Binary Swan

This will be my second exploration into playing a game as The Pacifist Gamer. For those who have yet to read any of my posts about this approach to gaming I suggest you take a look at my introductory piece. I have selected Plants Vs Zombies (PvZ) for this playthrough because it presents a very different type of game to that of Morrowind which I tackled in my very first Pacifist Gamer series.

PvZ is a fun and original take on the “tower defence” genre where you are tasked with defending your house from zombies using plants in your garden. It stands out from the crowd not only through its thematic uniqueness but also through minigames and puzzles that put a new spin on the core mechanic of the game. The repetition of this core mechanic across all modes acts as training in being a good PvZ player. My experience with game is such that I need little concentration to effectively navigate levels and challenges and as a result, the game is now my choice of activity whilst listening to podcasts as it provides minimal distraction from their content.

To play PvZ as the Pacifist Gamer thus presents an interesting opportunity to break from the training and attempt to play a level whilst taking every care not too harm the invading zombies. I elected to make my attempt through the games survival mode to ensure access to the full library of plants so that I could pick from the plants that would maintain a passive stance in the face of the zombie onslaught. I selected plants that are readily available as defensive options in the game but which normally act to complement the large amount of offensive options on hand. My nine choices of plant were as follows:

1. Sunflower – which collects sun and provides the resources to ‘build’ more plants
2. Twin sunflower – placed on a sunflower to double sun production
3. Wall-nut – a wall that the zombies must chew through thus delaying their progress
4. Tall-nut – a more expensive version of the Wall-nut that I picked so that I could have a second wall to place during the Wall-nut cooldown period
5. Imitator (Wall-nut) – This plant imitates another plant once placed which let me have a third wall to place to slow down the zombies
6. Pumpkin – provides a protective shell around a plant, acting as a further wall to slow down the zombies
7. Ice-shroom – When placed it first freezes then slows down the zombies on screen for a short period of time each
8. Coffee bean – Used to ‘wake up’ an Ice Shroom which is asleep in daytime mode because it is a mushroom
9. Garlic – Diverts the zombies who bite it to another lane, allowing for a concentration of defence in certain places

They can be seen in picture form below:

With my plants selected I decided to have a few play attempts in order to refine my strategy and get used to being a Pacifist in a game that expects you to kill off any zombies that enters the screen. Once I felt confident I decided to record an attempt which you can watch below.

The Video

This strategy acknowledges the inevitability of defeat when playing the pacifist in PvZ. I rely upon delaying the movement of zombies until the final group of a wave appear. This is so that when any zombies reaches the end of the yard, all are vanquished by the automated lawnmower defense. This lawnmower remains the only source of harm to the zombies I could allowed as it falls within the second rule I set for this series:

If something inherent in the game/level design leads to the harming of something I will try to prevent it if at all possible

As I am unable to prevent the attack of the lawnmowers they remain a means by which I can survive to the end of levels through the channelling and delaying to the zombies so that they are removed all together.

Discussion

Jorge Albor made the point in his recent post on Experience Points about a permadeath playthrough in Mirrors Edge:

In the case of my Mirror’s Edge play through, permanent death was meaningless by itself. It was the threat of death that enhanced my emotions, which itself is an external application. Permanent death didn’t just change the story, it changed the game.

The Pacifist Gamer approach to Plants vs Zombies is one other type of external application that creates a new experience of the game. The accepted inevitability of defeat in survival mode was accelerated and made more immediate by the inability to thwart the incoming zombies in any continuous way. A sense of success was suddenly a matter of lasting a few more seconds rather than a few more waves of zombies. The appearance of a zombie in one of the six lanes of my garden was a threat to the single-use offensive capability of the lawnmowers and thus represented a different kind of obstacle that I had to act to overcome. I was forced to concentrate more closely than normal on my actions in the game because I was applying a different framework  on the game system designed by Popcap games. I was forced to consider the approaching zombies in a different light.

As The Pacifist Gamer in Plants vs Zombies the experience of defending my virtual backyard and brains from zombies became a more intense experience. The game no longer felt like unique spin on a genre known for its casual game audience but a hardcore challenge that I hope others might take up. Failing that, however, if you are committed to Pacifism in this world there is one other path that can be taken with no risk at all.

Happy gaming and happy gardening.

This is the 4th post in the adventures of Hid which involves me playing the game of Morrowind in a slightly different way, as a Pacifist Gamer. If you are unaware of the guidelines I have set myself for this playthrough they can be found here and please also feel free to check out parts one, two and three of the Adventures of Hid as well.

I am quite excited by this post as it is mainly concerned with the the real difficulties and threats I face in my Pacifist Gamer playthrough.

Having successfully completed the botanist arc of missions at the Mages guild, I spoke to the ranking member in Balmora who advanced me two more ranks in the guild. Feeling confident with the said advancement I took up some new missions offered by the ranking member. They involved coercing one wizard into membership and collected money from another. The problem being that they both had taken up residence in the Molag Mar region. I began to prepare but not before setting up my next Blades mission. This involved fetching a skull for some necromantic purpose from an ancestral tomb near the town of Pelagiad. I felt I was up to the task, how wrong I was.

Hid’s Trip to Molag Mar

With calm creature in hand alongside shield, healing and magic regeneration spells I felt like I could make it through to the locations in Molag Mar, I was mistaken. This marked the first point in my playthrough where I died and was forced to reload. My troubles were a combination of not being able to consistently cast the spells I wanted and being unable to outrun the animals once they were calmed. My situation was grim but I stubbornly thought I could make it given my previous experience with the game. I died another time. On my third run into Molag Mar I was going alright before I picked up a tail of 3 Cliff Racers I could not shake. I threw in the towl and decided to flee using a Divine Intervention scroll which took me to Moonmoth Fort.

After this experience I decided that I would need much more experience before heading into that area again. I would need to be faster, need spells that worked on a regular basis as well as better tools to deal with groups of attackers. These spells would have to be along the lines of invisibility, chameleon or paralyze spells. I need an ability to prevent any attacks upon my person rather than trying to outrun them all. These all fall under the Illusion school whose growing utility in my Pacifist playthrough has made me regret selecting it as a Minor specialization when creating my class. As a result my advancement in the Illusion skill will be slower despite my heavy reliance on its spells.

Hid’s trip to an ancestral tomb

A bit concerned that I might have hit a large speed bump in my playthrough I headed to see if I could complete my mission for the blades. This took me to an ancestral tomb near the castle town of Pelagiad on the western edge of the Ascadian Isles. I entered the tomb and immediately heard the telltale signs of ghosts in the tomb. I cast my shield spell and began to run forward. I ran through the corridors of the tomb desperately trying to the find the skull.

I entered a dead end room, suddenly surrounded my 4 undead attackers. I managed to move back past them without taking much damaged before closing the door behind me. I then blindly ran down the only other corridor I had not explored only to be confronted by more skeletons who were guarding a couple of chests. I looted the chests whilst under attack from the skeletons and thought I was ok. I then became trapped moving too close to a sword wielding skeleton and was struck down. My second attempt avoided my previous dead end paths and headed straight down deep into the tomb. The second time I came to the skeleton and chest room I moved on by, going deeper down still. I came to one final room where the skull lay behind a lumbering zombie. I ran past taking almost fatal damage before, with skull now in hand, I cast Almsivi intervention, teleporting to the temple in Vivec. This was the end of my playthrough, for now.

Some conclusions

The experience in the tomb made me think of whether I would not have been justified in attacking the ghosts, zombies and animated skeletons. As they are already dead and therefore would not necessarily experience sensations of pain. This brings up a point of reflection regarding being The Pacifist Gamer. By inhabiting a fantasy world I have encountered a new problem for the practice of pacifism that I did not forsee because it has provided a new context in which this belief is to be tested. I find this doubly interested since my next two Pacifist Gamer explorations will be in Plants Vs Zombies and Left 4 Dead, where your enemies are zombies and nothing but.

At the end of this play session I was battered and bruised but alive and still maintaining a kill count of zero. The quests in the game are often centered around fetching a certain object for the quest giver. Initially this is easily achieved with no direct barriers offered by the game. However, in order to keep Morrowind interesting and increase the difficulty Bethesda start to place direct barriers both on the path to, and within the area that the item is located. The limitation of the game lies in that these barriers are often aggressive creatures. As a result players will typically fight these enemies and gain advances to skills in weapons and armour. The levelling system in Morrowind is such that the increase in 10 skills leads to an increase in level and improved stats. The greater opportunities for combat thus lead to greater chances for improvement in power and being more capable of overcoming the next challenge. Because my approach to overcoming the barriers was different I suffered when the difficulty increased. I had not been sufficiently levelled by my approach to previous quests and therefore my skills were not up to the challenge of more enemies as barriers.

I did recognise that all my troubles as a Pacficist Gamer could eventually be overcome with time and patience using the mechanics in place. I know that at higher levels in the game spells will always be successful, magicka can be regenerated quickly and that a characters collection of spells increases. This will just take longer than normal to achieve because I did not participate in a “productive” manner when playing quests. However, even with this spike in difficulty and reduced means to combat it, I find playing as a Pacifist gamer a fun challenge and very akin to the practise of “roleplaying” heavily in a game like Morrowind. This difference in my case is that I set down my restrictions and rules directly where as a player who roleplays might veil them in narrative and characterisation.

I will be leaving the adventures of Hid where they are at the moment so I can pursue the Pacifist Gamer idea in other games. I plan to continue my playthrough and I will provide broader update posts that lie further apart in my experience as The Pacfist Gamer should some new thoughts arise. I do hope to one day show a powerful Hid who rose without hurting a single soul and who is capable of exploring any part of the world without fear or execessive amounts of running. Until then however he will be stuck running away from assassin’s in Balmora.

I received my third quest from the Mages Guild in Balmora which involved collecting some flower samples found in the Ascadian Isles region. I decided that in addition to this quest I would do a little sight seeing first to re-introduce myself to some of the nearby locales. I headed north out of Balmora, casting calm creature on a rat during my journey which leveled up my Illusion skill. I then arrived at Caldera, a fort town near the local Ebony mines. I visited the local shops to see if there were any enchanted items for sale that would either give me another source of spells or some form of magicka regeneration. Finding nothing, I left on my mission to the south. I passed Moonmoth legion fort on my way to the Isles to upset the local ecological balance.

Caldera

Moonmoth Legion Fort

During this mission I found the calm creature spell to be exceedingly useful in avoiding conflict with local fauna. I knew that I would soon need a more powerful version of this spell if it was going to be useful in the long run. I managed to find all four flower samples in short order so I decided that I would go south to visit the capital Vivec before teleporting back to Balmora to complete the quest. Heading south through the Ascadian Isles waterways using water walking and came across the cave of Punammu. I had yet to randomly explore a cave as a Pacifist so I jumped at the opportunity.

As I open the door I was caught by a Nix hound on the other side who quickly attacked me and I turned and fled. Not being deterrred I rested and healed before preparing my Calm creature spell and moving once more into the breach. I settled the large green animal and another of its kind before I noticed two bandits, deeper into the cave, standing around a fire with a chest nearby. Taking my chances I cast my shield spell, ran forward and emptied the chest of its low level armor pieces. The bandits attacked me but I was sufficiently protected  by my shield to get away and past the docile Nix hounds out of the cave. I then travelled south to Vivec where I did some window shopping, sold my loot and agreed to help out an armorer by stealing an supply order from his direct competitor. More notes on that soon.

A nice stroll through the Ascadian Isles

Vivec, the capital of Morrowind

What I learnt from this short session was that Morrowind has a good means of protecting Pacifists via the limits of the engine’s techonology. NPCs and creatures cannot travel betweeen interior and exterior locations and therefore any point between the two will provide me with a safe escape from any pursuit. I also noted how difficult it was to gain any type of loot with the armor from Punammu scoring me less than 100 gold pieces. Whilst I am supremely confident that I can be committed to Pacifism in Morrowind, it is a path that is alot harder than the path commonly taken. This speaks to the assumption of the game design that players would take violent acts as a matter of course and therefore set up part of its reward system in line with this.

For this second and future posts I’ve decided to describe my actions in the first person rather than trying to take up the mindset of Hid. I got caught up in the excitement of being this type of character and I wanted to “role-play” more closely. Upon reflection this runs slightly against what I want to achieve with this series of posts which is looking at what mechanics are in place in Morrowind that allowed for a pacifist approach to playing the game.

The first quest for Hid from Caius Cosades of the Blades is meeting a contact in the Fighters Guild in order to gather information about two topics, The Sixth House and the Nerevarine. The contact wanted Hid to search the local Dwemer (Dwarven) ruins for a puzzle box, first before divulging any information. I accept and grab some supplies before heading to the ruins that lie to the east of Balmora. The two main purchases include an intervention spell that will teleport me back to the local temple once the puzzle box is found (no need to hang around longer than necessary) and some scrolls of Celerity, which boost your run speed for a short time.

As I approached the ruins I knew that the bridge would be guarded by a spell casting bandit. I elected to cast a shield spell, an inherent abilities of the Breton race, and simply run past up to the entrance to the ruins. Upon entering the ruins I noticed that I still had some time left on my shield so I used that opportunity to quickly run to the upper level of the area where I knew the box would be kept (I have played this first main quest mission many many times). The bandits on the lower areas were not alerted so I was free to loot some nearby shelves which scored me a dwarven spear, a nice piece of loot. I then prepared my intervention scroll and entered the next room on the left. Faced with a hammer wielding Nord bandit I quickly ran to the shelf where the box was sitting. I took some damage from physical hits as I prepared the spell and then instantly escaped to the temple in Balmora. Mission accomplished with no one hurt or killed.

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I went to the local shops to offload my loot and collect the information in return for the puzzle box. I decided to give Caius the information and set up the next Blades quest before going to work on my Mage’s Guild duties. After speaking to Caius I noticed to rest and heal but I was interrupted by the attack of a black clad assassin (I have Tribunal installed). Caius offered no helping hand so I fled the building to escape my attacker. This would happen three more times during the course of the session on odd occassions when I decided to sleep and heal. I went to the Mage’s Guild where I accepted my first duty gladly. I was to collect samples of four types of fungus found in the Bitter Coast area, a mission perfectly suited to my play style, no killing necessary. I used some cash to purchase a calm animal spell which would help me safely fend off attacks from kwama foragers and other creatures in the area. It was dark when I was ready to leave so I decided to nap in the city square until the morning. I was woken by the attacks of a forager who had entered the city. I ran away and found that the local guards quickly killed the attacking animal on sight. I had tried to calm the creature with my new spell but my poor Illusion skills meant that I couldn’t successfully do so before running out of magicka. I decided to nap again to restore my magicka before embarking on my noble mission. I was again woken by the attack of an assassin which the guards decided wasn’t worth their time to save me from. I was forced to outrun the attacker and leave town on my quest in an urgent fashion.

I left Balmora to the south and then headed West over the hills to the Bitter Coast where I searched for the fungus samples. I safely used the calm creature spell a couple of times to thwart attacks by some rats. Upon finding the samples I returned to Balmora by the route I had just taken. I decided from my previous experiences that I would need to work on my spellcasting skills in order to prevent any fatal failures. As I walked I kept casting the spells in order to help level up the skills which ran down my magicka. I slept to regenerate my magicka and was again attacked by an assassin. I fled along the river using my water walking spell to gain valuable distance from the attacker who was forced to swim. I got out of harms way but the soundtrack of the game let me know that he was still in close proximity. This could prove to be a continuous problem in Balmora whose guardsmen had a weird set of defence priorities. I got some health potions for my fungus troubles and quickly completed a simple mission that involved planting a fake gem in a rival mages desk. This coupled with my first completed duty allowed me to advance in rank in the guild gaining the appropriate benefits.

I retired to the bed at Caius’ apartment and was glad to see I wasn’t attacked as I rested and healed. I was glad to be able to complete these two early missions and maintain my pacifist stance. I also learnt that I would either need to improve my spellcasting skill, as my illusion and alteration spells thus far had been key to playing Morrowind this way. Therefore I will need to find a means to regenerate my magicka quickly so I can improve my skills through practise or find a source of income to purchase training for those skills. These present some interesting challenges for a Pacifist in Morrowind as loot has traditionally been gained by clearing out an area of both its treasures and those who are guarding it.