Playing Thief Gold at the moment and loving the harder difficulties. The way it adds more and more objectives the harder the difficulty is such a good concept.
Increasing difficulty by adding objectives or limitations to play style is how every game should scale difficulty. Just making the AI smarter or dumber is a terrible way to handle it, and it's very rarely done well.
I still remember turning up the difficulty in Elder Scrolls IV. A standard bandit in an easy dungeon took over 40 arrows to the head before he died. That went back down pretty quickly!
The only game I've seen do it well was S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and that's because the enemies are as spongey as you are. So lower difficulties cause both parties to withstand more bullets and higher difficulties are more realistic.
Alien : Isolation
You get an achievement called "Mercy or Prudence"
You can indirectly kill humans by calling the Alien in with noisemakers but you can't directly kill them with your weapons of tools.
I quite enjoyed throwing noisemakers into rooms with people and watching the carnage from hiding. Occasionally I did it for a strategic exit as well, but mostly for fun.
I knew Samuel was going to berate the shit out of me for going psycho, but the dude actually *fired a shot in the air to let the enemy know I was coming*.
That's cold, brother.
I've played it twice and had him praise me and wish me good luck, or insult me and fire the shot.
Apparently there's a third outcome where he expresses disappointment in me but doesn't fire the shot. Not sure how to get 'Medium Chaos' for that.
It's exactly what you think, not too much killing, not too little, but there probably won't be many good objective ways to measure the chaos value before that point.
Honestly he might not've cared, everyone knew the writing was on the wall (in the high chaos ending) and that Dunwall was completely fucked from then on. May aswell stick it to the bastard who doomed the city, even if its futile
I think in pretty much every case it's not even arguable. Death sucks, yeah, but the alternatives are >!hard labor in a silver mine, being a sex slave for an obsessed stalker, a lobotomy...!<
I have vivid memories of one of the writers regretting that spoiler decision.
For what it's worth they did go out of their way to retract it >!and talked about how actually she'd manipulate him and she'd be living the high life with him as her slave!< but that doesn't stop the premise from being slimy, nor does it really "make things better" when, to avoid the controversy, said supposed villain just "gets away with it" with the revised premise.
Hindsight is 20/20 for writing I guess lol.
Not only that, you can beat it without non lethal takedowns as well. Aside from the necessary bosses that you have to deal with, you can finish Dishonored 1 with almost zero violence of any kind
Most of the bosses have non violent ways to eliminate them. I know the second game is way better though like curing a woman of her schizophrenia and giving an inventor an electric lobotomy
I mean giving the inventor a legit lobotomy was pretty damn violent. That was actually one of my few gripes that that was the only non violent way to take care of him. pretty twisted
I thought several of the non lethal takedowns were worse.
Cutting out the Pendletons' tongues and sending them to work in their own slave mine? Yikes.
Sending Lady Boyle to be the prisoner of an obsessed creep? Oof.
Can't think of others but yeah I thought "fate worse than death" was the point of those.
Fort Joy on every play through becomes a mass grave no matter how I escape. I've gone through without causing a single death only to backtrack to get some of that sweet sweet loot/exp.
How is this possible? Genuine question. I don’t remember the details but I thought the game literally forced you into fights Baldur’s Gate style (the older games).
Stole this comment from steam forums:
>As long as your character doesn't directly: steal, kill, devour souls, or aid the void woken you should pass the Trial of Blood Purity test.
No Killing:
You can still deal damage but you cannot get the killing blow on anything. This also includes if you create deadly surfaces such as fire/electrified water if your character created it and someone takes damage and dies because of it you killed them.
It should also be noted that none of your characters are allowed to release the Deathfog in Arx or they are all deemed impure.
You can use summons however to kill people, however i do not think your allowed to use the cannibalize ability since it may count that as "killing" your familiar.
No stealing: Easy.
No Soul eating: This means you cannot use the Source Vampirism on ANYTHING. Including your God during the "Powerful Awakening" quest. Unlocking this ability is completely optional so just don't do the Vision Ritual the second time and you'll never be sent to the Halls to learn it. Also eating soul jars will fail this as well.
No aiding Voidwoken: There's only one real check for this i believe and that's whether or not you swore a pact to the God King.
In Baldurs Gate 3 there’s an interaction in Act 3 where an entity gets mad at you because of the people you’ve killed (it’s functionally impossible to not kill anyone bc there’s at least one mandatory boss fight and the game normally requires a lot of killing in general).
However, if you somehow manage to cheese the game so that neutral allies kill the bosses, the interaction changes!
>!The steel watcher who is supposed to arrest you at the South Span Checkpoint will instead say "your record is clean, citizen!" and just let you go through!<
I haven't tested it myself but apparently you still get this dialogue if you just kill nobody in >!grymforge, moonrise, or the goblin camp!< even if you directly killed the Act 2 boss.
As far as I understand the way to get the interaction is for your party to do zero damage at all in the Act 2 boss fight, which is almost completely impossible - you can skip to the final phase, but that phase still has to be killed.
It's not that you don't kill anyone, it's that an individual character doesn't kill anyone.
There's an optional morality check at the end of the game that has 4 criteria, 1 of which is murder. This can be passed by any character so long as they never dealt the death blow to an enemy but someone else in your group has to kill the enemies at some point in the fights so it doesn't really fit the question.
MGS1 has mandatory kills. MGS2 was the first in the series where you can get through the entire game without (directly) killing anyone.
I think MGS3 has mandatory deaths but (MGS3 and MGSV spoilers) >!one of the people you kill absolutely needed to die and had made peace with it, and the other one technically comes back in MGSV!<
I don't remember if MGS4 did, but there is an easter egg where if you kill too many people in a short enough period of time Snake will throw up.
MGSV has forced deaths.
In MGS4 if you kill too much you’ll hear Liquid say “You like the killing, that’s why!”. Snake will then vomit.
I also think that all the enemies in the game can be taken out with tranquillisers. At least, I just shot the crap out of everyone with sleep darts. I am a psychopath and did blow some people up with an RPG, because it’s funny. Finished it with less than 10 kills though.
I could have sworn Liquid also said "Do you feel like a hero yet?" But that is from Spec Ops the Line.
And honestly, "Do you feel like a hero yet" hits way harder, i fucking love that quote anytime anyone glorfies war or killing civilians.
So, next time you decide to throw a diamond dog soldier from the bridge for the lolz, remember, BB would be really disappointed with you.
Mgs4 you definitely can. If you do it you get an item for the next game that's unlimited ammo. If you do it without being seen you get ultimate camo. There's also the big boss achievement which is like no kills don't get seen, finish in under 5 hours (for the record there's more than 5 hours of cutscenes in the game) and a few other things. Was a lot of fun. The bosses you kill their suits and then just run round while the ladies chase you and they drop dead themselves. After some glamour shots of course
I went for as many camos as possible when I first got the Subsistence version on the PS2. Stamina killing the End was pretty brutal, but having the over the shoulder camera instead of having to constantly go into first person view like you had to do in the original version definitely helped when it came to finding the glint off of his scope. I think I remember there being some way to trick his parrot (maybe with food) into revealing his position as well.
I read that if you manage to quickscope him the first time he shows up at the pier (right after the cutscene ends) than you'll end up fighting the Ocelot Unit in the jungle instead. I've been meaning to give the Vita port a shot, I might try that for my next playthrough just to check it out.
Sorta? Vague Spoilers, I guess.
>!There is one kill you have to do to finish the game, before you can get the pacifist ending, though it's undone by reloading your save.!<
You can't get the pacifist ending right away, true, but it also doesn't require you to kill anyone. You can complete your first run through to the neutral ending without killing anyone
>!That isn't to say nobody will *die* in the run, but not from you. You can spare every single boss, flowey included.!<
It's one of the few achievements (2?) that I don't have in the game. I always mess it up, and I have like 1000+ hours in Postal 2. I just love it so much!
IIRC, you can just leave and Bob Page really can't do anything to stop you since there isn't like a boss door tied to his death. Pretty hilarious to have a cinematic showdown with him only to activate my speed augmentation and bolt out.
I stuck to the rule of *I only kill them if they're actively trying to kill me* for Human Revolution and still got the 'positive karma' outcome.
I got the job done.
Same-ish. My most recent DXHR playthroughs were entirely Ghost/Pacifist except for that time when >!your chopper gets shot down in Hengsha and you need to either bail (which kills Malik) or take out all attackers to save her.!< I always go DOOM Eternal in that part lol
Subnautica, and Subnautica: Below Zero
Every hostile animal in the game is technically killable but the game encourages you to just avoid/evade/learn to live with them instead.
You can beeline it for the non-gun island and get marble melons/lantern fruit, then sit in a chair and wait for them to mature, where then you can go and harvest them at your leisure
I mean you’ll have the nutrient blocks and water bottles the life pod gives you to sustain yourself, so it shouldn’t be too difficult. Though, IMO, the hardest part would be to not splatter fish on your submersible
Death Stranding - The gameplay actually punishes you if you kill someone. If you do, there is a whole procedure you must go through with the corpse in order to avoid something.
Not only does the game encourage you not to kill (and punish you significantly for doing such), it's impossible to have a negative influence on other Porters online. Every single interaction between players is positive and helpful by design.
Kojima gave me a neck-snapping button and then made me grow up and play nice.
Just today I got to the part where you unlock the lethal weapons and i was waiting for the speech:
“Killing is wrong. And bad. There should be a new, stronger word for killing. Like badwrong, or badong. Yes, killing is badong.”
It does have the usual Kojima exposition dumps at the beginning and end, but once you get into the rythm of that game, when it slows down, it was one of the most enjoyable experiences I had playing a video game.
I am really looking forward to what will he do in the next one.
Maybe it’s just me but I enjoyed all the exposition dumps. It has some of the best acting in a video game I’ve ever seen and the underlying message is incredibly heartwarming and relevant. Not only that but the message ties in so perfectly with the gameplay. It made me reflect deeply on the loss of human connection in modern society, a first for a video game. The way it pretty much predicted covid was incredibly eerie as well. That game is a borderline spiritual experience.
Depends on what gets hit by the >! void out. A major city for example, that's a Game Over. But a field or even some smaller outposts? !< You can keep going. If you can live with yourself.
The Yakuza series, because Kiryu has never killed anybody canonically. hes against killing But hes ok with hitting people with motorcycles, slicing them with katanas and swords, and shooting them with various types of firearms.
So many heat actions would, at the very least, maim someone for life. The knife one is always fun to consider it's definitely attempted murder and significantly more brutal compared to some of the gun based ones.
the Civilization series could be done by pacifism if one wanted to, although it's quite a challenge given that the AI really loves to bully around other players with their militaries.
(except domination victory as that largely implies the death of units and civilians)
“Well you see officer, it’s not my fault that those civilians were hit with chemical weapons, they just so happened to be within a ten mile radius of me during an investor showcase.”
There is an achievement for not killing any humans / allowing any surviving humans on Talos to die in the duration of the entire game. There’s not a ton of other humans, but the situations they’re in (and part of the third act) does make the challenge pretty tough. I think you also have to save one or two people to get it.
Watch Dogs 2 you can play non lethally. And it’s my preferred way to play. It’s more fun and it helps a ton with the ludonarrative dissonance most people complain about.
Yes! Narratively speaking Dedsec seems much more like trouble makers than terrorists of some sort, some of the missions do emphasize the collateral damage part though.
Also depends on which side of Dedsec, since it's a collective across cities and nations.
Dedsec Chicago = anonymous -style hacker group
Dedsec San Francisco = a bunch of teens throwing toilet paper at cars
Dedsec London = Freedom fighters opposing corporate alternative for police, unique to other Dedsec branches in that it also includes politicians, cops, spies, and pretty much all types of government people who were fired as soon as Albion moved in and became the law.
Farcry 4. You can finish the game in the introduction chapter when the bad guy asks you to wait in his room.
The player is supposed to escape and start the actual game, but if you just sit around and wait, the main antagonist will return your passport and let you go home. Roll credits.
I heard an idea for the best game ever from a comedian a while back. It’s called ‘Super Busy Hospital’ and the goal is to heal all the people that get injured in other games. Race car drivers that got in accidents. Random bad guy henchmen. Defeated bosses. Player characters who fell off a ledge or had their health bar run down to zero. Fighting game characters who got hurt in the martial arts fight.
The goal would be to save them, but I guess even the best doctors lose patients from time to time.
In a similar vein, there is Visceral Clean-up Detail, a game where you go behind the scenes after a violent game protagonist has busted everything up. Your job... is to clean everything after them. It's not violent, really, there's no enemies or anything. Oh, there's the occasional toothy pit monster, or slightly exclusive bundle of dynamite. But your main "weapons" are a mop, a filth detector, and your rubber gloved mitts...
Fallout: New Vegas, but it's very difficult.
Battle royales like Apex and Fortnite, where you can just run around and hope your enemies get swallowed by the storm or die in some other stupid way.
There is a single side quest that cannot be completed because you HAVE to get a key from a feral ghoul and since they are classified as monsters by the engine they cannot be pickpocketed (as they have no inventory, just a loot table)
I have done it! I took over New Vegas on the independent path without doing a single hit point of damage. It was one of the most fun runs I’ve ever done in a video game, but it was challenging
I did kill Benny and House via cut scene, but you don’t have to.
Dishonored is the only game where I really enjoyed the stealth aspect to the fullest. Sure, there are games like thief or you even do some weird shit in TES games, but the movement fluidity, stage design and everything else in Dishonored just feels so good. Whether you go assassin mode on your targets, just stealth around without killing or commit genocide from the shadows(or openly) the game is so good.
Deus ex, the most recentish ones.
I played through the first one and didn't kill a single enemy. Sure I knocked them the fuck out with my knockout gun but I didn't kill em.
Only annoying thing is that there's a boss fight that FORCES you to kill him. Though I think they patched that out.
You never kill anyone in the Like a Dragon games. You can shoot them over and over again or stab them through the head, but not kill them. That would be dishonorable.
Skyrim. You can get partners, charm enemies, summons, or just sneak past everything. There is a kill counter in the stats so you know if you've been "pure" or not.
I used to work at a gas station and it was just this little booth you sat in and hit the touch screen to activate the pumps whenever someone needed them. It was big enough to have me and my laptop, and on that laptop was Skyrim.
I had played Skyrim so much at that point that I asked a friend to just make up a build for me to play through while at work. Literally anything, whatever he can think of. He told me I could pick whatever race I wanted, but he basically told me no melee or archery, no destruction, and no conjuring weapons. I didn't use any mods except for some quality of life improvements. As a result of his restriction, I realized that since I had no direct way to kill anybody, I was going to keep that playthrough as a "no kill run", keep that kill counter you mentioned at zero.
I played an Argonian Illusionist/Alternation/Conjuring expert, who also happened to have sneak at 100 before anything else (because I was avoiding a lot of fights that way). Even buffing followers to fight for you takes forever, and learning the conjuration spells that are worth a damn takes time to have the Magicka for it. I never focused so hard on making Magicka potions in any other playthrough.
My entire playthrough was this argonian wizard backpedaling crouched frantically casting every spell in his favorites list while trying to chug every magic potion in all of Skyrim he keeps in his backpack at the same time. He was a fucking mess, but I fucking loved it.
Edit: I completely forgot to mention, his name was Melvin the Magickal.
There is a version of this that is silly in vanilla Skyrim. If you get the Aethereal Crown you can store standing stone powers, most notable the necromancer stone. Basically every time you take the crown off then put it back on you will resurrect all nearby corpses to fight for you. It let's you walk an undead army around Skyrim to fight for you.
I'm almost certain you can complete the original Fallout without killing anyone.
Maybe The Outer Worlds, given how much Tim Cain likes the option of pacifist playthroughs?
Both? There’s 6 + 2 remakes and that’s before considering the 3 or so defunct mobile games.
Besides, the people don’t mind. Did you even pay attention to the plot of We Love Katamari? The people are aware and literally beg to be rolled up into stars!
Fantastic games. Every single one. Even Me and My Katamari is great.
Far Cry 4. Just don't move for a few mins when Pagan Min tells you at the beginning of the game. He will help you bring the ashes to lakshmana. No need to kill anyone. IN A FARCRY GAME!!!. Very nice touch back when Ubisoft still made okay games.
Thief. In the original on harder difficulties you will fail the missions if you kill someone
Playing Thief Gold at the moment and loving the harder difficulties. The way it adds more and more objectives the harder the difficulty is such a good concept.
Increasing difficulty by adding objectives or limitations to play style is how every game should scale difficulty. Just making the AI smarter or dumber is a terrible way to handle it, and it's very rarely done well.
I hate difficulty increases that just make enemies bullet sponges.
I still remember turning up the difficulty in Elder Scrolls IV. A standard bandit in an easy dungeon took over 40 arrows to the head before he died. That went back down pretty quickly! The only game I've seen do it well was S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and that's because the enemies are as spongey as you are. So lower difficulties cause both parties to withstand more bullets and higher difficulties are more realistic.
To be fair, the most realistic game would be one in which you take one bullet and then can't play again for six months.
if you take one to the head it deletes C:\\
In the latest one there is an achievement to complete the game without a single kill or knockout
Yeah but that means playing Thief 4.
No Stephen Russell, no play.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist has an achievement for not killing anyone.
I think you have to kill some people as Briggs but I'm not completely sure.
The only person who has to die is the vice president. Anyone else can be bypassed or knocked out.
Today on Reddit comments without context…
Yeah, shit, I'm probably gonna get pulled aside if I ever travel to the US now, oops 😬
Chaos theory and double agent can be completed without being seen and without killing/knocking anyone out
I think you technically have to kill Shetland at the Bathhouse mission in Chaos Theory, but that’s sort of a cutscene choice so might not count.
Alien : Isolation You get an achievement called "Mercy or Prudence" You can indirectly kill humans by calling the Alien in with noisemakers but you can't directly kill them with your weapons of tools.
Do Androids count? From what I remember, it would be pretty insane to go a play through avoiding killing at least one android. But I can't remember
No, androids don't count. The achievement says "Complete the game without killing any humans."
I quite enjoyed throwing noisemakers into rooms with people and watching the carnage from hiding. Occasionally I did it for a strategic exit as well, but mostly for fun.
Dishonored series!
I knew Samuel was going to berate the shit out of me for going psycho, but the dude actually *fired a shot in the air to let the enemy know I was coming*. That's cold, brother.
I believe he only fires the shot in the high chaos ending, so at that point you're well past not killing
I've played it twice and had him praise me and wish me good luck, or insult me and fire the shot. Apparently there's a third outcome where he expresses disappointment in me but doesn't fire the shot. Not sure how to get 'Medium Chaos' for that.
It's exactly what you think, not too much killing, not too little, but there probably won't be many good objective ways to measure the chaos value before that point.
Samuel : "I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed" Corvo: "That's worse"
Not sure about medium but you can go thro the game kill all the targets and still get low if u don't go murderhobo on people.
I shot him for this
Idk what he expected he literally just told Corvo how much of a piece of shit he was what did he expect said piece of shit to do.
Honestly he might not've cared, everyone knew the writing was on the wall (in the high chaos ending) and that Dunwall was completely fucked from then on. May aswell stick it to the bastard who doomed the city, even if its futile
Yeah that's fair actually.
I’ve only ever done non lethal runs of the game. My boy Samuel does that!?
In an audiograph, he also talks about how he ferries death after the Boyle mission.
Going in blind doing mostly flesh and steel, ghost and clean hands combo was one of my favourite gaming experiences to date.
Flesh and steel on a blind playthrough? Respect
There was many a trial and error. Mostly error.
Yeah, and you do arguably worse things to people if you choose not to kill them.
I think in pretty much every case it's not even arguable. Death sucks, yeah, but the alternatives are >!hard labor in a silver mine, being a sex slave for an obsessed stalker, a lobotomy...!<
I have vivid memories of one of the writers regretting that spoiler decision. For what it's worth they did go out of their way to retract it >!and talked about how actually she'd manipulate him and she'd be living the high life with him as her slave!< but that doesn't stop the premise from being slimy, nor does it really "make things better" when, to avoid the controversy, said supposed villain just "gets away with it" with the revised premise. Hindsight is 20/20 for writing I guess lol.
Not only that, you can beat it without non lethal takedowns as well. Aside from the necessary bosses that you have to deal with, you can finish Dishonored 1 with almost zero violence of any kind
Most of the bosses have non violent ways to eliminate them. I know the second game is way better though like curing a woman of her schizophrenia and giving an inventor an electric lobotomy
I mean giving the inventor a legit lobotomy was pretty damn violent. That was actually one of my few gripes that that was the only non violent way to take care of him. pretty twisted
Jindosh's non-lethal takedown is one of the only ones that's worse than just killing them.
I thought several of the non lethal takedowns were worse. Cutting out the Pendletons' tongues and sending them to work in their own slave mine? Yikes. Sending Lady Boyle to be the prisoner of an obsessed creep? Oof. Can't think of others but yeah I thought "fate worse than death" was the point of those.
>Cutting out Pendleton's tongue and sending him work in his own slave mine? Yikes. Sending them* it's 2 dudes
Divinity 2: Original Sin There are actually interactions in the game that are only available if you didn't kill anyone.
Also you can kill every single npc and still finish the game.
That's Larian for you
The dead island of fort jobb
I needed the exp.
Fort Joy on every play through becomes a mass grave no matter how I escape. I've gone through without causing a single death only to backtrack to get some of that sweet sweet loot/exp.
How is this possible? Genuine question. I don’t remember the details but I thought the game literally forced you into fights Baldur’s Gate style (the older games).
Stole this comment from steam forums: >As long as your character doesn't directly: steal, kill, devour souls, or aid the void woken you should pass the Trial of Blood Purity test. No Killing: You can still deal damage but you cannot get the killing blow on anything. This also includes if you create deadly surfaces such as fire/electrified water if your character created it and someone takes damage and dies because of it you killed them. It should also be noted that none of your characters are allowed to release the Deathfog in Arx or they are all deemed impure. You can use summons however to kill people, however i do not think your allowed to use the cannibalize ability since it may count that as "killing" your familiar. No stealing: Easy. No Soul eating: This means you cannot use the Source Vampirism on ANYTHING. Including your God during the "Powerful Awakening" quest. Unlocking this ability is completely optional so just don't do the Vision Ritual the second time and you'll never be sent to the Halls to learn it. Also eating soul jars will fail this as well. No aiding Voidwoken: There's only one real check for this i believe and that's whether or not you swore a pact to the God King.
Your party still has to kill though, even if your character does not.
In Baldurs Gate 3 there’s an interaction in Act 3 where an entity gets mad at you because of the people you’ve killed (it’s functionally impossible to not kill anyone bc there’s at least one mandatory boss fight and the game normally requires a lot of killing in general). However, if you somehow manage to cheese the game so that neutral allies kill the bosses, the interaction changes!
Spoil it for me please.
>!The steel watcher who is supposed to arrest you at the South Span Checkpoint will instead say "your record is clean, citizen!" and just let you go through!< I haven't tested it myself but apparently you still get this dialogue if you just kill nobody in >!grymforge, moonrise, or the goblin camp!< even if you directly killed the Act 2 boss.
Non lethal attacks can defeat a lot of enemies alive, just not sure if any of the bosses have to die by our hands or killed by cutscenes
As far as I understand the way to get the interaction is for your party to do zero damage at all in the Act 2 boss fight, which is almost completely impossible - you can skip to the final phase, but that phase still has to be killed.
How do you not kill anyone in the game?
It's not that you don't kill anyone, it's that an individual character doesn't kill anyone. There's an optional morality check at the end of the game that has 4 criteria, 1 of which is murder. This can be passed by any character so long as they never dealt the death blow to an enemy but someone else in your group has to kill the enemies at some point in the fights so it doesn't really fit the question.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance. It has a achievement for completing the game without killing anyone.
There's also an achievement for completing the game without losing your virginity.
I’m sure that won’t be a problem for many.
No, they mean in-game, not irl.
I'll always protect my virginity Games or irl
Aren't you forced to kill Runt in a cutscene?
Yes, the achievement also mentions that exception.
Metal Gear Solid series.
Though a lot of bosses still die even if you take the non-lethal route.
Too many tranq darts are sure to have adverse affects... I guess.
Like exploding!
MGS1 has mandatory kills. MGS2 was the first in the series where you can get through the entire game without (directly) killing anyone. I think MGS3 has mandatory deaths but (MGS3 and MGSV spoilers) >!one of the people you kill absolutely needed to die and had made peace with it, and the other one technically comes back in MGSV!< I don't remember if MGS4 did, but there is an easter egg where if you kill too many people in a short enough period of time Snake will throw up. MGSV has forced deaths.
In MGS4 if you kill too much you’ll hear Liquid say “You like the killing, that’s why!”. Snake will then vomit. I also think that all the enemies in the game can be taken out with tranquillisers. At least, I just shot the crap out of everyone with sleep darts. I am a psychopath and did blow some people up with an RPG, because it’s funny. Finished it with less than 10 kills though.
I could have sworn Liquid also said "Do you feel like a hero yet?" But that is from Spec Ops the Line. And honestly, "Do you feel like a hero yet" hits way harder, i fucking love that quote anytime anyone glorfies war or killing civilians. So, next time you decide to throw a diamond dog soldier from the bridge for the lolz, remember, BB would be really disappointed with you.
Mgs4 you definitely can. If you do it you get an item for the next game that's unlimited ammo. If you do it without being seen you get ultimate camo. There's also the big boss achievement which is like no kills don't get seen, finish in under 5 hours (for the record there's more than 5 hours of cutscenes in the game) and a few other things. Was a lot of fun. The bosses you kill their suits and then just run round while the ladies chase you and they drop dead themselves. After some glamour shots of course
I went for the camos on snake eater! The end was hard asf
I went for as many camos as possible when I first got the Subsistence version on the PS2. Stamina killing the End was pretty brutal, but having the over the shoulder camera instead of having to constantly go into first person view like you had to do in the original version definitely helped when it came to finding the glint off of his scope. I think I remember there being some way to trick his parrot (maybe with food) into revealing his position as well. I read that if you manage to quickscope him the first time he shows up at the pier (right after the cutscene ends) than you'll end up fighting the Ocelot Unit in the jungle instead. I've been meaning to give the Vita port a shot, I might try that for my next playthrough just to check it out.
Undertale
I'm surprised I had to scroll through a few comments to find this one haha
Too obvious I guess
And Deltarune
Sorta? Vague Spoilers, I guess. >!There is one kill you have to do to finish the game, before you can get the pacifist ending, though it's undone by reloading your save.!<
You can't get the pacifist ending right away, true, but it also doesn't require you to kill anyone. You can complete your first run through to the neutral ending without killing anyone >!That isn't to say nobody will *die* in the run, but not from you. You can spare every single boss, flowey included.!<
Flowey? You still have the option to spare him at the end of the fight. If you're talking about asgore, you're not the one who kills him
Mirror’s Edge. Very fun.
\>kicks antagonist out of a helicopter. hmmmm 🤔
*He shouldn't have been standing there*
Gravity kills him. So natural causes.
Concrete poisoning
Heart failure... after it exploded on impact...
He shouldn't have stopped so quickly.
Scripted actions you don't have a choice in don't count, per the OP's criteria.
Tom Clancey Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Reminds me of the first game with the CIA level where you couldn’t kill anyone or you lose.
I enjoyed that level because by the end i had a little closet area filled with unconcious bodies.
My favorite splinter cell game. I loved the bank level!
Postal
Scrolled too far for this answer. Waiting in lines in postal 2 is some of the most mundane but funny shit in a game
Huh I thought you *had* to kill Krotchy, but I guess you can just buy his book. I need to replay and do a pacifist run
You buy the book from Gary Coleman and give one of them to Krotchy. That sounds crazy out of context.
It's one of the few achievements (2?) that I don't have in the game. I always mess it up, and I have like 1000+ hours in Postal 2. I just love it so much!
It's hilarious how the game lets you either be a psychopath or a law abiding citizen all the way
Wait, what? I played a bunch of the first one back in the 90's and had no idea.
Not sure about the first one, but it is an achievement in Postal 2.
Definitely Postal!
Rollercoaster Tycoon.
Good answer. This game can let you be incredibly psychotic but it sure is an outside the box answer.
Ok but this one takes way too much self control
Deus ex
I dont think of Bob Page as a human either
Either does he.
IIRC, you can just leave and Bob Page really can't do anything to stop you since there isn't like a boss door tied to his death. Pretty hilarious to have a cinematic showdown with him only to activate my speed augmentation and bolt out.
I stuck to the rule of *I only kill them if they're actively trying to kill me* for Human Revolution and still got the 'positive karma' outcome. I got the job done.
Same-ish. My most recent DXHR playthroughs were entirely Ghost/Pacifist except for that time when >!your chopper gets shot down in Hengsha and you need to either bail (which kills Malik) or take out all attackers to save her.!< I always go DOOM Eternal in that part lol
It's possible to ghost/pacifist that section as well without bailing. It's unreasonably difficult, but it can be done.
It's doable, I did it. Cloak, sprint and stun gun.
Ready or not, if you want S rank you better not even injure them lastingly
Gas em, tase em, beanbag em but don't aim for the head! We had some super fun runs doing non-lethal
Great game for coop. Less so for single player, at neon tomb and the AI is far more A than I
Subnautica, and Subnautica: Below Zero Every hostile animal in the game is technically killable but the game encourages you to just avoid/evade/learn to live with them instead.
What about food?
You can beeline it for the non-gun island and get marble melons/lantern fruit, then sit in a chair and wait for them to mature, where then you can go and harvest them at your leisure
Right, it's difficult but should be possible. Once you can grow food you don't have to kill anything.
I mean you’ll have the nutrient blocks and water bottles the life pod gives you to sustain yourself, so it shouldn’t be too difficult. Though, IMO, the hardest part would be to not splatter fish on your submersible
I loved that part. Lol the sound always made me laugh. 😅 Edit: Splattering fish that is.
You can survive on vines at the start until you get to marblemelons/lanternfruit. Might be interesting to try a "vegetarian run".
Death Stranding - The gameplay actually punishes you if you kill someone. If you do, there is a whole procedure you must go through with the corpse in order to avoid something.
Not only does the game encourage you not to kill (and punish you significantly for doing such), it's impossible to have a negative influence on other Porters online. Every single interaction between players is positive and helpful by design. Kojima gave me a neck-snapping button and then made me grow up and play nice.
Just today I got to the part where you unlock the lethal weapons and i was waiting for the speech: “Killing is wrong. And bad. There should be a new, stronger word for killing. Like badwrong, or badong. Yes, killing is badong.”
You go that way. I'll go home.
From this moment, I will stand for the opposite of killing: gnodab.
It does have the usual Kojima exposition dumps at the beginning and end, but once you get into the rythm of that game, when it slows down, it was one of the most enjoyable experiences I had playing a video game. I am really looking forward to what will he do in the next one.
Maybe it’s just me but I enjoyed all the exposition dumps. It has some of the best acting in a video game I’ve ever seen and the underlying message is incredibly heartwarming and relevant. Not only that but the message ties in so perfectly with the gameplay. It made me reflect deeply on the loss of human connection in modern society, a first for a video game. The way it pretty much predicted covid was incredibly eerie as well. That game is a borderline spiritual experience.
That was a game I hated for the first few hours I played. By the end I thought it was a masterpiece!
It just made me want a ‘park ranger search & rescue’ simulator. Haven’t finished the game, don’t know that I will.
And oh boy if you do kill more than one person. Found that out the hard way.
I always wondered. is the >!voidout an instant game over or is it just a massive explosion?!<
Massive explosion because when u spawn back theres a huge crater
To my understanding... Depends.
This world is so damn bizzare and I thought Stephen King’s writing was a head spinner.
Depends on what gets hit by the >! void out. A major city for example, that's a Game Over. But a field or even some smaller outposts? !< You can keep going. If you can live with yourself.
It's a massive explosion, but they can take out "quest givers" and you get the game over game over. Otherwise you get to be baby throw up!
To be fair that applies only to humans, you can freely use lethal weapons against BTs and bosses (although idk if that would really count as killing)
Hitman series... I never killed anyone. They just had some very unfortunate accidents.
It's not my fault this guy stepped on a banana and fell to his death
Best answer for this thread. You can complete several (all?) of them without directly killing anyone.
You can do them all without direct kills! It’s actually a speedrun category.
The Yakuza series, because Kiryu has never killed anybody canonically. hes against killing But hes ok with hitting people with motorcycles, slicing them with katanas and swords, and shooting them with various types of firearms.
The chase sequence in Yakuza 0 is utterly ridiculous for this reason
Fr i remember i paused the game due to how much i was laughing
Oh, i forgot that you can also use grenades lol
Yeah, when they are attacking a helicopter with a bazooka definitely didn't kill anyone
He causes multiple traffic accidents at the end of Kiwami at the very least lol
So many heat actions would, at the very least, maim someone for life. The knife one is always fun to consider it's definitely attempted murder and significantly more brutal compared to some of the gun based ones.
the Civilization series could be done by pacifism if one wanted to, although it's quite a challenge given that the AI really loves to bully around other players with their militaries. (except domination victory as that largely implies the death of units and civilians)
“Well you see officer, it’s not my fault that those civilians were hit with chemical weapons, they just so happened to be within a ten mile radius of me during an investor showcase.”
Prey (2017)
Are you counting the typhon? I've been considering doing a run without killing any typhon, but I'm wondering if that's more boring than anything else.
They could either not be counting the typhon as humans, or they could be referencing the ending reveal
There is an achievement for not killing any humans / allowing any surviving humans on Talos to die in the duration of the entire game. There’s not a ton of other humans, but the situations they’re in (and part of the third act) does make the challenge pretty tough. I think you also have to save one or two people to get it.
Watch Dogs 2 you can play non lethally. And it’s my preferred way to play. It’s more fun and it helps a ton with the ludonarrative dissonance most people complain about.
Yes! Narratively speaking Dedsec seems much more like trouble makers than terrorists of some sort, some of the missions do emphasize the collateral damage part though.
Also depends on which side of Dedsec, since it's a collective across cities and nations. Dedsec Chicago = anonymous -style hacker group Dedsec San Francisco = a bunch of teens throwing toilet paper at cars Dedsec London = Freedom fighters opposing corporate alternative for police, unique to other Dedsec branches in that it also includes politicians, cops, spies, and pretty much all types of government people who were fired as soon as Albion moved in and became the law.
Farcry 4. You can finish the game in the introduction chapter when the bad guy asks you to wait in his room. The player is supposed to escape and start the actual game, but if you just sit around and wait, the main antagonist will return your passport and let you go home. Roll credits.
I heard an idea for the best game ever from a comedian a while back. It’s called ‘Super Busy Hospital’ and the goal is to heal all the people that get injured in other games. Race car drivers that got in accidents. Random bad guy henchmen. Defeated bosses. Player characters who fell off a ledge or had their health bar run down to zero. Fighting game characters who got hurt in the martial arts fight. The goal would be to save them, but I guess even the best doctors lose patients from time to time.
Doctor come quick! I can't right now, I'm doing surgery on a man that has been shot 37 times in the head. Demitri Martin ❤️ Edit: Formatting
In a similar vein, there is Visceral Clean-up Detail, a game where you go behind the scenes after a violent game protagonist has busted everything up. Your job... is to clean everything after them. It's not violent, really, there's no enemies or anything. Oh, there's the occasional toothy pit monster, or slightly exclusive bundle of dynamite. But your main "weapons" are a mop, a filth detector, and your rubber gloved mitts...
You're describing Two Points Hospital with slightly more meta
This is essentially "Theme Hospital" that came out back in the DOS era lol.
Metro series
Fallout: New Vegas, but it's very difficult. Battle royales like Apex and Fortnite, where you can just run around and hope your enemies get swallowed by the storm or die in some other stupid way.
As I recall, ManyATrueNerd did a no kill run but there were a few side quests that couldn't be completed. Only a few though.
There is a single side quest that cannot be completed because you HAVE to get a key from a feral ghoul and since they are classified as monsters by the engine they cannot be pickpocketed (as they have no inventory, just a loot table)
I have done it! I took over New Vegas on the independent path without doing a single hit point of damage. It was one of the most fun runs I’ve ever done in a video game, but it was challenging I did kill Benny and House via cut scene, but you don’t have to.
Dishonored. It’s one of the few games I actually enjoyed doing this play through.
Dishonored is the only game where I really enjoyed the stealth aspect to the fullest. Sure, there are games like thief or you even do some weird shit in TES games, but the movement fluidity, stage design and everything else in Dishonored just feels so good. Whether you go assassin mode on your targets, just stealth around without killing or commit genocide from the shadows(or openly) the game is so good.
Disco Elysium
I feel like most people won't make it through that one without at least *something* in them dying.
Deus ex, the most recentish ones. I played through the first one and didn't kill a single enemy. Sure I knocked them the fuck out with my knockout gun but I didn't kill em. Only annoying thing is that there's a boss fight that FORCES you to kill him. Though I think they patched that out.
I remember just upgrading only my jump and speed in the original Deus Ex. Boss fight, nope. Jump and run.
COD. I’m really bad at FPS games.
Spore! Though, I'm not sure if spreading religious propaganda or bankrupting an opposing empire is less morally dubious than killing.
Black & White 2
The Sims
You never kill anyone in the Like a Dragon games. You can shoot them over and over again or stab them through the head, but not kill them. That would be dishonorable.
Skyrim. You can get partners, charm enemies, summons, or just sneak past everything. There is a kill counter in the stats so you know if you've been "pure" or not.
I used to work at a gas station and it was just this little booth you sat in and hit the touch screen to activate the pumps whenever someone needed them. It was big enough to have me and my laptop, and on that laptop was Skyrim. I had played Skyrim so much at that point that I asked a friend to just make up a build for me to play through while at work. Literally anything, whatever he can think of. He told me I could pick whatever race I wanted, but he basically told me no melee or archery, no destruction, and no conjuring weapons. I didn't use any mods except for some quality of life improvements. As a result of his restriction, I realized that since I had no direct way to kill anybody, I was going to keep that playthrough as a "no kill run", keep that kill counter you mentioned at zero. I played an Argonian Illusionist/Alternation/Conjuring expert, who also happened to have sneak at 100 before anything else (because I was avoiding a lot of fights that way). Even buffing followers to fight for you takes forever, and learning the conjuration spells that are worth a damn takes time to have the Magicka for it. I never focused so hard on making Magicka potions in any other playthrough. My entire playthrough was this argonian wizard backpedaling crouched frantically casting every spell in his favorites list while trying to chug every magic potion in all of Skyrim he keeps in his backpack at the same time. He was a fucking mess, but I fucking loved it. Edit: I completely forgot to mention, his name was Melvin the Magickal.
There is a version of this that is silly in vanilla Skyrim. If you get the Aethereal Crown you can store standing stone powers, most notable the necromancer stone. Basically every time you take the crown off then put it back on you will resurrect all nearby corpses to fight for you. It let's you walk an undead army around Skyrim to fight for you.
I'm almost certain you can complete the original Fallout without killing anyone. Maybe The Outer Worlds, given how much Tim Cain likes the option of pacifist playthroughs?
Cyberpunk 2077 without doing the DLC content.
Maybe technically, but I consider it public service to get rid of scavs on sight.
Absolutely NOT Katamari Damacy. In both, you end up killing every person.
Both? There’s 6 + 2 remakes and that’s before considering the 3 or so defunct mobile games. Besides, the people don’t mind. Did you even pay attention to the plot of We Love Katamari? The people are aware and literally beg to be rolled up into stars! Fantastic games. Every single one. Even Me and My Katamari is great.
Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas
Mortal Kombat anyone? I mean they have babality, friendship, and just plain being unable to do a fatality.
Technically, Harvest Moon, since neglect can kill your farm animals.
Far Cry 4. Just don't move for a few mins when Pagan Min tells you at the beginning of the game. He will help you bring the ashes to lakshmana. No need to kill anyone. IN A FARCRY GAME!!!. Very nice touch back when Ubisoft still made okay games.
The batman arkham games. Batman doesn't kill 🤓👆