The Choice to Spare Shroud and the Paradox of Tolerance
I may have “neglected” Invisigal during my first Dispatch playthrough (which is a whole other can of worms bc how tf???) and lost the choice to spare or kill Shroud, but if I had actually gotten that choice, I would’ve strangled that mf, absolutely no hesitation. And I say this as someone who achieved the true hero ending by making genuine choices that were most closely aligned with my own morals and values IRL (humoring that fuckass reporter in ep. 1, etc.).
I fully understand why a lot of people chose to spare him, though. One of the strongest themes Dispatch establishes within its narrative is that anyone can, and deserves to be, redeemed. No matter what they’ve done in their past, no matter how the world has come to see them. No matter what, everyone has the potential for good inside of them—they just need to accept it themselves, then build a support system that will help them nurture it. This value is baked inseparably into the premise of the game itself—rehabilitating former villains—so it’s no wonder the game tries to nudge you towards sparing Shroud.
Another theme—sharing a common thread with countless superhero franchises—is that taking another person’s life, even if completely justified, means you are stooping down to villainy/evil and is therefore unacceptable to any truly good hero. Killing Shroud, as Chase mentions later in the game, would go against the honorable values that the Mecha Man lineage has long stood for.
But, like, just think about it for a second. Shroud, obviously, shows no desire to be good. He has submitted entirely to evil, fully believing it to be the only natural course of human nature. Therefore, he has no qualms taking human lives to further his own interests, and has already taken far, far too many. Any attempts to rehabilitate him, at least, at the point in his life where we have the choice to kill or spare him, would be entirely fruitless. He’s had plenty of years to think about what he wants out of life, and he’s clearly already made up his mind.
I’d even go as far as to say that leaving him alive would be a liability for the values the Mecha Man lineage has served to protect for all those years. Shroud is highly intelligent and extremely conniving (even without the probability thing), having easily manipulated tons of otherwise no-name petty villains into doing abhorrent things to support him. And, again, he has no issue killing people for his own gain. Sparing his life would indirectly subject Torrance to the same danger it was in all over again. Also, he’s literally escaped from jail before. Why would we assume he wouldn’t do the exact same shit again if he doesn’t regret literally anything he’s done?
Again, I sort of get why the game wants you to spare Shroud, but in practice, it literally makes no sense. More specifically, I’m reminded of the “paradox of tolerance.” If you haven’t heard of this before, it’s the idea that tolerating the intolerant will always lead to the destruction of tolerance. That’s a mouthful, but think about it this way—if you have a farm and let in wolves, cattle, and sheep, you’re just gonna end up with wolves. To protect all of the other livestock in your farm, you have to turn away the wolves who want to eat them. To protect tolerance itself, you have to be intolerant towards the intolerant.
What I’m trying to say is that to promote the long-term perseverance of good, you have to incapacitate evil. And seeing as Shroud has no plans to ever turn towards good, and the only realistic way to render him unable to enact evil is to take his life, well, killing Shroud is objectively the most heroic choice to make.
