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scifista42

FPS-like games that don't encourage any kind of violence?

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Is there any game that plays like a first person shooter, but doesn't feature anything what can be considered violence? In that manner that a hypothetical pacifistic person, who believed he was actually in the game, could play the game. Keeping the gameplay essence of a shooter is important though.

Destroying entities like robots or even abstract mindless shapes counts as violence. Non-lethal harms and entrapments count as violence as well. Amount of realism doesn't matter. You can also mention Doom mods if you know of any.

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"7th Guest" comes to my mind, however you don't move freely in the game the way you do in FPSes. It's still a first person perspective game though.

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Jeez. Well, in Chex Quest you "zorch" the aliens to "another dimension," but that's just an obvious violence stand-in. The first person graphics that lots of adventure games have don't really fit the bill because you don't get to move freely like you would in a shooter.

Yeah, I have no idea. That's really too bad, because one of the best things about games is getting to explore a new world, but it seems like worlds aren't marketable unless there's something in them you can kill, and it isn't easy to get away from those violent mechanics and themes and still have something engaging.

EDIT: Antichamber. There aren't even any turrets to knock over.

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You don't have to burn the Marching Band in Postal 2. Or anyone else for that matter. Granted, it doesn't encourage it since you'll just get slaughtered by the end.

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rf` said:

Super Noah Ark 3D video

Nice, but the violence here is at least debatable. Shooting goats to make them fall asleep? And they hurt you. Also:

Patrol1985 said:

"7th Guest" comes to my mind, however you don't move freely in the game the way you do in FPSes. It's still a first person perspective game though.

In fact I didn't want just a game with first person perspective, but also with some non-violent equivalent of shooting. Not that much of puzzling. But thanks for mentioning the game.

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The gameplay essence of a shooter is positioning your avatar so as to place moving targets in the center of the screen, and pressing a key/button when things are lined up appropriately. (With some allowances for subtleties like leading shots, parabolic trajectories, radius area effects, and non-shooting tricks like laying down mines or telefragging.)

So, there's not much else you can do with a shooter than combat or simulated combat. Feeding animals (like in Super 3D Noah's Ark) or teleporting aliens (like in Chex Quest) is just a non-violent disguise on something that is still patrolling mazes to neutralize hostiles. Would a paintball game (so you can simulate simulated combat) count as violent or not? Extreme Paintbrawl is too unplayable to be considered a game so the question remains rhetorical.

What you could do would be a photographer game. The fundamentals (get the target in the center of the screen, and press the button then) remain the same, but this is really non-violent. In fact, the term "shooting" is even used for photography too. You could imagine edutainment games for kids ("find and photography a duck! No, that was a chicken, try again! Good, that was a duck! Now find and photography a sheep!") based on this premise; and I'm sure a die-hard film photography simulator could get a nice little niche market, but I'm not sure I can see a broad market appeal to the idea. In Beyond Good and Evil (that French game with the green-lipstick girl) you could take photos of various critters (including the monsters you had to fight) for bonus points, but it wasn't the core of the game.

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doomgargoyle said:

Where can i buy Super Noah's Ark 3D for the pc nowadays?


It's near impossible to find a physical dos copy of Super Noah's Ark these days. There's plenty of SNES copies on eBay, although you'll have to be willing to spend $150+ because they're quite sparse.

As for a non violent FPS, i don't really think there are any. I've witnessed segments in some games that utilize first person view, one that doesn't involve killing. Toy Story for the Genesis/Megadrive is an example of this, but 3/4 of the game is 2d perspective.

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Memfis said:

uh portal? haven't played it but I think it doesn't have monsters, etc.

The knocking over of sentries might classify as some kind of violence according to his definition. Also they tend to shoot at you a lot.

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I think sport/recreational accuracy shooting isn't violent... but wouldn't be very interesting in a computer game...


You can probably play some FPS games in pacifist style.. The enemies might still try to kill you.. if they see you.

I think I saw some pacifist screenshot walkthrough for Deus Ex somewhere, but it probably involved using the stun weapons...?
It did have some elaborate crate stacks made around some of the bosses, so that they can't do anything to player...

Me: I'll take the GEP Gun.

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Memfis said:

uh portal? haven't played it but I think it doesn't have monsters, etc.


You haven't played it? Valve even gave it away at one point!

Anyway, Portal has its share of woman-vs-machine violence.

Here's the game that inspired half of Portal 2. It does what most FPS-games do when they're not being violent: becomes a platform game.

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Perhaps Thief: The Dark Project/Gold and The Metal Age? You can engage in combat, but it's draining, very unrewarding, actively discouraged, and even disallowed on Expert difficulty. There's only one mission in Thief 2 IIRC where it's required to knock someone out (barring the first mission on Expert mode, which I always thought that objective was stupid since you're not kidnapping someone).

The sword can be used to cut open tapestries to reveal hidden entrances, and the bow has many arrows for navigational purposes only. The rope arrow allows you to climb to higher places (provided it's a soft enough surface to stick), the moss arrow allows you to quickly and silently move across formerly noisy surfaces, the water arrow allows you to put out torches so that the guards can't see you.

Probably the closest you're gonna get to a non-combat FPS, besides something like Portal.

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There was a game called Myst which looked like an FPS but was actually an adventure/quest game featuring a character who became stranded on an island after falling asleep, or something like that.
Then there was also another similar game called The Return To Zork, where you just walked around and talked to people and collected items while the camera was always in first-person perspective.

I'm sure that there are YouTube videos of these games, but I'm just too tired and lazy to find them for you and link them here ATM.

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Gez said:

Wisdom Tree still exists, so you can buy it from them.


I'm more impressed they're still around to be honest.

If people don't mind digital downloads then that's great. Sure beats paying a ridiculous price for a physical.

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Gez said:

Wisdom Tree still exists

Huh, strange. I didn't think there'd be a big enough market to keep them alive. Even though I'm not remotely interested in their catalogue (beyond the novelty of a Wolf 3D engine game), congrats to them for staying afloat, I suppose.

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188DarkRevived said:

There was a game called Myst which looked like an FPS but was actually an adventure/quest game featuring a character who became stranded on an island after falling asleep, or something like that.

Umm, adventure games with pre-rendered graphics are hardly comparable to FPS. Unless you're talking about realMyst, a 3D remake of the first Myst.

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Trying to find video game, let alone an FPS, without violence?
Good luck. You aren't able to sit down and have lunch with all those demons because it's just not feasible with what we've got to work with technologically. There's an entire video somewhere on YouTube going into detail about this. The closest thing we've got are Facade and Cleverbot, and each is either broken or being busy making no fucking sense.

In nature, it's hard to find someplace without violence of some kind, unless there's nothing even there. Even plants will kill each other, with parasitic mistletoe, or carnivorous plants taking down creatures as big as mice.
Just by living, your immune system and bodily functions have destroyed countless microorganisms, some of which were hazardous to you.

Hell, let's go even deeper, what about the chemical reactions that sustain you? You're tearing apart bits of other organisms and assimilating them into yourself, and in turn tearing apart chemical compounds and reforming them to suit your own needs.

And if changing things is considered violent in this context, then the sun is the most vicious and cruel object in the entirety of the Solar System. Turning Hydrogen into Helium and releasing incredibly deadly amounts of energy. It could literally kill anything and everything. Including Chuck Norris, why do you think he lives down here and not up there?

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Not QUITE within the parameters of the OP, but Mirror's Edge doesn't exactly encourage violence though sometimes it's unavoidable. Pretty fitting allegory for life in general.

[edit]I like Gez's idea for a photography game. Especially with the near photorealistic scenes some games are displaying these days it could be quite interesting.

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Wasn't there a pokemon game where all you did was take pictures of them?

I also vaguely remember a PS1 game based on the cartoon Dexter's Lab with a first person dodgeball mini-game if you don't consider dodgeball to be violent.

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flubbernugget said:

Wasn't there a pokemon game where all you did was take pictures of them?

What you mean pokemon snap? I hated that game as a kid!

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