Posted February 22, 2021
Naoya8: During a side mission Saints and Samurais (or something like that), you're tasked with helping someone held captive, but you're asked not to "take any life" by quest-giver. However the mission objective is "kill or incapacitate/stun (I don't play English version) is one and the same, with no non-lethal option as optional and no matter what I do (go in gun blazing with my non-lethal pistol, using non-lethal hacks like overheat or simply using [R] option for non-lethal takedown after sneaking up on enemy and grabbing him) the victim complains that I killed his kidnappers...
Is that a bug just with quest itself or am I missing something?
I had no problem using non-lethal methods on Cyberpsychosis side-quests target and Regina never complained about me killing a target, so I guess it worked as it should?
This is an unfortunate kind of "gotcha" that is present in the game. It's not really a bug, but rather just an unexpected thing the way non-lethal takedowns work as I've learned. Basically when you use any kind of non-lethal takedown, it is only the very hit that takes them down which is non-lethal. If the final non-lethal take down hit or shot or whatever has been delivered to them that drops their hitpoints to 0 or whatever, then if they are hit again after that at all by anything, they will be lethally killed. Is that a bug just with quest itself or am I missing something?
I had no problem using non-lethal methods on Cyberpsychosis side-quests target and Regina never complained about me killing a target, so I guess it worked as it should?
So you must make sure that when you shoot them with a bullet, or hit them with a non-lethal grenade, punch them with gorilla fists or any other non-lethal option, that that you don't send a barrage of attacks at them all at once which hit them multiple times in a row, as only one single hit is non-lethal - the takedown hit.
Tossing 5 non-lethal grenades at someone, the first grenade that hits them and drops hitpoints to zero is non-lethal. The rest of the non-lethal grenades that go off after that within range of their body will kill them. Same thing for non-lethal rifle shots with weapon mod. Shoot them once and they go down. Shoot them with a spray of bullets and they're hit by one more bullet than it took to take them down, and they're dead.
Non-lethal takedowns IMHO always need to be done with very careful surgical precision, painstakingly one shot or hit at a time and making sure there is no splash damage from the weapon being used nor any skill mods or cyberware in use that causes damage to spread to nearby enemies etc.
It's kind of non-obvious at first and very frustrating, but once you understand what's happening you can adapt your approach to be more surgical and less "bull in a China shop" so to speak. :)