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.
Sil (specifically Sil-Q, the most modern fork) is a great Tolkien-esque roguelike in the vein of Angband where pacifism is a first-class citizen. You get a lot of XP just by observing hostiles from the shadows. I highly recommend it!
There are some fun ways to complete some Hitman missions “without killing anyone”, just by fiddling with the environment so that the target coincidentally dies “by accident” later on. You can even get one of your targets in Hitman 3 to commit suicide.
It’s mainly just talking to people, but if you want to fight as few times as possible, you probably need to know the game or tons of save-scumming. You’ll also have to be ok with just missing a bunch of stuff, or pick and choose your fights, which again, needs prior knowledge.
I don’t think it’s a good way for a first playthrough.
IIRC there are six fights you always need to do (two of those in the tutorial and another shortly after, although technically you can use glitches to skip these). But if you only wanted to do these fights, you’d basically do an evil playthrough and miss most of the game, especially Act 1 and 3. And if you’re not talking to people, save-reload the correct dialogue choice, you would just sneak around everywhere, trying to avoid enemies, constantly saving and reloading, because you were spotted.
If you add a handful of boss fights, a good run is possible, but still, there’s going to be a lot of sneaking around and save-scumming.
Fairly certain the NPC in Morrowind could theoretically be killed by a combination of his own drain health spell reflected back at him and/or - once he’s out of magicka - dying to fire shield.
In Morrowind, you have to kill a ghost to please the Urshilaku, Dagoth Gares for the Sixth House Base, Dagoth Vemyn for Sunder, and Dagoth Ur/the heart. I guess you could probably cheese reflect spells, but that doesn’t feel quite “true pacifist” to me - just like dragging Eridor everywhere in Oblivion doesn’t quite feel like “pacifism.” You’d also have to do a lot of leveling/side quests to get the Hortator/Nerevarine skip to avoid the inevitable slaughter of Venim, Gothren, the bad Erabenimsim, etc (it’s annoying, Gothren stalled out my “no inventory” run and working on the skip took 5ever)
You could trade the ghost and Gares for Vivec if you wanted, and then not have to do the leveling/side quests.
In Nethack, you can fully complete the game as a pacifist, although it’s VERY hard and the game is already hard to get into to begin with. In that case, you are only allowed to indirectly kill enemies by having your pet(s) kill them or by using spells which make enemies attack themselves. Or simply by avoiding enemies completely. Playing as a healer or wizard is the easiest option, but still very hard.
The game rewards this and other conducts (= supported “challenges”) by mentioning it in the very end after you’ve ascended.
That’s not so bad. The good news is that the game gets easier the farther you go. The endgame is the easiest part. The bad news is that you still need to know about a lot of the enemies, items and potential situations that can occur and how to handle them. The most important thing is to gather what’s commonly called an Ascension Kit, which is an approximate list of items you pretty much should have in order to win the game because then you can deal with literally every enemy and situation (unless you make a stupid mistake). So you need to know what those items are, how to get them, how to identify them in the game and not waste them, and things like that. You can get somewhat far just through sheer luck but you’ll never make it through if you play blindly (don’t read any tips or spoilers) or just rely on luck.
Not an RPG, but in the Thief series the hardest difficulty usually means that you aren’t allowed to kill anyone. Many people even try to play the games as a ghost. Meaning the only sign of their presence after leaving is the stuff they stole. Every door has to be closed and locked again. Keys stolen from guards have to be returned (in lieu of a game mechanic for this you have to lay it on the ground behind them).
People do challenge runs of the Gothic games as pacifists. So it isn’t part of the games but doable with some shenanigans.
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.
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…
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.
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.
There’s a skill tree, equipment (not clothing/weapons like most RPGs, but still equipment), and crafting. That’s enough to make it an RPG mechanically.
There’s also the perspective definition. You are embodying a person separate from yourself and you are expected to make choices as them. Textbook RPG.
Disco Elysium? More or less entirely conversation-driven RPG about an alcoholic cop who drunk himself to submission so hard he forgot who he is, hence developing him back with skillpoints. Off the top of my head there’s like one combat situation which you can talk around if you’re so inclined.
Otherwise, it’s been said many times that “Planetscape: Torment” is similar … ish. Not the setting, but mechanics, apparently you can entirely go through the game without combat - but that’s not to say there’s not going to be bodies - or so I’ve been told, haven’t played the game to completion, only dabbled the beginnings.
So, these suggestions are with grain of salt, obvs. But afaik both are pretty high up on the rpg shelf.
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!
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.
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Sil (specifically Sil-Q, the most modern fork) is a great Tolkien-esque roguelike in the vein of Angband where pacifism is a first-class citizen. You get a lot of XP just by observing hostiles from the shadows. I highly recommend it!
Also forgot to mention the latest version has tiles support that looks like this:
So you don’t have to play with ASCII graphics. ;)
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.
There are some fun ways to complete some Hitman missions “without killing anyone”, just by fiddling with the environment so that the target coincidentally dies “by accident” later on. You can even get one of your targets in Hitman 3 to commit suicide.
What? Amazing! I stopped playing Baldur’s Gate because I dislike the combat. How do I avoid it?
It’s mainly just talking to people, but if you want to fight as few times as possible, you probably need to know the game or tons of save-scumming. You’ll also have to be ok with just missing a bunch of stuff, or pick and choose your fights, which again, needs prior knowledge.
I don’t think it’s a good way for a first playthrough.
IIRC there are six fights you always need to do (two of those in the tutorial and another shortly after, although technically you can use glitches to skip these). But if you only wanted to do these fights, you’d basically do an evil playthrough and miss most of the game, especially Act 1 and 3. And if you’re not talking to people, save-reload the correct dialogue choice, you would just sneak around everywhere, trying to avoid enemies, constantly saving and reloading, because you were spotted.
If you add a handful of boss fights, a good run is possible, but still, there’s going to be a lot of sneaking around and save-scumming.
I think the Of Loathing games can be pacifist
Fairly certain the NPC in Morrowind could theoretically be killed by a combination of his own drain health spell reflected back at him and/or - once he’s out of magicka - dying to fire shield.
In Morrowind, you have to kill a ghost to please the Urshilaku, Dagoth Gares for the Sixth House Base, Dagoth Vemyn for Sunder, and Dagoth Ur/the heart. I guess you could probably cheese reflect spells, but that doesn’t feel quite “true pacifist” to me - just like dragging Eridor everywhere in Oblivion doesn’t quite feel like “pacifism.” You’d also have to do a lot of leveling/side quests to get the Hortator/Nerevarine skip to avoid the inevitable slaughter of Venim, Gothren, the bad Erabenimsim, etc (it’s annoying, Gothren stalled out my “no inventory” run and working on the skip took 5ever)
You could trade the ghost and Gares for Vivec if you wanted, and then not have to do the leveling/side quests.
In Nethack, you can fully complete the game as a pacifist, although it’s VERY hard and the game is already hard to get into to begin with. In that case, you are only allowed to indirectly kill enemies by having your pet(s) kill them or by using spells which make enemies attack themselves. Or simply by avoiding enemies completely. Playing as a healer or wizard is the easiest option, but still very hard. The game rewards this and other conducts (= supported “challenges”) by mentioning it in the very end after you’ve ascended.
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I’ve played nethack for 20 years and have never gotten further than the Castle :(
That’s not so bad. The good news is that the game gets easier the farther you go. The endgame is the easiest part. The bad news is that you still need to know about a lot of the enemies, items and potential situations that can occur and how to handle them. The most important thing is to gather what’s commonly called an Ascension Kit, which is an approximate list of items you pretty much should have in order to win the game because then you can deal with literally every enemy and situation (unless you make a stupid mistake). So you need to know what those items are, how to get them, how to identify them in the game and not waste them, and things like that. You can get somewhat far just through sheer luck but you’ll never make it through if you play blindly (don’t read any tips or spoilers) or just rely on luck.
Iirc, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided can be completed as a pacifist - and you get an achievement for that.
Not an RPG, but in the Thief series the hardest difficulty usually means that you aren’t allowed to kill anyone. Many people even try to play the games as a ghost. Meaning the only sign of their presence after leaving is the stuff they stole. Every door has to be closed and locked again. Keys stolen from guards have to be returned (in lieu of a game mechanic for this you have to lay it on the ground behind them).
People do challenge runs of the Gothic games as pacifists. So it isn’t part of the games but doable with some shenanigans.
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.
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…
Related, while I’m sure it’s not fully pacifist, Torment: Tides of Numenera greatly emphasises dialogue and text descriptions.
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.
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.
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+1 for the sytx games. Freaking hard to be a ghost.
Dishonored is an RPG. It also adjusts the world based on your body count, with corruption getting worse as you kill people.
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There’s a skill tree, equipment (not clothing/weapons like most RPGs, but still equipment), and crafting. That’s enough to make it an RPG mechanically.
There’s also the perspective definition. You are embodying a person separate from yourself and you are expected to make choices as them. Textbook RPG.
Disco Elysium? More or less entirely conversation-driven RPG about an alcoholic cop who drunk himself to submission so hard he forgot who he is, hence developing him back with skillpoints. Off the top of my head there’s like one combat situation which you can talk around if you’re so inclined.
Otherwise, it’s been said many times that “Planetscape: Torment” is similar … ish. Not the setting, but mechanics, apparently you can entirely go through the game without combat - but that’s not to say there’s not going to be bodies - or so I’ve been told, haven’t played the game to completion, only dabbled the beginnings.
So, these suggestions are with grain of salt, obvs. But afaik both are pretty high up on the rpg shelf.
Planescape Torment yes can be pacifist-ed, except for killing a zombie at the very beginning of the game.
Then again, killing/death is a bit strange in this game, so…
can you even kill something that’s already dead?
But tbh, only played some of the beginning (edit: and remember even less). Should actually play it through.
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.
Disco Elysium can totally be pacifist
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because the OP does