Comment by stevenwoo
1 day ago
If I am remembering correctly, I felt terrible after completing the first mission but that may have been the point - make you think about what you are doing. It was presented to the player as authentic threat, then when you get to end you are told it was a test but in my playthrough I killed all the “bad guys” on the way, and could have spared their virtual lives by sneaking around and knocking them out.
Postal 2 can be played through without ever hitting anyone, which I've done for fun. Although it's the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do there, which is the joke.
Haven't been able to repeat that in Deus Ex, you can't play through the campaign as a total pacifist, and Carter explains as much right at the beginning.
I vaguely remember doing a self-challenge pacifist run... I think I had to move all the unconscious bodies on the PCRS Wall Cloud up to the dock, because otherwise, I would be indirectly responsible if it sank while they were unable to evacuate.
Sure, I've done at least a dozen of less-violent runs (being addicted to this game and a couple of others), but you still can't get though it without ever killing anyone, at least not without hacks exploiting NPC pathfinding bugs, and the game still treats characters like Anna as dead even if you work around it.
100% of regular NPCs can be spared IIRC.
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There is not a big difference between unconscious bodies and dead bodies in the game, after all, they never wake up. The real challenge is playing without harming anybody, which is possible up to one or two specific situations.
Or were there unconscious bodies on the ship from before your arrival? I do not remember that anymore.
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It’s been years since I played, but I believe they were a real terrorist attack? It was a test of your capabilities, but not a false flag.
It was a real attack, but the troops were told to pull back so JC could be tested.
One of Deus Ex's main flaws in my book is that they didn't really keep up with this after that first mission - you still have the choice to be lethal or non-lethal, but I don't recall the game really reacting to the choice later on.
Wow, so same. I spent the whole rest of the game (and generally ever since) trying to max stealth and nonlethal gameplay