I’ve beat Fallout NV as a true pacifist - no companions, no death caused by me.
It is funny, because it really doesn’t seem to fit the themes of the game to be a pacifist. You end up doing things that would (IMHO) be more fucked up ethically. It’s also hard for me to leave Vulpes alive - killing him is an every play through thing.
I’ve tried playing Morrowind and Oblivion as a pacifist. Morrowind you can get pretty far, but the Sixth House Base quest requires the death of an NPC. Oblivion… lol. You can sorta try if you don’t count dragging along companions from uncompleted quests, but that doesn’t fit the spirit of the challenge.
I wish more video games allowed you to play pacifist. I play most video games with the least violence possible, but even really well written stories like Planescape: Torment need you to solve some problems with violence.
I’ve really appreciated games like Undertale and Dishonored too.
Some of my friends and I in a D&D campaign managed to talk our way out of so many encounters, and heist our way through so many quests, that we started calling ourselves Ocean’s Five. It was some of the most fun I’ve had in that game, improving our way through heists and getting away with it.
Well, Fallout 1 definitely allows it, and I don’t believe necessitates unethical behavior in order to achieve. It’s just a challenging and rewarding questline that I wish more games would emulate.
The Deus Ex series often have pacificist playthroughs (3rd one definitely does, you can play a pacificist playthrough of the OG game with a few exceptions).
The Age of Decadence has a mostly skill check and conversation playthrough. I forget if it’s fully pacifict though.
Live a Live’s Twilight of Edo Japan chapter gives a special completion reward if you complete it with zero kills, or a full 100 kills. It’s designed in such a way that figuring out how to do the pacifist run is a puzzle you are unlikely to solve on your first playthrough.
This mechanic was actually one of the inspirations for Undertale!
As far as I know this mechanic wasn’t in the original SNES game, only in the remake.
It is in the original. For the most part, 2022 is very faithful to the original and doesn’t feature any big structural changes (apart from one new thing that’s a big spoiler), mostly just balance and quality of life improvements.
Like I said, Toby Fox openly cited this segment as an inspiration for Undertale (2015), and that came before the 2022 remake.
Dishonored can be completed 100% pacifist, IIRC
I came to say this The game actually discouraged violence. The more people you killed the more police rat swarms you have to deal with.
Styx games have rpg elements and have shadow achievements which you do not kill anyone. Dishonored i believe have the same but i don’t think those can be loosely called rpg
+1 for the sytx games. Freaking hard to be a ghost.
I believe it’s possible in Cyberpunk 2077. Blunt weapons are non-fatal, other weapons can be modified to be non-fatal, stealth is usually an option, and you can even remotely disable enemies if your hacking skill is high enough.
There are sections you can’t do alone, so you might need to be proactive about neutralising enemies before your companion does.
Yeah there is one section in the DLC that you have to work extra hard to avoid useless killing…
Tap for spoiler
Are you talking about the underground agency where they market kids?
spoiler
Talking about the section where you’re directing Reed from a distance through a stealth section, there’s a couple of spots where you can preemptively act to have Reed not just stealth kill them or smth
I think the Of Loathing games can be pacifist
Baldur’s gate 3 has only a few required kills for main story progression. Most combat can be avoided.
Not an RPG, but: In the Hitman series, you will have to kill the target, but how many non targets you kill/cleverly avoid killing is up to you.
What? Amazing! I stopped playing Baldur’s Gate because I dislike the combat. How do I avoid it?
It’s been a while and I’ve never tried a 100% pacifist run, but I think that it’s theoretically possible in Planescape: Torment (Steam, GoG).
I know for a fact that the vast majority of encounters can be skipped with dialogue, and in fact, it’s heavily incentivized because the combat system is not very good.
Related, while I’m sure it’s not fully pacifist, Torment: Tides of Numenera greatly emphasises dialogue and text descriptions.
combat system is not very good.
Fuck the final fortress with the shades….
I’m pretty sure you have to kill a zombie in the first level to escape. And I don’t think you can avoid fighting (and killing) Ravel and the Deva. The Deva I think you can maybe spare after defeating, as long as you don’t bring a certain party member with you…
There are lots of games where combat is not even an option, like Life is Strange, Before your eyes (do play this one with a camera and a box of tissues nearby), or Firewatch. But games where you’re expected to fight but can find ways around it the first example that comes to mind is Metal Gear Solid 3, you can beat that game without killing anyone, there’s even an achievement for that and one of the bosses will be particularly easy if you go this route.
Technically speaking Far Cry 5 meets this definition. At the beginning of the game the big bad guy arrests you and says to wait while he brings you the person you’re trying to save. If you sit there for 10 minutes doing nothing he returns with the person and lets both of you go. Most people just start murdering instead
I think you’re mixing multiple endings. Far Cry 4-6 all have quick endings like that but none of them I know of fit your description?
You’re correct, I had mixed up several of them in my memory. I think 6 is what I was thinking of where you can say “fuck your civil war, I’m out”
While Skyrim probably has the same issues you ran into with Fallout/other TES games, it’s quite viable to roleplay the game without doing the main quest without the game feeling empty.
I did one “playthrough” as an Orc blacksmith, with the goal being maxing out the smithing skill and crafting a dragonbone armour to present to a chieftan of one of the orc strongholds in order to join. I started out hunting deer and making leather stuff to gen enough money for food and board, working my way up, eventually venturing into dwemer ruins to gather metal. I did a handful of quests if they felt doable for a non-heroic regular dude and ran if I got into too much danger.
Strict pacifism wasn’t my goal, I was just playing as a non-heroic normal person, but I’m sure you could do something similar. You just need to abandon the main quest and set your own goal.
I once modded Skyrim to make hunger, thirst, sleep, wounds, infections, and weather as realistic as possible. Then, from nothing, set out to go dungeon diving. My guy had heard there were untold riches, and being dirt poor, it was going to be his ticket out of squalor. The amount of preperation that was needed took days. I had to build a small camp outside the entrance, catch kill and prepare foods that wouldn’t spoil. Make water skins to store enough water. I may be down there for weeks! Finally ready to go in, I have no idea what to expect, only rumors. It’s very dark (mod), but I made torches. Surprise Frost Troll. Dead. Bethesda update corrupted my modded save, but that’s ok, just another death of no one special in the frozen lands.
I need to reinstall the VR version and do a run like that.
I think your best bet would be looking into the CRPG subgenre, though I can’t name any specific examples of games with pacifist routes.
Most games require killing the end boss to finish the game, how exactly would you play around that? Or do you mean don’t kill anyone who doesn’t try to kill you?
Ideally, games where you kill nobody at all. Even avoiding killing creatures for a “true pacifist” run.
I’m just going to spoil a bunch of things, because why markdown?
There’s quite a few games where you have alternatives when it comes to main bosses - in the original Fallout ::: you can talk the Master into suicide by proving that the supermutants are infertile :::
in Planescape Torment there are multiple ways of ::: convincing your mortality to merge back with you :::,
New Vegas lets you talk down
:::Legate Lanius, at least on the NCR route:::
Jade Empire will give you a bad ending
:::where you surrender to the Glorious Strategist in exchanged for being fêted as a hero:::
even Fallout 3 will let you
:::talk Colonel Autumn into surrender for like no reason at all:::.
I’d really like that to expand into video games having killing “mooks”/generic enemies be more of an action with consequences. Undertale does a good job of that -
:::if you kill any monsters, even if you spare all bosses, the ending still mentions that there are some hard feelings towards you.:::
Spec Ops has no “pacifist option” but also makes you realize that
:::you were slaughtering American soldiers and innocent civilians because you were going insane:::.
The default problem solving strategy in most games seems to be violence, and that breaks my immersion. The last time I was in a physical confrontation with anyone was fighting my sister in high school - I’ve certainly never killed anyone.
Spec Ops has no “pacifist option”
I mean, the whole point of the game is that you could have not killed anyone, you could have stopped playing, you choose to keep playing, you choose to kill all those NPCs, the game never forced you, turning off the game was always an option.
All those games you listed are violence centric, so I imagine the non-violent route isn’t as satisfying. I tried to finish Dishonored (not really an RPG) without violence, but most of abilities involve violence and getting caught just meant waiting for them to kill me instead of fighting back. The gameplay just isn’t optimized for it like something like Thief is.
There are games designed for non-violence where violence simply isn’t an option, such as Disco Elysium or WanderHome. Searching specifically for games without violence is probably a better option than finding games where nonviolence is an option, unless you’re specifically looking to find clever ways to play games non-traditionally.
