Fastest pacifist completion of Fallout 4 on Survival mode

Playing on Fallout 4's hardest difficulty, US streamer Kyle Hinckley aka "The Weirdist" incredulously finished Bethesda's epic RPG without being credited with a single kill, achieving a time of 26 hours 35 minutes on 19 June 2016. As the name suggests, a "pacifist" speed-run involves completing a game making as few kills as the game will possibly allow (usually zero) – an increasingly popular challenge amongst players of action-oriented titles. However, due to the game's nature, Fallout 4 does include several instances where an NPC must be killed to advance the main narrative. However, by working with The Minutemen faction, it is still possible to indirectly cause an enemy's death without it registering on the player's death count. Such ploys include hacking a robot to attack enemies, exploiting "hilarious glitches" to cause enemies to "inadvertently destroy themselves", or by pacifying an enemy and convincing them to attack other enemies. Amazingly, Kyle's fastest completion was the second time he had finished a pacifist completion of Fallout 4, and he achieved this following a game update in spring 2016, which made Survival even harder by way of removing manual saves and fast travel. In his first pacifist completion of the game, on 20 December 2015, Kyle literally spent five hours orchestrating the death of the character Kellogg. In that run, he recorded a time of around 35 hours. Of his improved second run, Kyle explained: "The second playthrough was done for the benefit of anyone who believed it wasn't possible on the new Survival mode... I believe I could probably lower the time significantly, I was merely concerned with being the first across the finish line."

Kyle explains further that there are four ways to complete the main storyline, depending which faction the player decides to work with. Of three of these (The Brotherhood of Steel, The Institute and the Railroad), it is not possible not to finish the game without killing an enemy personally. However, by siding with The Minutemen, it is possible to kill enemies through "secondary means".

Kyle told GWR: "My definition of pacifism is to complete the game with no recorded kills in the game's menu. This includes everything from human beings to mutant dogs and robotics. Even something as totally non-intelligent as a sentry turret will count in the game's records as a kill.

"However, there are certain flagstone deaths that absolutely must take place in order for the game to proceed, and these vary depending on which group or faction the player decides to work with. Of the four ways to complete the main storyline, three of these cannot be worked around. The Brotherhood of Steel and The Institute require that the player, personally, kill six members of The Railroad. Meanwhile, the Railroad has a quest called Boston After Dark in which three raider enemies cannot be killed by anyone or anything other than the player. The first faction you are supposed to meet, The Minutemen, have no quests that behave this way. While they do require certain enemies to be killed, non of these enemies are deemed "essential" by the mechanics of the game. Thus, they can be caused to be killed through secondary means.

"There are a total of 12 ways to kill or to cause the death of an enemy. They are:

1. The player kills an enemy personally, with any weapon item.

2. The player's companion kills an enemy.

3. The player uses a smoke grenade to signal an artillery barrage.

4. A turret or robot is reprogrammed to be on the player's side, killing other enemies.

5. A perk ricochets a bullet back into an enemy, killing them instantly.

6. The player "pickpockets" a live grenade into an enemy's inventory, blowing them up.

7. The player "kites" or leads enemies into friendly territory, including their own settlements and turrets.

8. The player uses one of a series of perks to pacify an enemy, and can eventually compel them to attack other enemies.

9. The player does a quest where a friendly character accompanies them, but does not fill the companion slot. These characters will be able to kill enemies.

10. The player uses signal grenades, flares, or beacons to summon various kinds of friendly characters to assist in killing enemies.

11. A robot is hacked directly and caused to self-destruct, or to attack other enemies.

12. Hilarious glitches cause enemies to die from fall damage, or to destroy themselves inadvertently.

"Of these types, 1–6 count in the game's records as a "kill". The rest are not considered kills by the player. Using methods 7–12, which are more obscure, and harder to set up, I managed to complete Fallout 4's main storyline twice.

"I did it twice, because of an update to the game's hardest difficulty level. In the first play-through, I was playing on Survival. This mode is punctuated by slower healing, but not much else. In the spring of 2016, however, there was an update to Survival, which caused it to be much more intense. Manual saving was removed, disallowing me from using saves and reloads to manipulate the randomness of certain perk activations. Fast travel was also removed, meaning I had to walk to every location."