Mercy Rewarded

Some games reward you for not killing your enemies.

Compare Pacifist Run, but this is not necessarily a full no-death run—it may just be that isolated incidences of non-lethality get you more points than a lethal version of the same.

Often coincides with Video Game Caring Potential, for when your own troops inspire affection rather than the desire to use them as C-4 strapped lemmings.

Can often be an aspect of the Karma Meter and Video Game Caring Potential. Contrast Video Game Cruelty Potential, though the "reward" in that case is usually simply one's own personal amusement or gratification, as well as Video Game Cruelty Punishment, where you are punished for unnecessary violence.


 * Jo Wood's Cold Zero gives you more XP for enemies KO'd rather than killed and still more for enemies left unharmed at the end of a mission.
 * Materia Magica features a samurai duck who wears a full set of ebony armor - valuable stuff at low levels. But if you pass him by without killing him, you earn the Mark of Truth.
 * ''Metal Gear Solid examples:
 * Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater rewards you with new camouflage if you nonlethally defeat bosses, but they die anyway.
 * In the fight against The Sorrow you must dodge The Sorrow's attacks while wading through the ghosts of every character you have killed up to that point in the game. The fewer characters you have killed, the fewer there are to dodge and the easier the fight is.
 * Literally wading; the battle takes place knee-deep in a river of variable length.
 * Nonlethally beating The End gives you his modified-to-fire-tranquilizers sniper rifle, making the rest of a Pacifist Run much easier. (You actually have to corner and hold him up for his special camo).
 * When Quiet is taken prisoner in Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, the player decides whether she lives or dies; choose to show mercy and she joins your side. Is this a good thing? Well, let's put it this way, in the original version game, if you choose to spare her, she eventually dies anyway via Heroic Sacrifice, and this caused such an uproar among fans that an upgrade was added including an unlockable mission that made it possible to save her.
 * Splinter Cell games (at least the later ones) deduct points for every person you kill on the mission, all of them if its a civilian or ally. However this applies in missions in which you are specifically told to kill someone, and the objective is fulfilled for "knocking them out" even if you only do it nonlethally, by all rights they should be alive.
 * The SWAT series does this, however it still rewards you for breaking police procedure if you can knock out hostile criminals instead of opening fire. A bit of a Justified Trope in that minimal loss of life is part of their goals.
 * SWAT 3 and 4 docked you points for killing, but SWAT 2 would suspend officers for killing terrorists who had their guns drawn. Also, you had to deal with certain terrorists non-lethally to get the best ending.
 * In real life, officers that are involved in a fatal shooting are always placed on suspension with pay while the shooting is investigated. It's not so much a punishment as it is a requirement for proper decompression and dealing with taking life. Officers can still train, but are not on-duty until cleared by Internal Affairs. So, really, SWAT 2 is the most realistic.
 * The Suffering: Ties That Bind rewards mercy, but in this the form of Shoot the Dog, by finishing off a slowly dying officer.
 * The original The Suffering has a similar sequence in the abandoned insane asylum. You come across a prison guard who's been mostly eaten alive by rats, in agony and incapable of much but twitching sickeningly. Killing him is counted as good act, rather than an evil one, by the game's Karma Meter.
 * The second Spider-Man game for the PS1 does this with one particular boss: if you defeat The Lizard with nothing but antidote shots (which gets tough), you're rewarded with an insulated costume - making the latter parts of the game against Electro far, far easier.
 * The grizzled veteran quartermaster in the beginning of Deus Ex rewards you with extra ammo if you use non-lethal methods, or withholds them if you kill. After a certain (early) part of the game, though, this ceases to be a factor.
 * It seems to be the designer's way of saying "Good show" to players who decide not to kill everything in sight...because as it turns out, . The general also reacts better if you ask for nonlethal weapons, or nonweapon equipment.
 * Except for the fact that he has no problem giving you a rocket launcher, assuming that you'll used the anti-tank weapon against the robots.
 * BioShock (series) rewards you for showing mercy to the Little Sisters.
 * Expanded on in the sequel, where showing mercy to certain characters alters the ending. Sparing them is considered good, however sparing one character . It's considered a good act.
 * It's either that or  Also, he's begging for his life.
 * The decision is complicated further by . The Broken Base is less about the decision itself and more about 2K Marin's decision to label one decision "good" despite the fact that it's designed to be a very grey dilemma.
 * In Red Steel, sparing your enemies in the sword battles will give you more allies in the final level. Of course, you're still free to mow down all the guys with guns with no penalty whatsoever. It also gets you the good end if you do this in the final sword battle, but your opponent will not yield unless you break his sword, unlike all of the other enemies.
 * Robin Hood: Legend of Sherwood, an old Strategy First game, increases your overall game score and gives you more troops/workers if you keep your bodycount low. As compensation, knocking people out is dead-easy, you have infinite rope and tying them up works indefinitely as long as they aren't found by their comrades.
 * This is actually required in one level: you have to sneak into the fortress of a potential ally to enlist his aid, and killing his men would probably make him your enemy for life.
 * Medieval: Total War II has its own take on this, giving a Karma Meter to each of your individual generals. A governor-general that is very Chivalrous (as opposed to Dreaded) will increase population growth and happiness in a city instead of just public order. Good-aligned generals are, therefore, much more useful in empire-building. And given that troops fighting for them are less likely to run away, they're really helpful for taking on an enemy bristling with firearms.
 * The original Medieval: Total War had a somewhat less altruistic reward for not executing captured enemy soldiers, since this allowed you to ransom them back to the original owner for a fair chunk of cash. Of course, this meant that you would have to face them on the field again at some point, so it was often a good idea to put a few to the sword during the battle...
 * It also worth noting that while good-aligned generals are useful for empire building, dreaded generals are more useful for long, outdrawn conflicts, like the crusade. And if you combine King Edward the Ridiculously Cruel, with some nasty anti-moral weapons, the enemy will be running before you know it.
 * In the Bakumatsu chapter of Live a Live, you are given four path options - Kill as necessary, Kill Everyone (not really that extreme, but you end up leaving nothing but bloodstains in your wake), Kill Everyone (but spare the women), and Kill No One. The latter two get your rewards, in the form of an Inrou (Medicine Box) from the women living in the castle if you've killed no women, and Yoshiyuki, Prisoner's sword (which is MARKEDLY stronger than any weapon you can acquire in the chapter) as your equipped weapon for the final chapter.
 * Super Smash Bros. Melee had the "Merciful Master" bonus awarded if you win a match without KO'ing anyone - which usually means they managed to KO themselves. And an even bigger bonus called "Switzerland" awarded for not taking any damage and not using any attacks at all.
 * The first two games of the King's Quest series tends to give you more points for nonviolent solutions to problems. The later games, not so much. For instance, KQ4, KQ5 and the remake of KQ2 all require you to deal violently with the antagonist.
 * In some Super Robot Wars games, you can on certain occasions earn a battle mastery or (much more practically and rarely) a new unit by reducing an enemy to critical damage without destroying them. Of course, most of the time, you're rewarded for finishing off boss units, who tend to run away at low HP.
 * Inverted in Baten Kaitos Origins; killing the Quirky Miniboss Squad in the cutscenes after you defeat them gets you good equipment. However, for 100% Completion, you need to both kill them (for the items) and spare them (to see bonus scenes in the final Collapsing Lair sequence). Naturally, this requires you to play through the game at least twice via New Game+.
 * Used in Vectorman. Go through a level without shooting once? Get a hefty point bonus. (This is doable on some levels thanks to the fact that your Double Jump can do damage at certain points.)
 * The original Midway side-scrolling shooter NARC had this. You could gun down every crook you meet, but if you stayed in his space long enough, he'd be arrested, for a nice end-of-level bonus. You are a cop, so this makes sense.
 * Unfortunately, this doesn't work on PCP addicts or serial killers (they have melee attacks and will slaughter you if you try to arrest them), and is suicide against drug dealers (who throw extremely powerful syringes). Nice in theory, fails in practice.
 * Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction had this for the top-level bosses and minibosses, the Deck of 52. You could capture a card and drag his/her happy ass to an extraction point (hopefully the chopper doesn't get blown up on its way in) for the full bounty, or you could just level the place and snap a photo of the corpse for half. And for the sadistically antisocial, you could capture a card, load him/her in the chopper, get the full bounty..and then blow the chopper up for just the standard friendly-fire penalties.
 * Taking all 52 alive gives you the "Cheater Weapons" for your New Game+, a supply drop that includes a portable vulcan gun, rapid-fire grenade launcher, and portable airstrike bazooka.
 * One of the most interesting examples of this is in Mortal Kombat 3. A certain button combination at the "Finish Him/Her!" screen would trigger a Mercy which grants the other player a tiny bit of life to continue fighting. It also allows you to perform Animalities after you beat that shred of life out of them. That's right, for sparing your opponent's life, you gain a brand new way to brutally murder them.
 * Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 allows you to Capture enemy units. There are a few rules to it, of course, but you get their equipment and won't have to lose your own units if you're clever.
 * In Path of Radiance one particular chapter rewards you with the Ashera Staff if you refrain from killing any of the priests - and there are a hella lot of them clogging the chokepoints. What to do? Shove them out of the way. Then again, you wouldn't kill a helpless priest anyways, would you? You CAN, however, steal their staves and sell them for cash, or keep some of them.
 * In both Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn sparing enemies is some level gave the player bonus experience that they could use to level up characters that didn't even get into fights. The biggest of these would be sparing the senators when you have to destroy the supplies in their camp at the cost of losing the valuable items they drop, or if you have Harr and Heather at high enough levels to survive the inner parts of the camp alone you can have rob them before they escape and get both the items and the bonus experience.
 * Iji utilizes this well, but it's important to know that kills are only counted if they are caused by your projectiles (From version 1.6 onwards, those bounced off of a Resonance Reflector keep their ownership, allowing you to kill an enemy with his own rockets without getting your hands dirty). Assassins drop Nano when they voluntarily bail, so they don't count (with one exception). Also, breaking turrets, Skysmashers, and Proxima don't register on your kill tally either.
 * There is a single Tasen in Sector 3 between the Komato pursuit party and Elite Krotera. Leave her alive and she'll reunite with her homies, and they will unlock Deep Sector in Sector 9 - giving you access to a Supercharge and a sizable ammo cache. Too bad the Assassins move in as well.
 * If you manage to go through the game with a kill tally of zero, not only will Assassin Ansaksie assist you against Annihilator Iosa (and do her in for you to preserve your tally, though she's not doing it for you), but she'll also leave the Massacre for you to use on General Tor on all difficulties (except Ultimortal, where you're forced to kill a certain enemy, preventing full pacifist runs).
 * World of Warcraft's Diremaul instance has a section where the players can become king of an ogre tribe by killing the previous king. All the other bosses can be spared using several tricks to get past them, and doing so results in them paying you tribute in the form of items that are usually superior to what you would get by killing them.
 * Both Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect award Karma Meter points for getting out of certain situations without combat. There's also an achievement in Mass Effect for defusing seemingly unwinnable situations with your Charm or Intimidate skill. In one particular twist, doing so will avoid losing a party member.
 * The Virtua Cop series rewards disarming enemies (rather than hitting them directly) with a "Justice Shot" bonus.
 * Also, you get to show off your Improbable Aiming Skills by Blasting It Out of Their Hands. Always a crowd pleaser.
 * At one point later on in Chrono Trigger, right after, the party members (led by Frog), meet up with . You have a choice to make: fight him, or choose to leave him alone.
 * You get this same choice and (mostly) the same results, even if Frog is not in the party.
 * Minor one in Final Fantasy VII, as the team travel along the train tracks of Corel, a certain section of the tracks has a chirping sound. Cloud can travel up the slope to find a bird's nest with two treasure chests. If you choose not to attack the bird and give up the treasure, and either Aerith or Tifa is in the team, it can up their Relationship Values for the Golden Saucer Date sequence.
 * Subverted later when you can also spare some members of the Submarine crew when you take it over. They're the guys you performed with when you masqueraded to send off Rufus Shinra. Taking them hostage rather than killing them nets their thanks, avoids conflict, and they never betray you/ But they are one of the only (and in fact last) sources of the Shinra Alpha armor piece if you fight them and steal it, a nice pick-up if the player is low on gil and/or hasn't done the endgame side quests. Can be a good incentive to fight the outclassed mooks instead of showing mercy.
 * Doing good deeds in Red Dead Redemption (such as clearing out gang hideouts, helping the law, retrieving stolen goods, etc.) raises your karma meter slightly. When it's very high, random people will give you items, including but limited to cash, guns, and a rosary that deflects bullets. Disarming people in duels and bringing back bounties alive also gets you more fame, faster than killing your charges would have.
 * In Quest for Glory II, the hero may be awarded with the title of Paladin at the end of the game if he avoids performing certain unmerciful actions, such as trying to slay his opponent after disarming him during the trial to join the Eternal Order of Fighters, or acting similarly in a situation that arises near the end of the game while confronting the villainous henchman Khaveen.
 * Alpha Protocol gives you specific perks for sparing enemies and using nonlethal weaponry. Of course, you also get perks for mercilessly slaughtering everyone in your path. You can also form alliances with characters you spare, most of which will pay off in the ending.
 * Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines grants bonus XP for doing certain missions without being spotted or without killing anyone. Many of these also penalize you (i.e. The Prince yells at you and withholds money) if you kill anyone, since you're supposed to be upholding The Masquerade.
 * Very subverted in Dungeon Keeper. Setting your enemies free will merely cause them to come back to fight you; in contrast, torturing them causes them to eventually join your side.
 * This becomes doubly subverted in the unofficial expansion Ancient Keeper - at times you actually need to capture enemies, heal and buff them, and release them - still as enemies - to win. It also adds another subversion, requiring you to play the Bad Boss and selectively turn your own minions against you at various points. (Certain creatures can do things while trying to hurt their master they can't do to an enemy Keeper.)
 * In Queen's Blade: Spiral Chaos, if you fully break Monster Girl's armor with The One Guy instead of killing her, she'll join your army. Sadly, you can capture only one monster of each type.
 * In Yoshi Topsy Turvy, starting in Chapter 5, you will get levels where the Spirit of Kindness challenges you to get through the level while killing few enemies as possible. Killing none at all yields the best medal.
 * If you're running a good-aligned party in Might and Magic VII, one of your mandatory quests is to do a pacifist run of a fairly difficult dungeon called the Walls of Mist. You fail it if you so much as damage an enemy, though you can try again. (Evil parties have a quest that takes them here too, but are free to kill anything they like).
 * Arguably invoked in Return To Krondor. There are many situations in Return to Krondor where you get XP for avoiding a fight with various groups, but generally the reward is less than what you get if just kill them.
 * Horrifically inverted in Infinite Space.
 * In Summon Night: Swordcraft Story you can defeat human enemies by either beating them up or breaking their weapon. If you can manage the latter you'll learn the technique to make an exact replica of their weapon for your own use.
 * Scarface the World Is Yours. Ignoring rival gangs instead of blasting them means your drug-smuggling ventures are that much more profitable and easy. Blasted 'em anyway? You can outright bribe 'em into not hassling you so much. Of course to get one hundred percent completion they all have to die.
 * MARDEK 2 has a choice to spare a character. Doing so gets you a very useful shop in Mardek 3.
 * The Mass Effect games occasionally use this. An excellent example: In Mass Effect 1, you are given the choice to spare or kill . If you spare her, you meet an asari in the sequel carrying a message from her promising  to help you fight the Reapers.
 * Mass Effect 2 tries be more ambiguous on the issue in one quest on Illium. Sparing a begging mercenary recruit will come back to haunt you when it's revealed the recruit was an unrepentant Psycho for Hire who joined the mercenaries after murdering an innocent(ish) volus merchant and now walks free. Then again, you can give the evidence of her crime to the police, which can still be considered a better option than murdering her before the Player Character even knew she was evil.
 * Mass Effect 3 takes this to the extreme. Throughout all three games, an obnoxious reporter hounds Commander Shepard, hell-bent on digging up any kind of dirt she can find. In all three games, you can spout a one-liner and then punch her out. However, if you import a save after both games, and in those games you non-violently managed to upstage her in her own interviews,  Well, didn't see that coming...
 * Mega Man X Command Mission features enemy medics. Kill them and they yield XP and money as normal. Kill everyone but them, and on their next turn, they'll 'Surrender' and heal your party instead, and if they're spared for another turn, they'll retreat, but not without a 'Thank You'.
 * Note that it's only the "Nurse" medics who do it. If you try with the "Doctor" class, which is an upgraded version of the Nurse, they'll only attack you like their non-medic counterpart.
 * Violence is never the answer in the King's Quest series. If you have the choice between violence and non-violence, the peaceful method is always the "correct" one that gives you the most points and the Golden Ending.
 * A Judge Dredd video game for the Sega Genesis gave you 50 points for every dead criminal. Properly arresting one gave you 100.
 * In Frozen Essence, not using Mina's destructive power on after he severely injures Rune during the Life Path allows him to live long enough to thwart Oryon from recapturing Mina and Rune. Doing the opposite causes  to die of his wounds instead and leads to one of the game's worst endings.
 * Deus Ex Human Revolution is anything but subtle about this: Nonlethal takedowns are, pound for pound, worth twice as much XP as killing someone, and most quest resolutions saving lives pay off after a while as the grateful survivors get back to you.
 * You're also rewarded if you decide
 * Galaga '88 has periodic bonus stages where sets of enemy ships flew by in preset formations without attacking. A large "perfect bonus" could be earned by hitting all the ships in the stage, but one could much more easily earn a "secret bonus" worth the same value as the perfect bonus simply by not firing at all during the stage.
 * River City Girls, from the Kunio-Kun series; defeat all the enemy mooks in one room except one, and the last one will often plead for mercy if you damaged enough; choose to spare them, and they join you as Assist Characters.
 * River City Girls, from the Kunio-Kun series; defeat all the enemy mooks in one room except one, and the last one will often plead for mercy if you damaged enough; choose to spare them, and they join you as Assist Characters.