. But alas, no sin goes unpunished. Mob of the dead is proof of this.

Let's look at Richtofen for example. In the Maxis ending he does get punished. But in his ending, he gets rewarded!

The O4 all did bad things prior to the zombie apocalypse. maybe you could argue that their struggle to survive was their punishment.

My point is, some punishment needs to be dished out. Richtofen? Maxis? Sam? They all did horrible shit. So here's my question:

How should they be punished? Where should they end up in your opinion?

I personally like what they did in buried's maxis ending, and hate what they did in the richtofen ending. I like the wheatley approach.

In portal 2, the character wheatley is loved by everyone and is hilarious. He turns evil, and you go to fight him. I love the ending and what happens to him. Basically you let him drift off into space as punishment. You don't kill him, so he doesn't cease to be a character, but he does get severely punished for his deeds.

I like that they took a similar approach with the maxis ending. Richtofen is still alive, but barely. On the other hand maxis ceases to exist in the R. ending, which is not a satisfying punishment at all.

I've been talking too long. What are your thoughts? What do you think they've all got coming to them?

[InfestLithium]

Now that I think about it, Maxis' punishment was not enough. So I totally agree that further should have been done; after all, how long did Richtofen pursue his plan for world domination while amassing practically unlimited power over everything? His original intention was to kill off Maxis back in Der Riese, so a big finale of how he would put Maxis down for good would have been nice. There is no way that Richtofen would want Maxis to continue existing in any way, shape or form - not even like Gersch's purgatory.

 

I was kind of hoping that Richtofen would somehow feed Maxis' soul to the ancient evil dwelling within the MPD or something to that affect. Would give us more insight on the darkness that lies within the device which is slowly consuming Richtofen, y'know?

[Electric Jesus]

And these are really likable characters. Not the kind you want to just kill off willy nilly. This isn't the Walking Dead. Oh the irony. If they want to kill someone, at least make it spectacular. Not just "you will simply cease to be!" "noooooblaarghhh"

[Stop Mocking Me0]

I see the whole apocalypse as a form of redemption. It's clear the groups don't WANT to have to fight the hordes, but do it to achieve their goals. Almost as if the zombies are a punishment inflicted by past sins, once one achieves their goals, their life of hatred and murder is over. Like in MOTD. 

 

Thing is, richtofen LIKES to be evil, but it's not REALLY his fault. He was driven mad by the spark from the MPD. Before he was a simple super-scientist. SO does he DESERVE to be punished? 

 

 

On the maxis side, one could argue he did everything out of love. But is that truly a good thing to do? 

 

 

Samantha has done everything out of anger and has been ripped from her throne. She's like zuko from the avatar series. 

[Electric Jesus]

But Zuko regained his honor, and Sam turned into a middle-aged nazi and went AWOL. Two very different definitions of redemption.