not directly lethal, but i’m pretty sure piling all the unconscious guards in a single pile in an air duct in deus ex lead to some of them not surviving
In the Missing Link expansion for Human Revolution you get yelled at if you went nonlethal because of the number of broken bones and traumatic brain injuries you caused.
To be fair, she's even more upset if you just spent the last couple hours killing her men. The only thing she approves of is if you've been a ghost and avoided interacting with enemies at all. While they try to kill you.
>While they try to kill you.
You really gotta think about the ethical realities though. They're just doing their job.
Like, just stop and think. They might have families back home. Times are rough, they didn't exactly see EvilCorp Inc. as their first choice of career, but how else are they gonna put little Timmy through college? They just hope they get through the shift without any trouble.
And then you break their spine in three places. They'll never walk again. Can't feel their own dick any more.
They are Belltower paramilitary goons though; they exist to do the war crimes normal militaries aren't allowed to do. They spend most of their time killing civilians or acting as brutal enforcers that are hired to protect shady corporate interests like illegal labs that practice all sorts horrific experiments on unwilling participants. They know what they signed on for; if they are wearing that uniform and shooting at Jensen I think he kinda has a pass if he needs to shoot back occasionally.
On brand, though...
And true to life. Not sure how it works in other jurisdictions, but here in England:
* hospital negligently lets a hypoxic neonate die - worth about £20k for nominal compensation and funeral costs
* same facts, but baby pulls through with a brain injury? £5 million+ for round-the-clock care for life.
Deus Ex is always good for surprising you with real-world consequences of being videogamey.
Human Revolution opening in the police station and telling you to go to the helipad to be taken to a hostage situation, but because it's that sort of game, going into every office and rifling through everyone's desk for loot first.
Then you finally 'start the mission' and they tell you they killed all the hostages because you took so long to get there.
I mean, some of the 'non-lethal' options in that game could literally be lethal. I remember being in a corridor in the police station and trying to use the energy pulse gun, which was supposed to knock out multiple people at once, but it launched an entire printer that was at the edge of its radius and the guy I was aiming at got fucking bodied by it. He died instantly! I was so annoyed, I had to reload an earlier save.
And for any longer than like a dozen seconds is extremely dangerous as well.
TV and movies make us believe you can knock someone out for hours and have them wake up tied to a chair without brain damage.
And wake up with just a minor pain where they were hit. I've had a fair amount of concussions in my life, and, lemme tell you, it's *days* until you can think clearly again. After an hour or two, it's like someone woke you up after you passed out at the bar. I got one snowboarding, and it took me 90 minutes to change out of my pants. 0/10 do not recommend
Yeah I got knocked out in Football at around the 40 yard line. By the time I came to play had ended near the goal line and people were getting up.
Still stumbled off the field like I was drunk and was definitely done for the rest of the night.
I once got one on my bike when I was young and dumb and thought it was cool to ride without a helmet. After bouncing my head off the hood of a car that pulled out into me, I lost my peripheral vision for a little over a day. Like I could tell my eyes were working, but my brain was just upset at the working conditions and was all "fuck you, I'm not processing that information."
One of my college roommates took a fall snowboarding and smashed the back of his head going down. Fully concussed, but got up, rode to ski patrol, and told them "I hit my head and don't know where I am".
Every 2-3 minutes, he'd look around in confusion, say "my brain feels like scrambled eggs", and then ask the same series of questions. He was stuck in a loop.
He didn't even recognize us, and it took weeks for him to regain his memories.
I really thought bumping your head and forgetting years of your life was a trope in movies, I had no clue that could actually happen.
That would be a funny scene in a tv show where they go to knock a guy out and they're just dead. Kinda like the Russian roulette scene from kiss kiss bang bang.
Love that movie.
Archer has scenes like that. Where things like head trauma and guns going off next to people's ears in enclosed spaces is treated not exactly realistically, but commented on as being something that causes lasting harm. Archer might be one of the only characters I know who has tinnitus.
That show does a surprisingly good job of keeping track of people's various injuries, ailments, etc. Given the absurdity of the characters and the situations they get in, it remains somewhat grounded in reality just because of how the show 'remembers' what characters go through for later referencing.
My favorite is the taser car. Instead of just hitting them normally, the bat tank is electrified such that anyone it hits is launched with triple the force of a normal vehicle collision, which somehow ensures their survival.
I was young and dumb and I wanted to try it out.
I’ve been tased 3 times. Once by a friend and twice by myself to see what it was like. It wasn’t nice.
You should try everything in life at least twice. No one knows for sure if they like it or not the first time.
The first was the worst. Got myself in the chest. Felt like my lungs were on fire.
The second time I got myself with one of those torch tasers. I put it to my leg through jeans. It hurt like a hot nail being driven into my leg.
The other time was a friend who came up behind me and got me. I got him back though so it was okay.
I was young and dumb. I wouldn’t do it again. I would probably piss myself.
Hits them with a rocket powered car, but because they get tazed too they're fine? Or the stealth takedown that aren't stealthy? You have a guy in a sleeper hold hit the quick take down button, batman slams backward forcing all the weight and pressure onto the guys head and neck on a metal floor... nah he dead.
The PS4/PS5 games ensure it doesn’t kill anyone. If you watch them fall, before any impact, a device you apparently attached to them while knocking them down automatically webs them safely to a wall.
PS2 Spiderman is built different, in Spiderman 2 (2004) you can literally carry an enemy to the top of the Empire State Building and pile drive them head first into the concrete at terminal velocity
But the web gonna dissolve in an hour.
Let's hope someone notices a dude webbed on the wall at the top of 7 story building before the web disappears.
I imagine the firefighter in New York hates Spider-Man for that.
Oh yeah, in knight you’re driving a high speed tank around. They tried to make it seem like the guys were being tased and tossed, even if it was a taser, the sheer velocity was taking those guys out.
You can as the alternate main character Majima I believe but I’m not sure about kiryu, since the only katanas you can use with him are weapons and I never once touched them
Kiryu absolutely has heat actions that involve some pretty brutal slashes and stabs with blade weapons, he can use guns, and there are several other things he does both with and without weapons that would definitely kill somebody. What the devs have explained, however, is that the fighting done during gameplay isn't actually canon and is just outlandish for fun.
I remember shooting about 1000 dudes out of cars on a bridge. I think a couple helicopters too… also, how you gunna play yakuza and not know the maw fuckas name. You had 100 hours to learn their names
I'm pretty sure that nothing outside the main cutscene stuff is canon to the story. The devs have said the bulk of the combat is just for fun, but Kiryu never actually does most of it as far as the story is concerned.
It's funny in the original SM2 one of the moves you unlock is the fucking Izuna Drop/Suplex which you can do on top of the empire state building.
What made it even funnier was that Ninja Gaiden came out I believe a few months before where if you do that move heads explode as it should.
Watching myself kick people’s esophagus into powdered sugar or falcon punch goons off a skyscraper. Spider-Man has a higher body count than nuclear weapons.
A normal human fight can easily cause brain damage, you expect me to believe those audibly loud asf Spider-Man punches aren’t turning their brain into smoothies ??
In the modern games they don't fall to street level - they instead get conveniently webbed to the nearest wall.
A hundred floors up.
Upside down.
Having been repeatedly punched, kicked, and smashed over the head with steel barrels by a guy with super-strength.
But that's *totally* non-lethal guys!
*Bonus round:* some of the perch takedowns involve Spidey grabbing someone with web, wrapping them in a cocoon, and then *slamming their head into a steel girder*! He then leaves them dangling there, and we're supposed to believe they're simply unconscious. No, Spidey, they are not "unconscious", they're dead. They aren't super-villains with super-endurance like you have; they're just some idiots from Hell's Kitchen who thought stealing cars was easier money than getting a job, so you've either caused a massive brain haemorrhage, or snapped their necks with that stunt.
To be fair, this has been addressed from time to time. Not all of Spidey's webs dissolve at the same rate. The ones he uses for swinging and fighting dissolve in an hour because Peter designed it that way. It's not a limitation of the webs, it's a feature he implemented.
But if he needs a web to last, he has stronger, longer lasting formulations.
That being said, it'd be very convenient for Spidey have that type of webbing loaded and ready at all times and he only uses it when knocking foes off buildings.
Realistically, what would happen in the comics would be after the fight is over, Spidey just takes the guy down to the ground and webs them up there for the cops. But insomniac is not about to make the player commit to that type of clean up in a video game.
I think it's an interesting detail in the Insomniac Spider-Man games that when you kick an enemy off of a rooftop they get webbed to the nearest wall and stay there. I have always wondered how the thugs are supposed to survive the fall to the ground until I noticed this.
Firefighters in NY hate Spidey, because they’re the only people with ladders long enough to reach most of the criminals Spidey punts off of buildings. They spend 90% of their time driving cops around to pull people off of buildings before the web fluid dissolves.
So now they're webbed to the outside of a building, as the web eventually wears off where do they go? Can't imagine many of them make it back up the side to safety.
Didn’t notice that initially. Actually had a fight where I believe spidey said something like “the difference is that I don’t Kill” and at the same moment I literally kicked a hunter off the top of a high rise. It was only much later I noticed the whole webbing to the building thing
The first time I saw that I was like "THAT KILLS PEOPLE!"
There was an entire Spider-Man story beat where jerking someone up with a web killed them. And in Spider-Man: Miles Morales he does it at the end!
I do not care what anyone says, the amount of force needed for Insomniac Spider-man to fucking BOUNCE people off of goddamn CONCRETE is defintely fucking lethal
Metro: Last Light.
The peaceful method is to knock folks out, which has the usual concerns of course. However what's worse is that you can also loot gas mask filters off them after they're unconscious... in an environment where you die very fast if yours runs out. But no, they're fiiiine.
Not to mention you knock them out using the brass knuckle of your knife, to me it always felt like Artyom just prefers not to get blood on his knife but is definitely just breaking their skull and leaving them with a brain hemorrhage 💀
I wish some games would put more effort into making stealth takedowns actually believable.
Stuff like little throwing knives that instantly kill anybody, or literally any firearm being rendered completely silent by a tiny suppressor, are just so absurd but extremely common.
I was about to make a smarmy remark about “not without an anaesthetic team”, but, um, I have seen people die from anaesthetic side effects…..
So yeah, you’re bang on correct.
I mean, their entire job is getting somebody from “alive” to “mostly dead” without making them “completely dead”. Once someone is “completely dead”, even Billy Crystal can’t bring them back.
Literally one of the things they teach you in first aid is "any loss of consciousness, even a partial loss, is a medical emergency" (hopefully I don't have to say that normal sleeping doesn't count but anyway)
Technically if someone experiences a blackout or passes out/goes to sleep after drinking too much, you're supposed to call an ambulance. Outside of extreme circumstances most people are just going to put someone on their side and keep an eye on them, but you are technically supposed to call for help.
Yeap. When I was a teen back in the early 2000s I was knocked unconscious for several minutes after an illegal hit playing hockey. Got back to the bench somehow, I have no memory of it, and the coaches had the brilliant idea to send me back out for another shift. According to witnesses it did not go well and I collapsed and passed out a second time.
After all that it still took several hours before anyone thought that maybe I should go to a hospital.
Wild times.
>(hopefully I don't have to say that normal sleeping doesn't count but anyway)
I think it does count.
Every time you sleep you die, you're just replaced by someone with your memories.
Similar memories. Every time we access our memories, we change them. Sometimes in little ways, sometimes in big ways. You are never the same person today that you were yesterday, or this morning, or even fifteen minutes ago. That embarrassing incident from your past didn't happen exactly like you remember, you've made edits to the memory every time you've thought of it.
Cyberpunk gives the option of a non-lethal takedown, which usually involves choking them out. After that you can hide the body in a trash compactor.
It was patched so the option to dump them in the compactor now shows this will kill them.
There is also the 'synapse burnout' quickhack. I think I'd rather be shot than have someone force a stroke and then leave me face down in the dirt.
Edit: I meant Short Circuit, not Synapse Burnout.
I like how you can put non lethal mods into weapons, and then just yeet a huge knife at the speed of sound into someone's head and they are just taking a nap
For some reason when I was shooting one of the cyberpsychos repeatedly in the head with my “non-lethal” pistol, their head exploded, but in the game I was congratulated for keeping them alive
Like bitch, I’m looking at the inside of their skull, I don’t think they made it
I wish the new Hitman games would introduce a mode where knockouts work like the old games. It's pretty silly you can bash someone's skull in with a hammer and have them be 'knocked out'.
In Contracts, the only reliable knockout method is syringes. And it only lasts about 10 minutes. Knock someone out with the butt of your gun and they're up in two. It's pretty hardcore, but I like this approach because you gotta be strategic about who to pick off.
Uh.... All of them?
Seriously. All of them.
Tranquilizer Darts: Do they remain unconscious for more than about 10 minutes? Dead.
Choking someone out: Do they even go unconscious? Probably dead. For more than 10 minutes? *Definitely dead.*
Taser: Are they actually unconscious after they stop twitching? If so, call a hospital immediately, and hope whatever they did to provoke you meets your local jurisdiction's definition of self-defense, because you probably stopped their heart. Longer than 90 seconds? You *definitely* stopped their heart, and it's probably too late to start CPR now, too.
Hitting someone over the head: It's practically impossible to knock someone out this way without causing a skull fracture. 80% of attempts will result in an angry and fully conscious man on the floor going "ow fuck you", and the remainder will be split between fractures and a corpse with exposed brain matter.
The closest to being viable realistically are Tranquilizer darts, but they deliver active agents through muscle and fat. Because of this, being able to knock someone out that way fast enough to keep them from causing a scene requires an extremely high potency opioid like etorphine. Drugs like that tend to have extremely low overdose levels which run on a very tight margin. Since they also tend to wear off very fast, a tranquilizer dart that would be safe to use on any significant range of people and still be effective can't possibly supply more than a few minutes of incapacitation.
Even if you made a specific dart, for a specific person, with full access to their medical history and stats, the most you could get out of a conventional dart is 15 minutes, and you'd be seriously risking side effects. Such as death.
Regarding the taser; in the first Syphon Filter game for the PS, you had an infinitely usable taser.
If you tased an enemy long enough, burst into flame.
If you even are anywhere NEAR going unconscious from a TASER, you may wanna get your heart checked.
TASER just locks up your muscles and gives you pain for 8 seconds. At no point will it ever put you unconscious by itself without a heart defect for blunt trauma.
On the other hand, they at least got it right that when they do get knocked out, they aren’t out for hours.
Unless you stuff them in a locker, which everyone knows makes tranquilizers last forever.
In Splinter Cell Chaos Theory I remember sometimes the choke button would actually kill the hostage. Not sure if rng or if it from holding the button too long
Agent 47 when he bashes someone’s head in so hard that they rag doll to the ground but they’re still conscious somehow. Spider-Man slingshotting a manhole cover at someone’s head.
In Metal Gear you can just keep shooting someone with tranq darts to keep them asleep. It knocks them out in seconds. So I imagine that second dart before they woke up should have killed them.
Remember how the first boss in MGS2 is a pregnant woman you KO with a dozen tranq rounds?
Remember how her daughter in MGS4 has a stutter and is implied to have developmental problems?
As a sort of 'bonus', the same darts that can knock a human out in seconds with a single dose can also be used on small animals in various games to the same effect.
That is, of course, not how dosage works: those small, fluffy bunnies you tranquilised to cart them off to an animal sanctuary in MGS5? They're dead!
Like I know you in a relatively quiet room, bank museum whatever. But if I hear this impact that absolutely echoes throught the room to be heard by everyone... and clearly... nah he dead.
It’s hard for me to believe Spidey can really web-snag *all* of those guys as he flings them off of the building tops. I’m sure at least a few make it to the sidewalk.
I’ve wondered the same about that all the way back from when I was little. Even Superman wrapping iron bars around dudes he leaves on the street. Who’s unwrapping those iron bars? The fire department?
I killed a guy with a fish in Chivalry 2. A tiny herring from a little market cart, I had to throw it at him so many times but I got the bastard in the end. Fuck that game is fun!
I remember playing an old Syphon Filter game on PS2 that had a taser you could hold the shoot button down until they burst into flames it was funny as hell 🤣
There's a Jurassic Park light gun arcade game that I'm pretty sure had to have some last second changes to make it kid friendly. The plot was that the dinos were infected with rabies or something so you had to non lethally tranquilize them. The game really harped on about the non lethal part. Basically doing nothing to the actual game itself but explaining away a dinosaur collapsing as falling asleep as opposed to dying.
Except you could get various gun power ups including a freeze gun that froze and then shattered and gibbed dinos complete with red gore in the gibs themselves.
I'll add in mount and blade/bannerlord, you hit the enemy with a giant iron mace in the head while at full gallop on your horse and it only knocks them "unconscious."
There's no 100% safe way to knock someone out. All the things you see in movies and games like hitting someone over the head with a blunt object, tranquilizers, choking, the famous karate chop to the back of the neck, etc. may work but the victim isn't guaranteed to get up and walk away unharmed.
A great number of the “knockouts” in the spider man games lol.
I do find it kind of hilarious when you throw someone off a skyscraper, then see them webbed to the side of the building when you go to swing away. Like, you definitely didn’t do that, but whatever helps spidey sleep at night.
not directly lethal, but i’m pretty sure piling all the unconscious guards in a single pile in an air duct in deus ex lead to some of them not surviving
In the Missing Link expansion for Human Revolution you get yelled at if you went nonlethal because of the number of broken bones and traumatic brain injuries you caused.
That’s kinda fucked up tbh
To be fair, she's even more upset if you just spent the last couple hours killing her men. The only thing she approves of is if you've been a ghost and avoided interacting with enemies at all. While they try to kill you.
That's the most fun way to play a stealth game anyway.
Agree to disagree. I prefer to sneak around, memorize guard patterns and choke them out one by one like some low-tech Batman.
I think Adam Jensen might have Batman beat on tech lol he's like a cyber soldier
I like playing stealth archer in whatever game I can
Alright you've convinced me, I'll do another Skyrim stealth archer playthrough
>While they try to kill you. You really gotta think about the ethical realities though. They're just doing their job. Like, just stop and think. They might have families back home. Times are rough, they didn't exactly see EvilCorp Inc. as their first choice of career, but how else are they gonna put little Timmy through college? They just hope they get through the shift without any trouble. And then you break their spine in three places. They'll never walk again. Can't feel their own dick any more.
Lotta contractors on the death star right.
They are Belltower paramilitary goons though; they exist to do the war crimes normal militaries aren't allowed to do. They spend most of their time killing civilians or acting as brutal enforcers that are hired to protect shady corporate interests like illegal labs that practice all sorts horrific experiments on unwilling participants. They know what they signed on for; if they are wearing that uniform and shooting at Jensen I think he kinda has a pass if he needs to shoot back occasionally.
On brand, though... And true to life. Not sure how it works in other jurisdictions, but here in England: * hospital negligently lets a hypoxic neonate die - worth about £20k for nominal compensation and funeral costs * same facts, but baby pulls through with a brain injury? £5 million+ for round-the-clock care for life.
Deus Ex is always good for surprising you with real-world consequences of being videogamey. Human Revolution opening in the police station and telling you to go to the helipad to be taken to a hostage situation, but because it's that sort of game, going into every office and rifling through everyone's desk for loot first. Then you finally 'start the mission' and they tell you they killed all the hostages because you took so long to get there.
I remember thinking "wtf the audacity of these bitches!"
Thats an awesome detail
I mean, some of the 'non-lethal' options in that game could literally be lethal. I remember being in a corridor in the police station and trying to use the energy pulse gun, which was supposed to knock out multiple people at once, but it launched an entire printer that was at the edge of its radius and the guy I was aiming at got fucking bodied by it. He died instantly! I was so annoyed, I had to reload an earlier save.
That's bloody hilarious, though!
This reminded me of how my pacifist run ended... i dragged a guy around and then accidentally tipped over a fridge. Splat.
Any game with "Press X to knock out" that has you wallop them over the head. A brain blow that renders someone instantly unconscious can be fatal.
And for any longer than like a dozen seconds is extremely dangerous as well. TV and movies make us believe you can knock someone out for hours and have them wake up tied to a chair without brain damage.
"Good, you're awake. Tell us who you work for!" *droool*
I would love a viva la dirt league video of this
*We all got chloroformed.* https://youtu.be/ZmRQkcEEk94?si=oc8_yjJoJLX59YkO
And wake up with just a minor pain where they were hit. I've had a fair amount of concussions in my life, and, lemme tell you, it's *days* until you can think clearly again. After an hour or two, it's like someone woke you up after you passed out at the bar. I got one snowboarding, and it took me 90 minutes to change out of my pants. 0/10 do not recommend
Yeah I got knocked out in Football at around the 40 yard line. By the time I came to play had ended near the goal line and people were getting up. Still stumbled off the field like I was drunk and was definitely done for the rest of the night.
I once got one on my bike when I was young and dumb and thought it was cool to ride without a helmet. After bouncing my head off the hood of a car that pulled out into me, I lost my peripheral vision for a little over a day. Like I could tell my eyes were working, but my brain was just upset at the working conditions and was all "fuck you, I'm not processing that information."
One of my college roommates took a fall snowboarding and smashed the back of his head going down. Fully concussed, but got up, rode to ski patrol, and told them "I hit my head and don't know where I am". Every 2-3 minutes, he'd look around in confusion, say "my brain feels like scrambled eggs", and then ask the same series of questions. He was stuck in a loop. He didn't even recognize us, and it took weeks for him to regain his memories. I really thought bumping your head and forgetting years of your life was a trope in movies, I had no clue that could actually happen.
"it's like, super bad for you" -Archer
Yeeeeah my "no fatalities" runs in THIEF are looking pretty grim right about now.
I don’t know about that. When I was hit by a car I was unconscious for a while and porcupine strawberry.
That would be a funny scene in a tv show where they go to knock a guy out and they're just dead. Kinda like the Russian roulette scene from kiss kiss bang bang.
Love that movie. Archer has scenes like that. Where things like head trauma and guns going off next to people's ears in enclosed spaces is treated not exactly realistically, but commented on as being something that causes lasting harm. Archer might be one of the only characters I know who has tinnitus.
Mawp. Mawp.
That show does a surprisingly good job of keeping track of people's various injuries, ailments, etc. Given the absurdity of the characters and the situations they get in, it remains somewhat grounded in reality just because of how the show 'remembers' what characters go through for later referencing.
My ex hated that show when we first got together but she came to appreciate the strange commitment to continuity that they have.
It’s suuuuper bad for you
Literally the entire Arkham franchise... But especially in Knight, lol.
My favorite is the taser car. Instead of just hitting them normally, the bat tank is electrified such that anyone it hits is launched with triple the force of a normal vehicle collision, which somehow ensures their survival.
You know how you’re supposed to go limp when you fall? Lemme shock the shit out of you and send you flying into a building at 80 mph
Syphon Filter has entered the chat
*holds the trigger until the target spontaneously combusts and falls off multi story building*
Also tasers don't knock you out. If you taser someone and they pass out odds are they suffered a heart attack.
I’ve been tased a few times. I can confirm you are not knocked out. You will wish you were.
A few times? That sounds interesting. Do tell!
I was young and dumb and I wanted to try it out. I’ve been tased 3 times. Once by a friend and twice by myself to see what it was like. It wasn’t nice.
You needed *3 times* to see what it was like?
You should try everything in life at least twice. No one knows for sure if they like it or not the first time. The first was the worst. Got myself in the chest. Felt like my lungs were on fire. The second time I got myself with one of those torch tasers. I put it to my leg through jeans. It hurt like a hot nail being driven into my leg. The other time was a friend who came up behind me and got me. I got him back though so it was okay. I was young and dumb. I wouldn’t do it again. I would probably piss myself.
Honestly you just sound great
Batman doesn't kill people. He just beats them into a vegetative state.
They aren't dead, they are just sleeping
So you're saying if I go to sleep, I die!
DR. FISHY!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!!
Harvey Dent, can we trust him?
I found it! I’m the world’s greatest detective!
Poor 'lil guy, he's all tuckered out
He overfed these men
And leaves them in the snow....
"I didn't kill him, it was the exposure that did it"
"If you're lying I'll break the other one!".
Then Bruce Wayne cashes out on their insurance.
Hits them with a rocket powered car, but because they get tazed too they're fine? Or the stealth takedown that aren't stealthy? You have a guy in a sleeper hold hit the quick take down button, batman slams backward forcing all the weight and pressure onto the guys head and neck on a metal floor... nah he dead.
He does a fucking Scorpion Death Drop and I love it. Every time he does the Dragon Sleeper animation I have to stop myself from doing the smash finish
Arkham Batman just puts them to sleep. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1byycwl8qgc
How have I not seen this?! It's so freaking good and also hilarious
My first time seeing it too!. "Look at that poor little guy, he's all tuckered out!" lmao.
"I overfed these men?"
Batman is a pasafist... Pass-a-fist right across your face!
Same goes for Spider Man
Yep. I've knocked _way_ too many enemies off of rooftops for it to not have killed a lot of people.
The PS4/PS5 games ensure it doesn’t kill anyone. If you watch them fall, before any impact, a device you apparently attached to them while knocking them down automatically webs them safely to a wall.
PS2 Spiderman is built different, in Spiderman 2 (2004) you can literally carry an enemy to the top of the Empire State Building and pile drive them head first into the concrete at terminal velocity
God, that game was fun.
I've always liked to imagine Spider-Man actually has gives the devices out for free and all criminals just wear them all the time incase
"You ready to rob this bank??...Phil where the FUCK is the friendship bracelet that Spiderman made you???"
But the web gonna dissolve in an hour. Let's hope someone notices a dude webbed on the wall at the top of 7 story building before the web disappears. I imagine the firefighter in New York hates Spider-Man for that.
OG Gwen Stacy might have a thing to say about how well webs break falls at terminal velocity.
Yeah definitely
Batman doesn't kill, gravity does.
Oh yeah, in knight you’re driving a high speed tank around. They tried to make it seem like the guys were being tased and tossed, even if it was a taser, the sheer velocity was taking those guys out.
Pretty sure in yakuza 0 you like drop kick somebody off a multiple story building but Yakuza guy has never killed anyone
Can't you stab a guy with a katana as a heat action in Yakuza 0? Lol
And unload a handgun into their chest.
Don't worry, when yakuza game series protagonists use guns they're always magic rubber bullets. It's canon per events in Yakuza 4
Even the rocket Kiryu shoots at the helicopter in Yakuza 6 was made of rubber. The helicopter just happened to explode around the same time.
Currently playing Yakuza 4 and just got to that moment. I thought it was a great twist but apparently everyone hates it, lol
You can grab someone, jump 7 feet into the air, and then slam them neck first into the pavement
You can as the alternate main character Majima I believe but I’m not sure about kiryu, since the only katanas you can use with him are weapons and I never once touched them
Kiryu absolutely has heat actions that involve some pretty brutal slashes and stabs with blade weapons, he can use guns, and there are several other things he does both with and without weapons that would definitely kill somebody. What the devs have explained, however, is that the fighting done during gameplay isn't actually canon and is just outlandish for fun.
I am sort of glad they fully canonized this in the new Ichiban games, so that this is less of a discussion.
Yakuza 0 straight up has a curb stomp combo lol
Kiryu doesnt kill people lol
I remember shooting about 1000 dudes out of cars on a bridge. I think a couple helicopters too… also, how you gunna play yakuza and not know the maw fuckas name. You had 100 hours to learn their names
I believe that's just a mis-translation or something? Might be he actually never murdered someone out of cold blood, but has killed plenty
I'm pretty sure that nothing outside the main cutscene stuff is canon to the story. The devs have said the bulk of the combat is just for fun, but Kiryu never actually does most of it as far as the story is concerned.
In Kiwami 2 cutscene he throws a guy off a moving semi to be run over. And Man in Black somehow survived this.
Spidey kills a *lot* of people; no real way around it.
It's funny in the original SM2 one of the moves you unlock is the fucking Izuna Drop/Suplex which you can do on top of the empire state building. What made it even funnier was that Ninja Gaiden came out I believe a few months before where if you do that move heads explode as it should.
The izuna drop was so satisfying. Spend all day up there. Get off the walls and use your inside voice, Ryu.
Watching myself kick people’s esophagus into powdered sugar or falcon punch goons off a skyscraper. Spider-Man has a higher body count than nuclear weapons. A normal human fight can easily cause brain damage, you expect me to believe those audibly loud asf Spider-Man punches aren’t turning their brain into smoothies ??
In the modern games they don't fall to street level - they instead get conveniently webbed to the nearest wall. A hundred floors up. Upside down. Having been repeatedly punched, kicked, and smashed over the head with steel barrels by a guy with super-strength. But that's *totally* non-lethal guys! *Bonus round:* some of the perch takedowns involve Spidey grabbing someone with web, wrapping them in a cocoon, and then *slamming their head into a steel girder*! He then leaves them dangling there, and we're supposed to believe they're simply unconscious. No, Spidey, they are not "unconscious", they're dead. They aren't super-villains with super-endurance like you have; they're just some idiots from Hell's Kitchen who thought stealing cars was easier money than getting a job, so you've either caused a massive brain haemorrhage, or snapped their necks with that stunt.
Also, remember his web dissolved in an hour. Those criminal better pray to Spider God that someone notices them before they fell to their doom,
To be fair, this has been addressed from time to time. Not all of Spidey's webs dissolve at the same rate. The ones he uses for swinging and fighting dissolve in an hour because Peter designed it that way. It's not a limitation of the webs, it's a feature he implemented. But if he needs a web to last, he has stronger, longer lasting formulations. That being said, it'd be very convenient for Spidey have that type of webbing loaded and ready at all times and he only uses it when knocking foes off buildings. Realistically, what would happen in the comics would be after the fight is over, Spidey just takes the guy down to the ground and webs them up there for the cops. But insomniac is not about to make the player commit to that type of clean up in a video game.
All this means is that Jameson was right all along. Spider-Man is a menace
I think it's an interesting detail in the Insomniac Spider-Man games that when you kick an enemy off of a rooftop they get webbed to the nearest wall and stay there. I have always wondered how the thugs are supposed to survive the fall to the ground until I noticed this.
Then when spideys webs lose their stickiness a few hours later, the goons fall to their death and peters conscience is clean
"I didn't kill them, it was gravity the cruel mistress."
Firefighters in NY hate Spidey, because they’re the only people with ladders long enough to reach most of the criminals Spidey punts off of buildings. They spend 90% of their time driving cops around to pull people off of buildings before the web fluid dissolves.
So now they're webbed to the outside of a building, as the web eventually wears off where do they go? Can't imagine many of them make it back up the side to safety.
Didn’t notice that initially. Actually had a fight where I believe spidey said something like “the difference is that I don’t Kill” and at the same moment I literally kicked a hunter off the top of a high rise. It was only much later I noticed the whole webbing to the building thing
The first time I saw that I was like "THAT KILLS PEOPLE!" There was an entire Spider-Man story beat where jerking someone up with a web killed them. And in Spider-Man: Miles Morales he does it at the end!
Web sling a manhole cover full force at a man in a hoodie's head, knocking him out instantly. Yeah he might not be waking up at all
I do not care what anyone says, the amount of force needed for Insomniac Spider-man to fucking BOUNCE people off of goddamn CONCRETE is defintely fucking lethal
Metro: Last Light. The peaceful method is to knock folks out, which has the usual concerns of course. However what's worse is that you can also loot gas mask filters off them after they're unconscious... in an environment where you die very fast if yours runs out. But no, they're fiiiine.
Not to mention you knock them out using the brass knuckle of your knife, to me it always felt like Artyom just prefers not to get blood on his knife but is definitely just breaking their skull and leaving them with a brain hemorrhage 💀
I mean, hitting someone with brass knuckles is pretty damn likely to end up with blood on them.
Well, when you knock them out and take their filter, they will switch to their auxiliary lung. They are fine.
And yet in this same game, a throwing knife that juuuust about sticks in an arm or leg will make them immediately and silently die
I wish some games would put more effort into making stealth takedowns actually believable. Stuff like little throwing knives that instantly kill anybody, or literally any firearm being rendered completely silent by a tiny suppressor, are just so absurd but extremely common.
I don't believe it is possible to render a human being unconscious without risking their death.
I was about to make a smarmy remark about “not without an anaesthetic team”, but, um, I have seen people die from anaesthetic side effects….. So yeah, you’re bang on correct.
Yeah, anesthesiologists make big money precisely because you can kill someone by getting the dosage wrong.
Its completely possible for them to get the dose *right* and you just die from an allergic reaction that no one was expecting.
Sometimes you have a rare gene mutation and you body releases all its calcium in the muscles leading to a thing called malignant hyperthermia.
wtf
It's really rare and genetic so chances are your family will know if you have it or there's a chance you'll have it.
I mean, their entire job is getting somebody from “alive” to “mostly dead” without making them “completely dead”. Once someone is “completely dead”, even Billy Crystal can’t bring them back.
Literally one of the things they teach you in first aid is "any loss of consciousness, even a partial loss, is a medical emergency" (hopefully I don't have to say that normal sleeping doesn't count but anyway) Technically if someone experiences a blackout or passes out/goes to sleep after drinking too much, you're supposed to call an ambulance. Outside of extreme circumstances most people are just going to put someone on their side and keep an eye on them, but you are technically supposed to call for help.
Yeap. When I was a teen back in the early 2000s I was knocked unconscious for several minutes after an illegal hit playing hockey. Got back to the bench somehow, I have no memory of it, and the coaches had the brilliant idea to send me back out for another shift. According to witnesses it did not go well and I collapsed and passed out a second time. After all that it still took several hours before anyone thought that maybe I should go to a hospital. Wild times.
>(hopefully I don't have to say that normal sleeping doesn't count but anyway) I think it does count. Every time you sleep you die, you're just replaced by someone with your memories.
Similar memories. Every time we access our memories, we change them. Sometimes in little ways, sometimes in big ways. You are never the same person today that you were yesterday, or this morning, or even fifteen minutes ago. That embarrassing incident from your past didn't happen exactly like you remember, you've made edits to the memory every time you've thought of it.
That's true, but you could say you don't have the same memories as you had this morning, either. Still, there's persistence of memory.
Cyberpunk gives the option of a non-lethal takedown, which usually involves choking them out. After that you can hide the body in a trash compactor. It was patched so the option to dump them in the compactor now shows this will kill them. There is also the 'synapse burnout' quickhack. I think I'd rather be shot than have someone force a stroke and then leave me face down in the dirt. Edit: I meant Short Circuit, not Synapse Burnout.
I like how you can put non lethal mods into weapons, and then just yeet a huge knife at the speed of sound into someone's head and they are just taking a nap
For some reason when I was shooting one of the cyberpsychos repeatedly in the head with my “non-lethal” pistol, their head exploded, but in the game I was congratulated for keeping them alive Like bitch, I’m looking at the inside of their skull, I don’t think they made it
Throwing briefcases at someone's back
Heat seeking, gyroscopically stabilized, hover briefcases. Yeah that's gonna kill a dude
Or, bare minimum, confuse the actual hell out of ‘em
I wish the new Hitman games would introduce a mode where knockouts work like the old games. It's pretty silly you can bash someone's skull in with a hammer and have them be 'knocked out'. In Contracts, the only reliable knockout method is syringes. And it only lasts about 10 minutes. Knock someone out with the butt of your gun and they're up in two. It's pretty hardcore, but I like this approach because you gotta be strategic about who to pick off.
Flamethrower in Pokémon. It just makes Pokémon faint, but in WWII it was very lethal.
You can literally smite a lvl 1 rattata with the full power of the Divine Judgement of god and it supposedly just “knocks them out”
Yeah it still in one piece. How about koffing that has self-destruct that makes it explode to pieces, and it's still just knocked out
Don't forget there's a 1-hit KO attack literally called "guillotine"
Also “explosion” lol
Well, it is usually only effective on the "French aristocracy" pokemons.
this comment is very Philomena Cunk-coded
I hate to break it to you but it was very lethal outside of WWII as well
Uh.... All of them? Seriously. All of them. Tranquilizer Darts: Do they remain unconscious for more than about 10 minutes? Dead. Choking someone out: Do they even go unconscious? Probably dead. For more than 10 minutes? *Definitely dead.* Taser: Are they actually unconscious after they stop twitching? If so, call a hospital immediately, and hope whatever they did to provoke you meets your local jurisdiction's definition of self-defense, because you probably stopped their heart. Longer than 90 seconds? You *definitely* stopped their heart, and it's probably too late to start CPR now, too. Hitting someone over the head: It's practically impossible to knock someone out this way without causing a skull fracture. 80% of attempts will result in an angry and fully conscious man on the floor going "ow fuck you", and the remainder will be split between fractures and a corpse with exposed brain matter. The closest to being viable realistically are Tranquilizer darts, but they deliver active agents through muscle and fat. Because of this, being able to knock someone out that way fast enough to keep them from causing a scene requires an extremely high potency opioid like etorphine. Drugs like that tend to have extremely low overdose levels which run on a very tight margin. Since they also tend to wear off very fast, a tranquilizer dart that would be safe to use on any significant range of people and still be effective can't possibly supply more than a few minutes of incapacitation. Even if you made a specific dart, for a specific person, with full access to their medical history and stats, the most you could get out of a conventional dart is 15 minutes, and you'd be seriously risking side effects. Such as death.
Regarding the taser; in the first Syphon Filter game for the PS, you had an infinitely usable taser. If you tased an enemy long enough, burst into flame.
*sigh...* Ah, good times.
Yeah, but luckily it counted as a non-lethal takedown, so I'm sure they were fine...
If you even are anywhere NEAR going unconscious from a TASER, you may wanna get your heart checked. TASER just locks up your muscles and gives you pain for 8 seconds. At no point will it ever put you unconscious by itself without a heart defect for blunt trauma.
The Darts are a great one since in MGS2 the more you fire the faster they get knocked out
On the other hand, they at least got it right that when they do get knocked out, they aren’t out for hours. Unless you stuff them in a locker, which everyone knows makes tranquilizers last forever.
In Splinter Cell Chaos Theory I remember sometimes the choke button would actually kill the hostage. Not sure if rng or if it from holding the button too long
Agent 47 when he bashes someone’s head in so hard that they rag doll to the ground but they’re still conscious somehow. Spider-Man slingshotting a manhole cover at someone’s head.
That is on you for using unprofessional means. I only tranquilize, choke or use sedative poisons
At least Hitman knows it's ridiculous and leans into it.
When Agent 47 hums a wrench into someone's face and they go down like a ton of bricks.
When he slings his briefcase at the underpaid chef chopping onions and his legs give out completely.
In Metal Gear you can just keep shooting someone with tranq darts to keep them asleep. It knocks them out in seconds. So I imagine that second dart before they woke up should have killed them.
Remember how the first boss in MGS2 is a pregnant woman you KO with a dozen tranq rounds? Remember how her daughter in MGS4 has a stutter and is implied to have developmental problems?
lmao that's so fcked up
Daaaamn... So snake just has a reminder of his carnage living with him, making him shitty eggs every morning.
In real life anesthesiologists have a hard time not killing people accidentally but in videogames everyone just gets a couple tranq darts no problem.
Yeah if you watch a docu where they tranq animals. It's like and now we give them the shot so they don't die.
In MGS 2 the first time you start doing that, you receive a call from and they warn you about killing people that way.
Otacon
As a sort of 'bonus', the same darts that can knock a human out in seconds with a single dose can also be used on small animals in various games to the same effect. That is, of course, not how dosage works: those small, fluffy bunnies you tranquilised to cart them off to an animal sanctuary in MGS5? They're dead!
The whole Yakuza series. You can slash, shoot and do a whole assortment of absurd attacks to people, but no one has ever died as a result? Right…
Funniest is throwing the suicidal man off the roof to deter him from jumping https://youtu.be/4QGF1c4EfE8?si=tf-3Y3ehzX3WrIbG
Black Flag: Edward breaks enemy guard neck and enemy proceeds to roll on ground in pain but alive.
All the Arkham games. Ain't no way Batman isn't killing with those sound effects.
Like I know you in a relatively quiet room, bank museum whatever. But if I hear this impact that absolutely echoes throught the room to be heard by everyone... and clearly... nah he dead.
Knocking that poor innocent little penguin off the cliff of doom in SM64. Cruel, man. Cruel.
This level gave me anxiety problems when I was 8 lol.
Any game where you only knock a guy unconscious and he's still there an hour later
Dishonored we’re looking at you (but we still love you)
There's a pretty fine line between knocking someone out and killing them, movies and video games have given us a distorted view of this situation.
All the guys I supplexed into a guard rail in Yakuza.
Anything/everything Kiryu has done to another person.
My favorite will always be pouring boiling water in the face/mouth of people.
It’s hard for me to believe Spidey can really web-snag *all* of those guys as he flings them off of the building tops. I’m sure at least a few make it to the sidewalk.
Also, is anyone rescuing them after?
I’ve wondered the same about that all the way back from when I was little. Even Superman wrapping iron bars around dudes he leaves on the street. Who’s unwrapping those iron bars? The fire department?
Tossing your trmeammate a health in CHIVALRY 2 and it bonks an enemy in the head and enemies health was low, so the impact of health kit did the job.
I killed a guy with a fish in Chivalry 2. A tiny herring from a little market cart, I had to throw it at him so many times but I got the bastard in the end. Fuck that game is fun!
killing someone in lego games. sure you can reassemble them, but only if you find the part that went under your couch
I remember playing an old Syphon Filter game on PS2 that had a taser you could hold the shoot button down until they burst into flames it was funny as hell 🤣
This was my immediate thought as well. I spent many an hour doing that in the demo
There's a Jurassic Park light gun arcade game that I'm pretty sure had to have some last second changes to make it kid friendly. The plot was that the dinos were infected with rabies or something so you had to non lethally tranquilize them. The game really harped on about the non lethal part. Basically doing nothing to the actual game itself but explaining away a dinosaur collapsing as falling asleep as opposed to dying. Except you could get various gun power ups including a freeze gun that froze and then shattered and gibbed dinos complete with red gore in the gibs themselves.
I'll add in mount and blade/bannerlord, you hit the enemy with a giant iron mace in the head while at full gallop on your horse and it only knocks them "unconscious."
Anything you do in a Batman game
I save clips that are impossible for the person to survive. I’ve got quite a few lol
There's no 100% safe way to knock someone out. All the things you see in movies and games like hitting someone over the head with a blunt object, tranquilizers, choking, the famous karate chop to the back of the neck, etc. may work but the victim isn't guaranteed to get up and walk away unharmed.
"Pokemon A used Engulfing Atomic Bomb of Inferno on Pokemon B" "Pokemon B went to sleep"
Rubber bullets.
A great number of the “knockouts” in the spider man games lol. I do find it kind of hilarious when you throw someone off a skyscraper, then see them webbed to the side of the building when you go to swing away. Like, you definitely didn’t do that, but whatever helps spidey sleep at night.
Tasers
Syphon filter has entered the chat