I'm playing Baldur's gate 2 at the moment, and I ran into a couple of orcs in a room within a dungeon. Both of them were scared of me and tried to talk me out of killing them, as the dungeon had plenty of evil creatures I had previously killed already.
I was about to let them go... the first one said he's good and promised not to kill anyone anymore (heavily implying he had done plenty of killing before, but it sounded like he might've been forced to it so I was thinking to let it slide) but then the dumbass said something like "well at least not by profession.. maybe as a hobby..". Nah dude, I'm sorry, I would've liked to give you a new chance, but you blew it. He didn't have a weapon on and was already trying to walk out at that point so me killing him came as a surprise to him. While It did still make me think about whether I was correct about it, it was a pretty clear solution to be honest. If I had had a choice to put him behind bars and have him brainwashed (or at least tried it) to be a good orc, I would've preferred that, but no can do.
The second one was a bit more complicated. He wanted to give me some advice in exchange for sparing his life. That advice was slightly helpful (regarding an enemy I hadn't yet faced in the dungeon) and I was thinking of letting him go and told him that. He started walking to the door, without weapons too. But then I started to think about the other orc and about their nature, and while I would like to believe there are good orcs out there, I couldn't really have it on my conscience if the orc went on to kill people in the future. And it was pretty likely, so I struck him down.
This is kind of partly what I think my character to think but also partly how I myself feel as I immerse myself in the game. Obviously my feelings towards the characters in the game isn't nearly in the same level as towards people in the real world, but the empathy is there still.
Some of the responses here really are pretty silly. Like:
Yes I feel bad for killing lines of code who thinks of this
No, because they aren't real.
Come on, really?
(Hippopuncher12 I saw your later post and that's fair enough, but still that first post. Smh.)
I would care if video games gave me a reason to. Bad guys just run and shoot you, that's it.
Plenty of games out there that aren't quite so simple.