The gaming pacifist

(EDIT 1: Or games where the lead or protagonist doesn't kill anyone in game or in story)

A tweet popped up in my feed this morning that got me thinking about something. It was the White male protagonist bingo card by @wundergeek .

There was a post that looked at Booker Dewitt and had checked off both killing spree boxes. A small discussion reared up about exactly what/who Booker killed in the game.

Now it's clear that he killed human beings, this was unavoidable as some areas are locked off until you clear an area. But non-human assailants? This is less cut and dry.

There is honestly only one non-human creature you have to fight. A ghost.

The debate was that it's not really a killing spree if you only kill the one creature. Yes you fight it up to 3 times, but even then it survives to a cut scene. You don't kill it.

The point was put to me that you also fight ghost soldiers (resurrected by the ghost) but these are more zombies then ghosts and even then its probably plausible you could fight the ghost and not kill the soldiers.

This is where my train of thought started. Just how many games can be completed with zero casualties? Or should I say, where it's possible to play as a character and not see that character kill anyone.

It would have to be both during play and in cut scenes, sure you could personally play a game and kill nobody, but if the character then kills in a cut scene, he or she has killed and can definitely be called a killer. So I put it to you, the good and great of giant bomb. What games allow for someone or more importantly the playable character to be a total pacifist?

Now I should add some little caveats to this. 1. It has to be a game where it is indeed possible to kill (or even sometimes you're encouraged to kill) another living creature in the game. So no punchouts', or tetris', they would just be silly.

2. A game where you actually play as someone , be that a nameless hero, created character or one or more well defined protagonists please. No burnouts, the cars are empty.

3. The things you can kill have to be alive living actual things. robots may count, but only sentient ai type deals will be considered.

4. Before you say anything @danryckert , no metal gear solid 2 and 3 both dont count. You kill at least 1 person in both - fatman in 2 and another person in 3 who i wont spoil here.

Postal 2.

Dishonored :D

Deus Ex

Wait, why decide not spoil Metal Gear Solid 3, but then spoil other games in your post? =/

Erm, anyway, there's a list here.

Almost certain that last Splinter Cell game.

Pretty sure you can do Fallout New Vegas without killing anyone

Strangely enough, I'd argue for the Hitman games. I mean, obviously you've got your target/targets to assassinate, so "zero kill" playthroughs aren't possible, but if you're playing the game right and trying to attain "Silent Assassin" rating, you inherently can't kill guards, innocents, etc. As such, a "pacifist" playstyle is actively encouraged on everyone except the targets, so provided you play it this way, 99.9% of a game about a hired killer is spent NOT killing people. I'd contend that while that's not perfect, it's pretty good.

(47 checks a ton of those Bingo boxes, though.)

because theres an ongoing video series here with regards to the metal gear series. bioshock wasn't too much of a spoiler i dont think, megs 2 was a light one too. But both helped to explain where i was coming from.

Also that list allows for kills in cut scenes and bosses.

Persona 4. Also P4MC fits onto that board in only like 2 slots.

Persona 3 male MC fits into a lot of those slots, but you don't kill anyone directly in that game either.

Thief, Deus Ex, Dishonored and Alien: Isolation are the ones that immediately spring to mind. I am sure there are many, many more. It might be possible in Planescape also but I cannot remember.

@beachthunder: That list is a great start! Though the arbitrary restrictions and nonsensical bingo card seem like they're not designed to descriptively analyze games but rather to "prove" an incorrect point anyway.

Many stealth games have non-lethal options, for example, but they rarely matter or offer real choices. In Thief it's often stupid to stab a fool (noisy, leaves blood) instead of knocking them out (silent and they aren't going to get back up anyway). Deus Ex: Human Revolution has one of the silliest implementations of this. You're rewarded for not killing people even though there's no reason to kill anyone and the non-lethal animations are almost more violent and deadly-looking to begin with. You can finish Fallout without killing but in the case of a certain boss this is only achieved by driving him to suicide. I'm not sure how pacifist that is even though I obviously love the fact that they implemented that option.

Replacing death animations by characters sitting down (in Counterstrike) or sidearms with (functionally unchanged) tasers was a common way of censoring games in Germany for a while. That's how meaningful the lethal/ non-lethal distinction is. Now, searching games that allow or encourage violent conflict resolution but always offer truly non-violent ways of handling any given situation would be much more interesting I think. That one is actually hard to do and can make games a lot better. Especially if the devs have the balls to really make you question if non-violence is actually a reasonable reaction.

Examples:

DX:HR: saving Faridah Malik is very hard or impossible(?) if you don't pack heat

Alpha Protocol: pretty much any character can live or die, few are black or white

SpecOps: The Line: you are forced to make decisions so quickly that you're often not aware of all the
consequences beforehand or who's a civilian and who isn't

You kill tons of monsters in those games though. I don't think that really counts as "no killing" when half the game is combat.

Yes, but it's worth noting they never intended for you to get through the Anna Navarre fight without killing her, you have to glitch it.

@gunstarred said:

I'm pretty sure there's at least one QTE where you have to kill a dude.

Trying to find characters who didn't meet any of that criteria made me think of an example. I don't think Vincent HAS to push any sheep off to beat the game, but it is way easier.

@predator: Don't you also have to kill that Bob guy at the end, indirectly by flipping some switches or something? Or does the Helios ending not include you inflicting any harm on him?

If you tranq. Fatman in MGS2 then he's actually sleeping and not dead the last time you see him, though there is another boss that dies in cutscene even if you stamina drain them so MGS2 still doesn't count.

MGS4 I don't remember any cutscene death.

That being said the question is a little odd if you really mean pacifist then any kind of violence would disqualify, for instance the Batman Arkham games still have you punching and ruffing up dudes, so really only stealth games where you can entirely ghost the game could count. Unless I'm misunderstanding something.

@ll_exile_ll:

ok. pacifist was an incorrect term. but yes, non lethal characters.

as for stealth, mario isnt stealthy.

i think in mgs 4 the last boss fight is a kill...

@thephantomstranger: Does carrying a virus count as a kill? If so, then he killed at least two people in MGS4.

To answer your DX: HR question, I did manage to do it non-lethally while playing on the hardest difficulty setting. It took about an hour of attempts, and without save-scumming as the timing on the hardest difficulty is super short anyway. I did have to use all of my grenades and most of my ammo. Also, I did it without being seen (as I was going for a non-lethal, invisible, hardest setting playthough), but that part is a lot easier than it sounds.

And I agree with you, playing the game with those restrictions made the game actually a lot better for me, and really enjoyable !

no. That would be someone else killing through him. he doesn't get a say in it and has no way of knowing who it targets.

You can beat Fantasy Life, an ARPG, without ever swinging a weapon or firing a spell.

@jamesjeux007: Ah, very cool! I didn't have it in me to try that option intensively at the time and I have yet to replay the game. Excellent! That part played on my DX nostalgia so well. I remember being scolded and denied extra equipment in the first one after resolving one of the early missions less than professionally. Meaning I shot the place up real good!

I definitely love when games use their interactivity to portray messy situations like that. Which is also why @notnert427 is right and, of all things, a game about a professional murderer is probably one of the best examples of extreme dedication to forcing the protagonist into dangerous life-and-death situations and still offering anything from "adventure puzzle" solutions to stealth to "hiding in plain sight" all the way to full-on killing sprees. Of course by the OPs definitions that doesn't fit anywhere. Though after reading the other statements I'm even more confused than ever.

Are we sure that whatever Mario does is non-lethal? It definitely is violent. You're even being rewarded for harming enemies rather than evading them (via power-ups). And we're no longer on the "pacifism" discussion? Also, the intent of a character defines how lethal or violent the results of their actions are?

How about Desert Bus, the New York Bus simulator games, Train Simulator and World of Subways where you create a named character, often with a portrait that's mostly used for storage of user settings and statistics, but none the less a character you're supposedly playing as?

It's been a long time, but I think you also named your pilot in Flight Unlimited.

@baal_sagoth:

like i said, a game might be trying to reward you for it, I'm just asking if there's games where a character isn't violent both in game and cut scene.

Mario was just a statement of example with regards to game type , mario games aren't stealth games. It is plausible to play through mario and not kill a single enemy, but bosses would counter that as an example. Even mario is a murderer.

Luigi's Mansion is a good one, not one kill there.

As for no longer pacifism, someone pointed out violence can exist without killing, so i tweaked my description. Ultimately im just trying to find a list of games where the lead or player character doesnt kill. hurting people is ok with regards to this.

sorry chief, this wouldn't count. Like I said, it has to be a game where its generally accepted and possible to choose to kill but where you can play a character who doesn't unless you make them.

I mean one of the perceptions is characters in games are murderers and the like but its often the play choosing to engage in killing. I'm wondering where its possible to actually avoid it.

@robin_smith: Fair enough! I thought you meant to give Mario as an example for a non-violent character which seemed crazy. I'm not sure what Luigi does with the ghosts other than capturing them. Holding sentient beings (are they?, not sure) prisoner against their will would still satisfy the academic definition of violence, e.g. abusing force or power to achieve goals as a government oder institution would. Maybe he's an anti-ghost cop. But that admittedly gets very nitpicky!

Edit: I just noticed you initially claimed we where talking living things + sentient AI. Your example also doesn't follow your rule of "have to be able to kill" in the first place. Either way, I'm confused, don't mind me and proceed!

as long as they are still "alive" (or in the case of the ghosts, not obliterated from existence) its ok. this is strictly a list of games devoid of murder.

@fisk0: He specifically puts it in his first caveat:

Now I should add some little caveats to this. 1. It has to be a game where it is indeed possible to kill (or even sometimes you're encouraged to kill) another living creature in the game. So no punchouts', or tetris', they would just be silly.

Trying to think of something... Would Mortal Kombat count? You're playing as a character, you actively encouraged to "FINISH HIM!", but you don't have to.

depends on the MK game i suppose. mostly. I mean In the MK 9 story mode a lot of characters die. But the first games arcade mode its possible none do.

Well, you've got me there.

My go-to would be Hitman and MGS, so yeah.

Turning the game formula on its head, avoid killing dudes, does make for some very interesting gameplay though. I wish more devs/pubs went for it.
But these games are, by nature, harder to develop. So I can see why I'm not drowning in'em.

You could crash the bus, train or airplane. Flight simulators generally don't show the passengers on board, but the bus and train simulators do. While the games aren't graphically depicting what happens to the people on board, I think it can safely be assumed that if you crash your commuter vehicle at high speeds, there'll be casualties. Do inferred deaths not count?

Dishonored would be one of my personal favourites here. You're generally guided towards killing all of your targets, if not the other guards as well. But you can get through the game without any of them dying and all being dealt with in non-lethal ways - you can do it stealthily too, if you want to. There are a couple of cutscenes where your character is seen, but even then you don't kill anyone.

This War of Mine

The Sims, even if people act like psycho characters.

Dishonored is an interesting one, because if you take the non-lethal approach you're engaging in a much more sadistic endeavor. Killing is a mercy compared to what you make those bad guys go through.

im not sure the sims quite counts. sims can die. but 1. you dont play as a sim, more a all powerful influence on the world around them. 2. they aren't really characters in any kind of coherent narrative or path. Another reason those simulator games dont really count.

Now that I had time to go over this bingo board over Skype..

We got a bingo with Samus Aran.

Not with GTA5's Trevor.

Or the other GTA5 characters! Or Duke Nukem, Nathan Drake, the guy in Postal, etc.

Skyrim! In fact I think someone did that at least in spirit since he was more a wandering monk not trying to beat the main quest, I don't know if its actually possible to finish the main story without death but I bet you could find some creative ways around a lot of stuff (Alduin more than likely has to be killed but he is a Dragon bent of the destruction of all so he is neither human or someone to be "saved")

Did everyone already forget about mark of the Ninja? That was one of those games were not killing someone is actually a viable and interesting strategy.