I never played W2 but I remember some people commenting about the narrative dissonance between how the characters were presented in cutscenes and then seeing them shoot people like some highly trained soldier. So maybe this no guns thing can work, provided the combat is still fun.
Anyway, if this is true hopefully the main character is like Faith and not some snassy "2 cool 4 u" type of character (though between the Skateboard and graffiti it sounds like she totally will)
IMO it was such a stupid criticism of WD2. Narratively, it worked like this: the character in your hacker group who was in charge of the 3D printer was a sociopathic anarchist, he loved guns, so he had blueprints for guns in the printer. Lethal weapons were available, but they had to be purchased, and they were absolutely never required.
They were 100% optional. Your default weapon was a taser pistol, there was a non-lethal "stun" grenade launcher, there were non-lethal electro-shock hand grenade sticky-bombs. (There was also a stun shotgun, a stun sniper rifle, and a paintball gun, but those were post-launch DLC.) Your melee attacks were always non-lethal, according to the tutorial. Some of them look pretty brutal, but that's what it said.
The game never ever forced you to go lethal. If any player was killing enemies or NPCs with lethal weapons,
it was their choice. And IMO the choice is important. Going non-lethal made completing the missions more difficult, so putting the choice in the player's hands had a real effect on the game. There is no weight whatsoever when the dev makes the choice for the player before the game is even in their hands.