Dusk Pacifist E1M1 Transcript

(Voice of Jakob, the leader of The Cult) “Kill the intruder”
Hey, let’s not be cra- woah heyheyhey! Watch where you’re swinging that thing! Can’t we just talk this out? OK, I’m leaving, Jeez!

Hello and welcome to my Dusk Pacifist playthrough. In this series of videos, I will be going through the entirety of Dusk on Cero Miedo difficulty without killing any enemies. Dusk is a great game with fun movement, and while the guns are also fun, if you want to focus entirely on the movement system, playing pacifist is the way to go. But before we get into things, let’s lay out some ground rules:

1. I must get the pacifist trophy on each level. This means I can’t deal any damage to enemies. I am allowed to use guns for other purposes, however. Keep in mind that I also cannot damage enemies with their own attacks, so while I am allowed to use melee weapons to deflect projectiles, if they hit an enemy, I have to restart the level. Enemy infighting is unavoidable and usually not my fault, so it is acceptable; this is why my killcount will not always be zero.

2. No mid-level saves. Savescumming takes all the challenge out of games like this one, so if I die, I go back to the start of the level.

3. No going out-of-bounds, even in intended out-of-bounds areas. I am allowed to use prop stacking and explosive jumping to skip certain barriers, but if I start seeing glitchy transparent walls, I’ve gone too far.

4. I play on Cero Miedo, in Intruder Mode. Cero Miedo is the hardest skill level in Dusk other than Duskmare, in which you die in a single hit. While some levels may be beatable pacifist on Duskmare, many have so many enemies in such cramped areas, that I don’t think it’s possible to avoid taking damage without tool assisted speedrun level skills. Intruder Mode means that I start every level with only sickles, and only 100 health and 25 morale, except for the first level, which starts you with more.

5. This is not a speedrun. I will be going fast on most levels because that’s almost always the optimal way to play, but I will slow down to manipulate enemies or grab pickups. You probably can do this challenge faster than I’m going to do it, but I just want to get it done.

One more thing before we get started: Dusk is an amazing game, and these videos will contain tons of major spoilers, so if you haven’t played Dusk and you’re into this kind of game, I highly suggest you do so before you watch these videos. With all that out of the way, let’s get started in E1M1: Head Cheese

OK, so the first level is really easy to do pacifist if you know about this secret, which you should. It’s not exactly well hidden. Get used to me running past enemies because that’s kind of the modus operandi of pacifist runs. You’re faster than pretty much every enemy, and strafe-jumping makes you even faster than that. I’ll talk more about strafe jumping in the next video but for now, that’s the first level down, without even taking a hit, nice and easy. It won’t stay that way for long.