Zombie game with no weapons?

I've already got a pretty good justification for this, one that I've been keeping a secret...

But this has been in my mind for a while now. I've been wanting to eventually make an intelligent and realistic zombie with a good story without weapons for a while now. It would be a lot like R Emake, with its limited item capacity system, but you'd be on the move in a car or a motorcyle. You'd have to stop to rest, pick up supplies, or rescue other survivors. Instead of going "rock 'n' roll" on every zombie you see, you'd have to avoid them all together by sneaking past them, or "outsmarting" them. Without any justification, could it work?

If I did need to include weapons, I'd stick to melee offensives, like baseball bat.

*cough*

edited 11th May '10 6:46:11 PM by MedicoreNed

Most people know where to get a firearm. You need to come up with a reason why using one would be a bad idea.

No ammo?

Eh, just setting it somewhere other than the US would make a lack of firearms fairly plausible.

The zombies were specifically created as a military experiment gone wrong. Contact with bullets makes them flip the fuck out and run faster than you can see.

You could even show a cutscene near the start where a zombie enters the store of a paranoid shopkeeper with a gun and...it doesn't end well.

Eh, the military would be more or less portrayed as decent in this setting. You would start out in or near New York City and you'd have to go southwest to Area 51, which should give at least a bit of a clue about other elements in the game. The initial setting being the northern U.S. does give a reason for the protagonist not to have a gun, although it's not as good as a justification as it taking place in a different country.

Other survivors could have guns, though.

I feel like the protagonist should have some kind of pacifist thing going on, or else some reason why they're ineffective. Otherwise, it brings up some massive Fridge Logic.

edited 11th May '10 7:30:22 PM by Deathonabun

I think a better explanation would have guns be present and powerful, but rare and risky.

They're rare because everyone else has taken them already. Risky, because they make a LOT of noise and attract the attention of every zombie around. And possibly not all that effective depending on calibre. Sure, it'll stop a human dead in their tracks, but large shuffling sacks of meat may be able to absorb quite a few hits before finally going down. And headshots are notoriously difficult.

^I never thought of that.

It's brilliant!

You don't have to restrict access to guns to make it not about shooting them all. Realistically, trying to make a stand with guns you found in in some store would be a bad idea. Even if they're not your standard undead-style zombies that are especially resiliant (only head shots get you points), even if they're as vulnerable to gunfire as a normal living person, or even if they're more vulnerable, how long do you think you can fight them? How many can you kill before they close the distance and tear you apart? If this is your typical zombie apocalypse, then a significant portion of the population have become zombies. And there's a lot of goddamn people. You can only carry so many bullets, and even if there wasn't an upper limit to that, you'd still be screwed.

The best bet would bet to use weapons in a defensive manner. Only fight them in small numbers, and then only if they're in direct conflict with your current goal. And always have a plan. And a backup plan. And preferably some sort of tertiary plan. Running isn't a plan. Running is what you do when the plan fails.

On top of the fact that a few people with rifles aren't going to stem the undead tide, guns are noisy, and are likely to only attract the attention of more of them. As far as melee weapons go, it really depens on how your zombies work. If your survivors are people with natural immunity, like in Left 4 Dead, then it's workable to some extent. It's still not a good idea, as that puts you in arm's reach of the zombies which is several times too close, but it doesn't put them in risk of becoming one of them (whether or not the survivors know this, is another story). If contact with zombie blood or saliva can make you one of them, then fighting them in melee combat becomes a very bad idea, unless you absolutely will die otherwise. Melee fighting is a messy affair, and there's really no way to be sure that anything you can do to stop one of them won't result in you becoming splattered with their bodily fluids, even with a blunt implement.

But I digress. My point is that the idea of evasion being a priority, and conflict being best avoided really makes more sense than the alternative.

@OP:Once again Siren did alot of the things that you mentioned. It had monsters that revived themselves after a while when you killed them. However that 'rock and roll' thing could still happen if you had a weapon, especially if you had melee weapon surprisingly.

@Stranger: But that just the thing, if you give the player a weapon they will try to kill everything in sight, invincibility be damned. IIRC Climax studios, who made Silent Hill Shattered Memories mentioned they originally had weapons in the game, but whenever the game testers got their hands on them they would try to kill everything on site, often ending with their demise.

Edit: fixed pothole.

edited 11th May '10 8:53:06 PM by MedicoreNed

I'm actually thinking of Penumbra in response to this, particularly the second game when you stop having access to any weapons at all and have to sneak past all the monsters. (The first lets you get a pickaxe, but unless you're one hell of a player you won't be able to kill anything tougher than a Giant Spider.)

I only played the first penumbra game but by standing on boxes and aiming down you could in fact kill most stuff, at least as far as Í got.

I think you could still do it if you made it abundantly clear that you didn't stand a chance, by simply having too many of them, and having your weapons being too ineffective. You'd essentially have to make it a stealth game. Though I may be overestimating people's ability to grasp the concept.

I live by the following when it comes to combat:

Anything can become a weapon if you are trained to use it in combat and it hurts people.

And if you ask, yes, by the logic of the great Awesome Zombie 22, you can use a toaster and kitten as weapons.

I think the simplest solution would be to have Determinator-type zombies that could only be defeated by blowing them to Chunky Salsa (though that might just generate Helping Hands or Autonomous Organs that would clamber after you) or trying to Kill It with Fire, and that could be made much harder if they were waterlogged.

Assuming you lacked a Quake-level arsenal of rocket propelled grenade launchers and flamethrowers, fighting such zombies with commonly available weapons would be difficult verging on impossible. One example from literature I really like is the wights from A Song Of Ice And Fire.

edited 13th May '10 2:47:38 PM by EricDVH

Guns are loud. You could make every zombie within about a mile know where the player is when he fires a shot. Then (as long as ammo's pretty scarce and you can't hide in a convenient gun shop) that should be a pretty big deterrent.

guns are also hard to use for anyone who's never fired one before. you can expect to bruise your palm, maybe even sprain your wrist if you don't know what to expect. and your aim would be absolutely shit.

realistically:

1. zombie outbreak. gun store owner locks doors.
2. living people rush to gun store expecting free guns. shit happens.
3. ....?
4. you get to the gun store. shelves are empty and most people are dead.
5. you continue on to the hardware store and grab some lumber, chainsaws, pipes, wrenches, etc.

Well, there's also the option of making it so that there's a cure for zombie-ism and the protagonist, unlike the Fridge Logic-ignoring main characters of almost every story including The Virus, is generally not willing to go all-out when it comes to killing zombies.

Make it so that you lose points or, if points aren't an issue, access to the best ending, or gear, or NPC assistants, if you kill too many zombies.

The best weapons could be cattle prods or the like, things that will knock a zombie down long enough for you to get away, or administer the cure, or whatnot.

Here's an idea: the protagonist is missing an arm. In a country where guns are rare, he'd never find a pistol, and even if he got to a military base he couldn't carry the rifles he'd find there.

Or make it so that the zombies have the guns...

Or set it deep in, say, a rustic, in-the-country place that you might not think would have guns like that: like the farmland of Switzerland or something like that.

In any case, a stealth based zombie game... that'd be... different. I'd buy it.

To be honest, i don't see the problem with giving your protagonist a gun. The likelihood of them never coming across one in the game, especially if you're going for a 'realistic' setting, is slim. They'd find one at some point.

Ammunition for such a weapon on the other hand...

ya plus no wepons=your fucking dead nomatter what u pansy

^Pansy? Isn't that a little...harsh?

Also, Full Life Consequences joke goes here.