Player Beats Fallout 4 Without Killing Anything

[Luminous_Umbra]

Guys, please ... don't take the word "Pacifist" literally, for the gamer played the best he could without involving violence. In other words, he did everything in his power to avoid it, and only had the companions do the dirty work when Bethesda forces you to kill someone (aka Kellogg) despite we should of had the option to spare / forgive him. But welp, Bethesda demands you kill him due to reasons despite it should be a open world RPG where we have a say in what happens.

Heck, he didn't even use any companions. Which means he had to convince and/or brainwash strangers to turn on their allies, especially with Kellogg.

Kinda curious what he did with all the wildlife though...might have to look into this.

 

[Hawk of Battle]

He did a pacifist run in as much as the game would let him. I too would like to know why the devs made a true pacifist run impossible.

Because that would require too much effort in world building, story telling, creating dialogue, etc. Much easier to just make everything an fps forever...

 

[Revolutionary]

I don't know, I get that this is a challenge run, but if pacifism is really important to you, this probably isn't the right game for you.

 

[Buckets]

+points for creativity I guess.
Mines ain't a very pacifist thing to use, like using the minuteman artillery or the tactical nuke.
Maybe he should have used the junk jet to kill with nothing but teddies, death by hugs!

 

[josemlopes]

I guess Hitler was a pacifist during WW2

 

[Naldan]

Ha, congrats. Thinking about how

Spoiler

I killed even my own son, and feeling better after it.

But the methods is just evidence how... linear Fallout 4 in comparison to almost all the previous Bethesda titles is, not to mention all main Fallout titles.

I have completed the whole game with one ending and all sidequests available in under 60 hours. Fallout 4 is the most disappointing title of 2015 to me. This here proves it, given how much constraints he had to achieve this and additionally how shit the engine behaves when you try this.

And I'm not getting tired to tell how "shit" Fallout 4 is, in comparison even to Skyrim.

 

[blackrave]

So FO4 doesn't allow to deal with enemies non-lethally? Disappointment

And here I hoped that Mesmetron from FO3 will receive an upgrade in FO4.
(mod for multiple slave collars allowed to turn Paradise Falls into penal colony for raiders and likes of them)

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Wow, instead of a hearty "well played", most folks here would rather dismiss it and argue over their definition of the word "pacifist". Look, pacifist does mean avoiding/abhoring violence, yes, but this game was intended that players used weapons. The fact that a player completed the game, on the hardest difficulty, without using a weapon or proper companion (ie. Dogmeat, Strong, Piper, Cait, Hancock, MacReady, Preston) is an incredibly tough challenge and a cool achievement, the first we've heard about.

Stop arguing semantics and word definitions. The man did a "pacifist" run within the context of FO4, a game wherein one cannot proceed in the main quest without Kellog dying.

I would love to know how the Battle of Bunker Hill went down. Since...

Spoiler

The three major factions are battling it out, with the player presumably siding with the winner. IN a normal playthru, the player would have either chosen a side by this point, or is forced to if they have not. Did he let the game decide the faction with whom he would be siding (eg. he went with whoever was still standing), or did he use his charm powers to influence the outcome?

Anyway, kudos to beating the game in such a manner. It sounds extremely difficult and credit where it's due for beating the game with such a challenge. I'd miss Dogmeat too much. And my plasma rifle.

 

[Pinkilicious]

Guys, please ... don't take the word "Pacifist" literally, for the gamer played the best he could without involving violence. In other words, he did everything in his power to avoid it, and only had the companions do the dirty work when Bethesda forces you to kill someone (aka Kellogg) despite we should of had the option to spare / forgive him. But welp, Bethesda demands you kill him due to reasons despite it should be a open world RPG where we have a say in what happens.

this amuses me more than it should due to it being the obvious path they'd take.
I mean, you can't beat unmodded vanilla Fallout 3 without KILLING YOURSELF and that's with three very good plausible alternatives open to you and they even kinda mock it with Fawkes' refusal to enter the GECK chamber. The only way to avoid it is to convince Sarah to do it for you which is even lamer.
Also you have a very appropriate icon for this post.

Quick unrelated q to everyone, how do you make yours animated? I uploaded a gif but it doesn't move on the forums, only when I copy image from the profile. Weirdness.

So FO4 doesn't allow to deal with enemies non-lethally? Disappointment

And here I hoped that Mesmetron from FO3 will receive an upgrade in FO4.
(mod for multiple slave collars allowed to turn Paradise Falls into penal colony for raiders and likes of them)

The concept of a "Persuadatron" has existed since SYNDICATE
In 20 years time it's only come back once in highly limited fashion. (which even then requires exploitive abuse at times to function properly) What the dealio, people!
And it appeared in a game where you were encouraged/rewarded for wanton destruction most of the time, too!!!
Just don't understand what's so hard about this...especially if you've already got AI for them to do random things without your presence.
Also there needs to be options to be a 'good' slave owner or a 'good' Caesarian dictator, maybe if they ever make another Tactics game they could do that. Like being The Pitt minus The Pitt. I don't like how it's always Either/Or so often in most games lately. You only get alternative options if the game is engineered around politics itself (like Rogue State)
There has got to be a way somehow to do that. Maybe like an area with contested territory like New Vegas, but instead of being some random person, you've got rank and position in one of the groups from the start and can affect policies which will change NPC AI behaviour...something like that. There's lots of ways it could be done I'm just not sure what would be the most efficient way to do so. (Or you could even Mezz a bunch of raiders/townfolk and break away to start your own colony)

 

[immortalfrieza]

I find it funny that people are complaining that this game is making it so freaking hard to avoid killing anything when it's the first game in the series to even HAVE anything resembling a nonlethal option to deal with most enemies built into it, that being the pacify perks. Yes, other Fallout games gave you the ability to talk your way out of a few fights here and there and even run away a lot, but all of the games involved getting into combat with both mutated creatures, robots, and people unavoidably at plenty of points whether you wanted to or not.

As much as I praise Hinckley for pulling a pacifist run off to the furthest extent possible I also find it downright ridiculous that anyone would even expect or even want there to be pacifist options in a game like Fallout 4. Fallout 4 is part of a series of games about trying to survive the post apocalypse in an irradiated hellhole filled with psychotic nutjobs and mutant monsters, being pacifistic has never been the theme of the series in any sense of the word like games like Dishonored or Human Revolution were. Picking up Fallout 4 and expecting it to have nonlethal options is like picking up a game like say Manhunt and then expecting there to be the same, the expectations are utterly unreasonable to expect just by knowing anything about the game they are picking up, and if they were interested in picking up a game like that they wouldn't desire such a thing in the first place.

OT: Yeah, for a game that's all about being whatever you want or choosing which faction / group you want to side with ... you cannot choose a pacifist route. Maybe that's why Undertale is such a breath of fresh air because you have the choice to kill / spare anything you want BUT it does affect things and can alter almost any scene to change which is awesome.

Undertale is a good example of a game where it DOES make sense for the player to be able to resort to nothing but nonlethal options to deal with enemies, choices and in particular the choice whether or not to kill is the entire thematic point of the game, but it doesn't make sense with Fallout 4 because while choice IS a theme, nonviolence or even nonlethal violence isn't, quite the opposite. Being forced by really crappy circumstances to kill and dominate over others to accomplish your goals or just to survive and even coming to enjoy doing so has been the central theme of the Fallout series from the very beginning. Bethesda makes it difficult if not impossible to have a real pacifist run because NOT being able to do that is built into it's entire premise.

 

[Pinkilicious]

this amuses me more than it should due to it being the obvious path they'd take.
I mean, you can't beat unmodded vanilla Fallout 3 without KILLING YOURSELF and that's with three very good plausible alternatives open to you and they even kinda mock it with Fawkes' refusal to enter the GECK chamber. The only way to avoid it is to convince Sarah to do it for you which is even lamer.
Also you have a very appropriate icon for this post.

Quick unrelated q to everyone, how do you make yours animated? I uploaded a gif but it doesn't move on the forums, only when I copy image from the profile. Weirdness.

If you're talking about Avatars, it is based on size restrictions since Pub Members get 115 x 115 with 400 KB Avatars while Non Pubs get 85 x 85 with 120 KB as their limit. Also make sure it's a .gif file because if it's not a jpeg or .gif, it might screw with the site's requirements and not work properly.

Ah, thanks! Turns out that looks like what the problem might be. It let me upload larger than 120kb, but it changed it upon upload. I wasn't sure why the gif worked on my pc, but then I'd upload it, and it would work in the profile as I was seeing it from my cache but it ceased to work anywhere else. It turned it into a plain picture instead of animated.

Undertale is a good example of a game where it DOES make sense for the player to be able to resort to nothing but nonlethal options to deal with enemies, choices and in particular the choice whether or not to kill is the entire thematic point of the game, but it doesn't make sense with Fallout 4 because while choice IS a theme, nonviolence or even nonlethal violence isn't, quite the opposite. Being forced by really crappy circumstances to kill and dominate over others to accomplish your goals or just to survive and even coming to enjoy doing so has been the central theme of the Fallout series from the very beginning. Bethesda makes it difficult if not impossible to have a real pacifist run because NOT being able to do that is built into it's entire premise.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:Completing_Fallout_without_killing_anyone Doesn't meant it wasn't possible though.
The complaint is that it was wholly coded as impossible not that it was difficult.
New Vegas and F1 both allow full playthroughs, and the only reason you're stopped from doing it on F2 is you can't literally do anything else once you've encountered Richardson. You just get stuck there until you take'im out.
Also, like I mentioned, what they should've done is expanded the functionality of the mesmertron and slave collars, perhaps even let you build your own. So close, and yet so far...

 

[FalloutJack]

Aww, I was kinda' hoping that he was the 60 Billion Double-Dollar Man!

Oh well.

 

[immortalfrieza]

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:Completing_Fallout_without_killing_anyone Doesn't meant it wasn't possible though.
The complaint is that it was wholly coded as impossible not that it was difficult.
New Vegas and F1 both allow full playthroughs, and the only reason you're stopped from doing it on F2 is you can't literally do anything else once you've encountered Richardson. You just get stuck there until you take'im out.
Also, like I mentioned, what they should've done is expanded the functionality of the mesmertron and slave collars, perhaps even let you build your own. So close, and yet so far...

My point is that such a complaint makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER. It's like jumping into a pool and then complaining that water is wet, or sticking your hand into a fire and complaining that the fire burns you, killing in a Fallout game should be something that expected from it, it's the wrong game to expect even the option of a lack of such. No sensible person will walk into an action movie expecting to see no action the whole movie, nor will they go into an horror movie expecting to see no horror, etc. such expectations could not possibly be more unreasonable and nonsensical based on the very concept of these movies and the same goes for any Fallout games.

 

[Azrael the Cat]

I find it funny that people are complaining that this game is making it so freaking hard to avoid killing anything when it's the first game in the series to even HAVE anything resembling a nonlethal option to deal with most enemies built into it, that being the pacify perks. Yes, other Fallout games gave you the ability to talk your way out of a few fights here and there and even run away a lot, but all of the games involved getting into combat with both mutated creatures, robots, and people unavoidably at plenty of points whether you wanted to or not.

As much as I praise Hinckley for pulling a pacifist run off to the furthest extent possible I also find it downright ridiculous that anyone would even expect or even want there to be pacifist options in a game like Fallout 4. Fallout 4 is part of a series of games about trying to survive the post apocalypse in an irradiated hellhole filled with psychotic nutjobs and mutant monsters, being pacifistic has never been the theme of the series in any sense of the word like games like Dishonored or Human Revolution were. Picking up Fallout 4 and expecting it to have nonlethal options is like picking up a game like say Manhunt and then expecting there to be the same, the expectations are utterly unreasonable to expect just by knowing anything about the game they are picking up, and if they were interested in picking up a game like that they wouldn't desire such a thing in the first place.

OT: Yeah, for a game that's all about being whatever you want or choosing which faction / group you want to side with ... you cannot choose a pacifist route. Maybe that's why Undertale is such a breath of fresh air because you have the choice to kill / spare anything you want BUT it does affect things and can alter almost any scene to change which is awesome.

Undertale is a good example of a game where it DOES make sense for the player to be able to resort to nothing but nonlethal options to deal with enemies, choices and in particular the choice whether or not to kill is the entire thematic point of the game, but it doesn't make sense with Fallout 4 because while choice IS a theme, nonviolence or even nonlethal violence isn't, quite the opposite. Being forced by really crappy circumstances to kill and dominate over others to accomplish your goals or just to survive and even coming to enjoy doing so has been the central theme of the Fallout series from the very beginning. Bethesda makes it difficult if not impossible to have a real pacifist run because NOT being able to do that is built into it's entire premise.

FO1, FO2 and FONV all had pacifist options built in from the ground up.

 

[immortalfrieza]

FO1, FO2 and FONV all had pacifist options built in from the ground up.

No they didn't. They did not have any nonlethal weapons (actually Fallout 3 did, but it was just as likely to cause the heads of your enemies to explode as it was to actually pacify them) and no pacify options like Fallout 4 does. All they had was the ability to run and hide from enemies while very occasionally being able to talk your way out of a confrontation, and ultimately you are required to kill somebody no matter whose side you're on in all of those games. If that qualifies as "pacifist options built in from the ground up" then any game in existence could be considered to have pacifist options as long as you could run away from your enemies. Even if that wasn't true, it's definitely never been anything anyone could consider remotely practical to go pacifist in any Fallout game.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

(is it really not possible to skip Kellogg or pickpocket his key and access the computer?

If someone mods in fatigue weapons you probably can.(although the outer thing you need from him is not exactly pacifist friendly).

But due to how he fights, and the way his convo/attack trigger starts. I don't think you can target him or stealth before he starts shooting.
to boot, the way he fights(stealth boy), you don't have the option to pickpocket.

kellog uses a stealthboy? I never knew, I crited his face with a gaussrifle before he could even move

I mini-nuked him. Twice.

Handheld atomic missiles really make boss fights surprisingly trivial.

But I was dissappointed by the lack of general conversation options throughout Fallout 4, The original Fallout was designed so you could even defeat the final boss of the game by convincing him to stop his evil plan if you had high enough persuade/science skills, and had done a little in-game investigation. Fallout 4 always seems a little... thin on the ground regarding persuasion options.

 

[Rahkshi500]

Guys, please ... don't take the word "Pacifist" literally, for the gamer played the best he could without involving violence. In other words, he did everything in his power to avoid it, and only had the companions do the dirty work when Bethesda forces you to kill someone (aka Kellogg) despite we should of had the option to spare / forgive him. But welp, Bethesda demands you kill him due to reasons despite it should be a open world RPG where we have a say in what happens.

I don't know about you, but I find the idea of making others do your dirty work for you just as abhorrent, if not worse because you didn't want to kill anyone yourself to keep your conscious and track-record clean. It comes off as more selfish and egotistical than pacifistic.

 

[Rahkshi500]

But that's the thing- Fallout 4 wants you to kill certain things, to complete quests (especially a certain someone during the main quest for his death is unavoidable.) Also why is the guy selfish for if I may ask? Yeah he got other characters to do his work, but said NPCs were raiders / mob bosses that were trying to kill you. Convincing them to take each other out is clever, and a safe way of not getting your own hands dirty.

Trust me, if he had an alternative to spare people without killing anyone, he would. But sadly the game expects the player to go in guns blazing, or at least go stealth and pick people off. There really isn't an absolute 100% pacifist way, and unfortunately to beat the game he had to cheat the system by getting the NPCs to kill themselves / kill each other (at one point the game bugged, because you alone have to kill someone, and because he got someone else to do it- the figure stopped working and was invincible).

I'm sorry to say, but I don't know what else you'd want the guy to do. Even one of the Escapist writer's when playing the pacifist run in Fallout 3 had to take a companion to gun down certain enemies because they were required to die. The guy who did this playthrough didn't even have companions so the effort was more impressive. At least it shines light on the series that we don't have the choice to be Gandhi and some deaths are sadly, unavoidable to progress through the campaign.

I'm not calling the guy himself selfish. I'm calling the idea of wanting to be pacifist and yet getting other people to dirty their hands for you selfish. It's the idea of because you don't want to get your owns hand dirty yet make others do it for you so that you don't have to worry about shouldering the burden and can keep your conscious clear. Others have the pay the price for doing your dirty work. Funny enough, Gandhi would actually oppose to such a thing, since he consider direct violence preferable to nonviolence while not being able to risk one's life. Not to mention how it's a common accusation of hypocrisy for pacifists to let others bloodied their hands for them while not wanting to kill anyone themselves directly.

If you really wanna play the game as 100% Pacifist, that's fine and yeah, it sucks that the game doesn't allow that to be possible, I don't exactly find the alternative there exactly any better either.

 

[Rahkshi500]

.. I'm not sure what you want the gamer to do though. I get your point, and it's not like you're wrong or anything- but his objective was to be as much of a pacifist as humanly possible. Yeah it sucks he had to make others do the dirty work, but only when the game forced you to get violent with no other route to take in avoiding the bloodshed, let alone impossible to complete unless said enemy or enemies die. To me, this was a sign Bethesda kind of lied about having the freedom to do whatever you desired in the open world game like Fallout. You can be a nice human being, save farmers, gather resources to take care of your base with said followers, and improve the wasteland inhabitant's lives in general- but not having the option to spare or let everyone live is quite immersive breaking.

One of the Escapist staff members reviewed the game, feeling irked by the fact he was literally forced to kill Kellogg. Rather than giving mercy to obtain more information out of the kidnapper, or perhaps try to make the dude a follower / companion to track down the son- your only options are to kill Kellogg. If you, the player, hold no grudge against the plot motivator (aka the guy who took your son) and want to resolve things peacefully... well tough luck, the game demands that he dies. At least in games like Undertale you can basically spare everyone no matter how bad they are, or if they tried killing you.

Even in the Witcher 3 game, you can actually spare this one guy who rapes, tortures, and does horrific things to women. I mean some heavy level "jesus christ" inhuman actions to these poor women, prostitutes, and so on (including the fact he really hurt Ciri, someone Geralt considers as a daughter of his own)- but Geralt can have the choice of sparing him. So why can't we do the same thing here for a guy who kidnapped Shaun?

To be honest, I'm not sure I have all the answers either. Sorry to bring this up then. I mean, I get how frustrating it could be if you wanna literally do whatever you want but the game wouldn't allow it. Maybe it's that when it comes to things like violence, nonviolence, and the morality behind all of it, I would find it morally better to take the burden onto myself if I was forced to kill someone rather than make someone else take on the burden for me. Something like what Eddard Stark says, "One who passes judgement should swing the sword." or something like that. Though it also has me wondering if that you can have the option to spare someone, even if they might be the scum of the earth, would there be options of what you can do with them? Like if you don't wanna kill them but at the same time don't wanna have them get off scott-free for whatever crimes they committed, wouldn't there be options for things like putting them in prison or putting them to work, or exiling them with all of their powers and equipment stripped for them? I mean, I get if one wants them to live, but I also feel like at times they should earn their redemption rather than just go about as if their entire history was magically erased. And yes, I get what you mean regarding Undertale, since I played it as well though I didn't really like it, but that's a whole different subject altogether.