After more than three years, YouTuber and Twitch streamer Matthew ‘DarkViperAU’ Judge has finally completed his notorious pacifist run of Grand Theft Auto 5’s story with an impressively low body count.
Started in 2019, DarkViperAU has been on a long and fragmented mission to try and clear the entire GTA 5 story without personally killing any of the games NPCs or enemies unless it was essential for story progression. In a game where criminality and violence is rife, this was always going to be a pretty big undertaking, and while he could use them to test theories, DarkViperAU also banned himself from using any mods to complete missions.
Over the course of 27 episodes spread out across 1,227 days (which apparently condensed over 1,000 hours of gameplay), a combination of stealth, glitches, and strategy has seen DarkViperAU slog through the GTA V story. By avoiding combat where possible, and by using AI controlled allies or even the Los Santos Police Department to do the shooting when gunfights had to take place, he has managed to get through the campaign with a ridiculously low number of personally inflicted casualties.
According to his own tracked stats, DarkViperAU completed his pacifist GTA V run with just 96 eliminations. Only 30 of those deaths required a bullet as well, with the rest all being melee eliminations with fists.
In this conclusion to the series, DarkViperAU goes through a multitude of ridiculous ways trying to get Michael, Franklin, and Trevor to take out their respective big bads. Just in case you have lived under the world’s biggest rock and do not know what happens in GTA 5’s story, here is your spoiler warning.
When trying to take out Stretch as Michael, the YouTuber tries to lure him into the military base only for him to sponge some tank shells, tries to push him off of tall structures, and much more to no avail. He does eventually manage a proper pacifist take down of Stretch, thanks to a stroke of luck and an NPC food truck.
For Trevor’s assassination of Steve Haines, things were a little trickier. Despite using some mods to test whether Steve could be shot in the crossfire of a police shootout or drowned, it was eventually concluded that a pacifist take down was not possible.
Some creative solutions were also dreamt up for Franklin taking out Wei Cheng (including towing Cheng’s car into the military base) but a strategy was found to ensure a pacifist elimination. By repeatedly driving into the ocean, Cheng would follow in a vehicle, slowly taking drowning damage each time. Genius.
Arguably the easiest part was the final act of kidnapping Devin. By simply hiding underneath the pool area of his mansion, guards would jump off a seemingly low ledge to chase you, but take enough fall damage to kill themselves. Once they’d all finished their lemming impressions, Trevor could grab Devin without a problem.
DarkViperAU, who uploaded the first entry of his Pacifist % GTA V series in May 2019, says in his final video: “This series has generated over 30 million views and 90,000 subscribers. It has also taken the better part of my sanity, but it was well worth it.”
Remarkably, the Australian hints that he is not done yet, and may do another story run or attempt side quests in pacifist mode in the future.
With his first attempt taking three years, it’ll be interesting to see if he can nail a second run before the GTA 6 release date rolls around.