10 Surprising Video Games You Can Beat Without Killing Anyone

DOOMguy cares about his bodycount.

doom pacifist
iD Software

There are certain games where you expect that a significant amount of bad dudes won’t be making it out alive.

Pretty much anything with first-person shooter or RPG on the label is likely to have you doing a lot more corpse looting than conflict-avoiding and for the most part that’s a correct assumption. That said, there are a handful of seemingly violent games that let you take the pacifist route. In these titles you can make it all the way to the end having only doled out a few bruises, if that.

It might not be easy, or more fun, but it’s possible.

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10. Splinter Cell: Blacklist

splinter cell blacklist
Ubisoft

We’ve singled out Blacklist, but this isn’t the only Splinter Cell game that will let you get end to end with your mercy-riddled heart intact.

Save for two scripted deaths where you are forced to get your hands dirty, the entirety of Chaos Theory can be completed non-violently. I’m not saying you’re going to have a way better time playing a Splinter Cell game without popping off any headshots but it does add a new interesting layer of challenge to the game, not to mention the cool trophy you’ll get for your trouble if you’re able to pull off a true Ghost run.

Aside from that concrete wondering upon your success that you might indeed be better than everyone, you’ll also get extra experience points in Blacklist for going non-lethal.

This will require you to go about your journey knocking out baddies and hiding their bodies, or, if you’re very clever, leaving the hostiles entirely undisturbed and going the full evasion route. If you move to another area while being hunted there’s a chance you’ll get Hostiles Evaded points, which actually play into the Panther playstyle and not the Ghost playstyle.

Either way those guards get to go home to their families, so for the purposes of this list, you’re good to go. Interestingly, ensuring non-lethality is totally viable was pretty important to the devs, one of whom said “People on the team have families, they have kids. They don’t want to go around making murder simulators.”

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Likes: Collecting maiamais, stanning Makoto, dual-weilding, using sniper rifles on PC, speccing into persuasion and lockpicking. Dislikes: Escort missions.