Call of Duty: Vanguard is a brutal FPS, filled with bombs, blood, and brutality, but one daring player, taking inspiration from Desmond Doss and Hacksaw Ridge, has decided to show us all there’s a better way, by reaching prestige level ten without killing a single opponent.
As originally reported by Charlie Intel, a Call of Duty Redditor named Pilgore recently uploaded proof of their incredible, bloodless achievement, showing that across three days and 673 games of Vanguard, they had managed to max out prestige while keeping their kill record at a perfect round zero. How the game can also figure that the STG-44, or any gun for that matter, is Pilgore’s “weapon of choice”, is anyone’s guess – surely a better option would be “love” or “understanding”, which have clearly been deployed here to significant effect.
And this isn’t the first time that Pilgore has proven themselves as the definitive, online conscientious objector – they also hit prestige ten in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War without ending a single life, and we can only imagine they plan to do the same in Modern Warfare 2.
So how is it done? How do you become ruler of the battlefield while still remaining morally impervious? There are two methods. First, you complete objectives. Vanguard doesn’t award medals for objectives, but it does award XP, so there’s one half of the equation.
The other is a little trickier, and kind of borders on violence – but we’re giving Pilgore a pass here because, I mean, come on.
Basically, you have to destroy other players’ killstreak rewards. If you see care packages dropping out of the sky, fire a rocket and blow them up. If an opponent kills four people and calls in a spy plane, show them the error of their transgressions by shooting it down. It’s a little bit warmongering, but compared to most people when they play CoD, who can’t wait to score a melee kill by jabbing a knife into someone’s head, it’s practically affectionate.
Serious kudos, then, to Pilgore, surely Call of Duty’s most badass pacifist.