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Pacifism in games

Wyatt_Derp

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Threads like this exist only to lull you to sleep, so the OP's friends can thump you in the head with a blackjack and make off with all your loot.
 

Catacombs

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Lots of stealth and running away from/past things. I wouldn't recommend playing F3 as a pure stealth game unless you are weird like me, simply because there are better stealth games, but some areas were fascinating and very memorable when played this way. I particularly recall Germantown Police HQ (where I saved the hostage) as a fantastic experience. By contrast I don't remember my combat monster playthrough at all.

Nice. I applaud the amount of patience you needed to play F3 as a non-killing machine.
 

DalekFlay

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I've only ever played the Director's Cut and have only heard good things about the changes, now I'm interested. What was made worse in that version?

Removal of gold tint makes the game look weird because it was designed around it.
Inclusion of weapon DLC completely destroys balance.
Inclusion of hacking tools throws off balance.
Missing Link DLC being in main game totally screws with end-game design.
More glitches, more stutters (on my PC at the time anyway).
Missing Link is an enjoyable little standalone you can't just jump into.
 

Alphons

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Threads like this exist only to lull you to sleep, so the OP's friends can thump you in the head with a blackjack and make off with all your loot.

Sorry you feel that way, but I really wanted to make a thread and a weekly "What's an RPG?" thread was already created.
 

Norfleet

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One of those Far Cry games can apparently be completed without any violence whatsoever, as I found out when my kid beat it by doing what it was told during the intro.
 

RK47

collides like two planets pulled by gravity
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Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
Pacifism should be rewarded with the enemy severely underestimating you. I would love it if enemies think you're THAT honorable that they agree to not carry weapons to negotiations.
Sometimes games don't even acknowledge that you've not killed anyone, so I find it kinda pointless to play the pacifist.
 

Norfleet

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Sometimes games don't even acknowledge that you've not killed anyone, so I find it kinda pointless to play the pacifist.
Most games don't acknowledge that you HAVE killed anyone, either. I mean, in this one game I'm playing, your character is a genocidal maniac that has personally caused more deaths than Genghis Khan. Does anyone RESPECT that? Does anyone CARE? No, they're totally happy to fight you to the death yet again, adding another thousand or so kills to your tally.
 

TripJack

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invisible inc, pacifism is mostly the way to go but killing can 1) save your bacon sometimes 2) become a legitimate and powerful strategy later on with the right agents/equipment and 3) be a potentially gamebreaking strategy at the beginning of the game if you take a certain starting agent
 
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Norfleet

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Personally, I think that before we worry about pacifism as an option, we should first ask ourselves what a REALISTIC number of deaths is for someone in our character's position: Tip: Over 9000 isn't it. If you have to kill more than a hundred people in the course of the campaign without specifically going out of your way to avoid any kind of violence, you've probably designed a game that features a psychopath as a protagonist. This doesn't mean you can't fill your game with a fair share of fights, but DO try to make it so people don't pointlessly fight you to the death for absolutely no good reason.

Note: Zombies, robots, and other non-living creatures don't count, the player can kill as many of those as needed. While animals don't technically count either, since even normal people probably cause the death of hundreds to thousands of animals in the course of their norma lives, animals should definitely not fight people to the death for no reason. See: GAMES WHERE WOLVES CONSTANTLY ATTACK YOU AND THEN FIGHT YOU TO THE DEATH. Real animals will never attack people and then fight them to the death unless cornered. Even wild, starving animals won't go all-in unless cornered.
 

Xeon

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Really like the main list but the honorable mentions kinda suck tho, some of the those games are very combat oriented, playing them passively by just sneaking or exploits will probably suck for enjoyment, I don't mind pacifist playthrough but at least hope the game supports it not force your way around it or something.

Edit:
Eschalon: Book II has a challenge to do things as pacifist as possible, killing less than 20 people or something.
 
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ERYFKRAD

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Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Realms of Arkania HD. But then, pretty much all today allow you to pacify your enemies. Permanently if needed.
 

Deflowerer

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I don't see much difference between killing enemies and simply knocking them unconscious in most games tbh.
 

Lemming42

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Personally, I think that before we worry about pacifism as an option, we should first ask ourselves what a REALISTIC number of deaths is for someone in our character's position: Tip: Over 9000 isn't it. If you have to kill more than a hundred people in the course of the campaign without specifically going out of your way to avoid any kind of violence, you've probably designed a game that features a psychopath as a protagonist.

I agree with this but I think plot/story goes a long way in helping to justify absurd levels of violence.

Take Half-Life 1, Freeman ends up killing probably over 200 people, but it was technically self-defence/defence of others in literally every single case. You end up getting the impression that he's not a psychopath by the end of the game despite the fact he's just spend two days running around ripping people's faces off with a crowbar and blowing their heads off with a magnum.
 

DalekFlay

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Personally, I think that before we worry about pacifism as an option, we should first ask ourselves what a REALISTIC number of deaths is for someone in our character's position: Tip: Over 9000 isn't it. If you have to kill more than a hundred people in the course of the campaign without specifically going out of your way to avoid any kind of violence, you've probably designed a game that features a psychopath as a protagonist. This doesn't mean you can't fill your game with a fair share of fights, but DO try to make it so people don't pointlessly fight you to the death for absolutely no good reason.

This was kind of funny in the new Star Wars game. Not that jedi should never kill stormtroopers, but to play that game you basically need to hunt them down and aggressively attack first. You slaughter hundreds by the end of the game, not to mention animals that are just hunting for food. Definitely a bit of a clash if you think about the movies while you play.
 

Norfleet

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I agree with this but I think plot/story goes a long way in helping to justify absurd levels of violence.
Plot/story justifies the existence OF the violence. It doesn't quite explain why so many of those humans you're engaged in violence with are willing to FIGHT YOU TO THE DEATH every time. They engage the player and then fight him the death. If shot but not in the head, they simply continue to fight until the last hitpoint, never, oh, say, falling to the floor or crawling away behind some inoffensive obstacle to lie there bleeding until the player goes away. When enemies utilize cover at all, it's merely to make the player work harder to kill them, not to actually preserve their own lives, as they possess full awareness of whether the player is still there or not, and don't simply stay there until they have missed the action and the player has moved on to something more important.

Level design simply exacerbates this: The player, for his part, is incentivized to methodically eliminate every enemy so he can explore the bizarrely laid out maze of a level to find the various colored keys to unlock a circuitous route through a poorly-designed base, instead of simply moving directedly towards a location he should probably know about. Imagine the building you probably work in is some kind of secret facility where one of the rooms holds a macguffin the player needs: How many rooms full of people would the player have to methodically go through kiling everyone in to get what he wants? Like, ONE, maybe TWO? A typical building is laid out so you don't have to go through ANY other rooms to get to a specific room unless that room is some kind of back office or a closet, in which case you go through the reception. The rest will just be corridors, probably just one or two per level.

Compare this with the typical game, in which the player is expected to go through and sweep and clear each room like a SWAT team sweeping a building for terrorists. Except a SWAT team would consist of maybe half a dozen to a dozen people, and there are maybe 3 or 4 terrorists, many of which will probably give up when confronted with superior numbers, so the average member of the team PROBABLY WON'T EVEN SHOOT ANYONE.

At least in some of these games our enemies are aliens, robots, or zombies, so the protagonist doesn't have to be too much of a psycho to methodically gun them all down.
 

Alphons

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Personally, I think that before we worry about pacifism as an option, we should first ask ourselves what a REALISTIC number of deaths is for someone in our character's position: Tip: Over 9000 isn't it. If you have to kill more than a hundred people in the course of the campaign without specifically going out of your way to avoid any kind of violence, you've probably designed a game that features a psychopath as a protagonist. This doesn't mean you can't fill your game with a fair share of fights, but DO try to make it so people don't pointlessly fight you to the death for absolutely no good reason.

This was kind of funny in the new Star Wars game. Not that jedi should never kill stormtroopers, but to play that game you basically need to hunt them down and aggressively attack first. You slaughter hundreds by the end of the game, not to mention animals that are just hunting for food. Definitely a bit of a clash if you think about the movies while you play.

I've had a bigger clash in KOTOR. When you begin your Jedi training Consular class is described as person that always seeks to end conflicts without violence- too bad it doesn't work that way most of the game.

Plot/story justifies the existence OF the violence. It doesn't quite explain why so many of those humans you're engaged in violence with are willing to FIGHT YOU TO THE DEATH every time. They engage the player and then fight him the death. If shot but not in the head, they simply continue to fight until the last hitpoint, never, oh, say, falling to the floor or crawling away behind some inoffensive obstacle to lie there bleeding until the player goes away. When enemies utilize cover at all, it's merely to make the player work harder to kill them, not to actually preserve their own lives, as they possess full awareness of whether the player is still there or not, and don't simply stay there until they have missed the action and

It's quite bizarre in Gamebryo games. Enemies often start running away, cover in fear or get on their knees begging to spare them, only to attack you a minute later if they're left alone.

Anyway, I'll be updating the list over the weekend with your mentions and some games I found (like the Outer Worlds, that made me originally think about this topic with one of it's earlier dev interviews).
 

Lemming42

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I agree with this but I think plot/story goes a long way in helping to justify absurd levels of violence.
Plot/story justifies the existence OF the violence. It doesn't quite explain why so many of those humans you're engaged in violence with are willing to FIGHT YOU TO THE DEATH every time. They engage the player and then fight him the death. If shot but not in the head, they simply continue to fight until the last hitpoint, never, oh, say, falling to the floor or crawling away behind some inoffensive obstacle to lie there bleeding until the player goes away. When enemies utilize cover at all, it's merely to make the player work harder to kill them, not to actually preserve their own lives, as they possess full awareness of whether the player is still there or not, and don't simply stay there until they have missed the action and the player has moved on to something more important.

Level design simply exacerbates this: The player, for his part, is incentivized to methodically eliminate every enemy so he can explore the bizarrely laid out maze of a level to find the various colored keys to unlock a circuitous route through a poorly-designed base, instead of simply moving directedly towards a location he should probably know about. Imagine the building you probably work in is some kind of secret facility where one of the rooms holds a macguffin the player needs: How many rooms full of people would the player have to methodically go through kiling everyone in to get what he wants? Like, ONE, maybe TWO? A typical building is laid out so you don't have to go through ANY other rooms to get to a specific room unless that room is some kind of back office or a closet, in which case you go through the reception. The rest will just be corridors, probably just one or two per level.

I think Half-Life addresses some of these points too (the marines have logical reasons for trying to kill you on sight, the facility is mostly semi-logically laid out, and the player's unfamiliarity with how best to evade enemies is explained by Freeman only being familiar with a very small area of Black Mesa) but I like what you said in the first paragraph about enemy behaviour.

Have any games ever done that, where you can shoot to permanently wound enemies or have them surrender? I know Soldier of Fortune technically has both, but wounded enemies will always eventually finish playing out their animation and then return fire on you, and making enemies surrender is extraordinarily difficult. Same for SWAT 4, where shooting to wound is basically a total bullshit mechanic.
 

Alphons

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Have any games ever done that, where you can shoot to permanently wound enemies or have them surrender? I know Soldier of Fortune technically has both, but wounded enemies will always eventually finish playing out their animation and then return fire on you, and making enemies surrender is extraordinarily difficult. Same for SWAT 4, where shooting to wound is basically a total bullshit mechanic.

Grand Theft Auto 4 (and EFLC) allows you to shoot most enemies in their limbs to permamently disable them from combat (they'll limp away or just lay on the ground begging to spare them). If you successfully shoot a gun out of their hand they'll run away.
 
Self-Ejected

RNGsus

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One of those Far Cry games can apparently be completed without any violence whatsoever, as I found out when my kid beat it by doing what it was told during the intro.
The antagonist of Far Cry 4 recognizes you and invites you to his stronghold after the bus stop terrorist attack on his goons.
 

DalekFlay

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Level design simply exacerbates this: The player, for his part, is incentivized to methodically eliminate every enemy so he can explore the bizarrely laid out maze of a level to find the various colored keys to unlock a circuitous route through a poorly-designed base, instead of simply moving directedly towards a location he should probably know about.

I like picking up and looking at everything in stealth games and "immersive sims," which often leads me to killing everyone in the level so I can walk around freely. It's usually just a lot easier than knocking them all out. Depends on the game though, and I usually do a pacifist/ghost style run my second playthrough, when I'm not super interested in seeing everything.
 

Zombra

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It's quite bizarre in Gamebryo games. Enemies often start running away, cover in fear or get on their knees begging to spare them, only to attack you a minute later if they're left alone.
I hated this. I was amazed and super excited the first time a Skyrim enemy surrendered. I still remember it visually, some kind of wizard in the last room of a draugr dungeon. This was going to be great, a whole new system of interaction and relationship building beyond kill/be killed. Nope, sure enough, he just went back to shooting me a few seconds later. Why they even left that in is a mystery to me, unless they just wanted to make me feel bad. Mission accomplished Bethesda. :cry:
 

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