Talk:Gaetan/@comment-128.106.128.142-20180901045853

Bravo to CDPR for this quest, this was an entirely missable side quest and yet it was so well designed and encouraged such divisive choices.

The moral dillemma is so well balanced, if he only killed the ones who attacked him and the ealdorman, most people would let him go without much debate.

But he did kill civillians who were not attacking him as well and couldn't not be proven to have been complicit with the plan to stiff his payment and murder him. Even admitted to "gotten carried away". By this act, many feel no amount of justification can mitigate a "death penalty" for him.

Add in the empathy points that he was also a witcher, who was screwed over a contract, something the player might identify with and redemption points for sparing a little girl that looked like his sister, as well as the fact that he was betrayed and stabbed, not in the right state of mind.

Honestly if you strictly apply morality on his actions, he is clearly in the wrong, unless there was some proof the other villagers he killed were complicit, which in this case were only circumstantial. He was indeed done a great injustice, but that does not justify his actions, and his action was multiple counts of murder.

However there are more than the moral angle to look at this situation, the utilitarian angle for example. You say, sure he is wrong, but is killing him going to do more good?

I think not, first of all he doesn't kill for no reason. He works monster contracts and only killed people when put in that situation of being betrayed. With that assumption as well as the fact that there are few witchers left,

1. killing him will negate the potential good he will do in the future by killing monsters.

2. in the event he does something like this again, the people attacking him deserve to die anyway, and the innocents he would have killed would be killed by the monster if gaetan wasn't around to take the contract anyway.

So if you take the utilitarian route, you spare him because it will do more harm than good not to, despite whether his actions were justified.

Most people didn't consider the third option, which is whether Geralt himself should pass judgement. A good comparison is Letho, he killed two kings and many others in cold blood, for his own selfish reasons (a promise to revive viper school), but some players spare him anyway? Why? His guilt is obvious. Because he didn't give as much shit about the two kings and the others he killed.

If you are to take your choice seriously, you have to stop thinking of it as a choice in a game and apply the logic that should you choose to fight him, as another witcher, even injured, there is a chance he could kill you. So ask yourself, do you give that much of a shit to a bunch of dead villagers you never knew to risk your own life when you don't have to?