In TES history, the world is devoid of children. In my long relationship with TES I have met perhaps a handful, 2d motionless cutouts from the legendary game, Daggerfall. This is my story about why I think, they have a important place in the realism, and story telling of almost any game world.

Why TES games have no children, and are only populated by advlts

1) More dialogue and specialized child voice actors
2) The numbers and scope of 3d modeling would increase many times over
3) AI changes perhaps
4) Moral questions, ie, slaying children etc...
5) Effects of childrens presence in the game world, ie, day time schedules, squires/apprentices/labourers/and schools etc.



Many people might argue, that the amount of work to include children would offset the gains. I for a time thought this. Until, recently when I replayed perhaps the greatest and most RPG of all time, of course; "Ultima 7: The Blackgate"....

How RPG's of the past incorporated young into the game world

Ultima 7 included children in their game world. Some where dressed differently, some went to school, some where part of a family unit, Spark the orphin could join your party etc etc. Ultima 7 did not include all of the fore-mentioned points i listed.
As an older game in a very different 'top down' format, they could afford to dust over such details for their inclusion, still achieving a good result. You could slay children if you were so inclined, and that matter was handled no differently to anyone who might have to kill; txt based reply balloons whilst fleeing such as "Leave me alone!".....and "wahhhh!!". The killing blow would respond in an unrealistic pop noise as the moving character is converted into a flat bloody image of a body. There was no need for voice actors in that day in age.
They did not need to worry about paper-dolling armour or clothes onto child characters or even advlt characters, as the game did not support that.

What child characters bring to the game world

I believe child characters are an important part of a believable game world. They are of course, an important part of every day life!... Child characters can convey a sense of importance in story telling which is original, and extremely powerful. In the right context, saving the life of a young child could be considered more important than stopping an oblivion gate from opening for instance.
The presence of children allow for much better fleshing out of npc's in a game world.

1) The disinterestd son of the King,
2) The bar wenches bastard child which no-one loves etc etc.
3) The incarcerated child with raw magical talents....

Etc etc etc.... I just made them up right now. As you can see, it could breath new life into a very difficult aspect of the open world RPG genre. The possibilies for remarkable game play, and compelling heartfeld story telling is increased.


How child characters could be handled in a detailed 3d game world.

First of all, a detailed 3d world is a very different beast compared to the cartoonish depictions of classic games. It is difficult to simply 'black out the 'grey' areas of morality in a world bristling with detail, without drawing attention.

1) What type of censorship WOULD kill immersion?
2) Is censorship necessary at all?
3) What type of censorship is necessary?


Such child characters in my opinion need not be common to be effective. In a world like Oblivions for instance, 20 child characters would be more than enough. If babes would be included, even easier as they do not need much design and attention at all.

Young would not play such a direct role in the "game mechanics/rpg elements" for obvious reasons, so therefore it is not necessary to allow the fitting of weapons or armour. Perhaps just a few generic outfits or farmers clothes would suffice...

Censorship of violence and gore is probably the primary issue in the inclusion of children to any free roaming game. There are many ways to handle it. Almost all of which would encroach on the immersion factor, if you wanted to slay a possessed child for instance...

1) Children are ethereal. ie your spells and sword flys straight through them to now effect.
2) Children have an uncanny dodge ability, like peds in "crazy taxi"
3) Children simply get KO'd. With censored gore factor etc. And wake up with no memory.
4) No censorship at all.

All of these are plausibly acceptable in my imaginings, depending on what context such evil actions are performed in the story. Number 4 would definitlely make a higher rating likely, but IMO still not necessarily get the black flag and make a sadistic game. Number 1 and 2 IMO is acceptable provided your target runs away etc.
Number 3 is IMO the safest option, and is the option most closely resembling Ultima 7.

Other problems and faults which could come with inclusion of child characters

One of the most annoying thing about child characters is bad voice acting. Smart-aleck kids, or generic bland personalities.
Unrealistic, or boisterous replies to a looming PC dark-elf are not likely...




So, there it is.... I think that the series is in need of a bigger buffet of story telling tools. I think it is entirely possible to include child characters, without breaking the time/budget restraints of a AAA game. I believe that their presence would bring a lot more meaning to the sometimes cold factors of such epic scale games.
The same force is at work here when someone would suggest standard love themes/side quests to fill this humanitarian void....it is after all human nature!

Have you played Fallout 3? That game includes a handful of children. Some are just regular kids, but some or orphans and even slaves. There is even an entire city populated only by children. I wouldn't be surprised if TESV had children NPCs in it. In fact, I think I'd be more surprised if it didn't.

Arena: No children

Daggerfall: Children

Morrowind: No children

Oblivion: No children

Fallout 3: Children

Maybe someone who's good at math can figure out the pattern and tell us whether TESV will have kids.

Why bother? They're too annoying



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bng3agUOYiI

• Immersion
  
• More quest possibilities
  
• More game mechanic opportunities (families, etc)

Three pretty good reasons, I think.


That is what we call an opinion.

Let me get this straight... having two distinct and limited age groups adds immersion? Imagine walking down the street and seeing ONLY ten year olds and twenty-five year olds.

Better than just 25 year olds. Plus they added old people in Fallout 3.

Oblivion already had old people.

What would stop them from adding teens to the mix? And why just twenty-five year olds? Even Morrowind had old people. Oblivion too. And Fallout 3 also.

It takes too much time and resources that could be used on other more important things. And that's what it comes down to, whether or not you think its important enough. :shrug:

Not really. They did it Fallout 3, what's stopping them from doing it in TES V?

I doubt Bethesda would add children (especially kill able children) into one of their games. Not to say that it's a bad idea, it's just that if they were to do such a thing they'd probably start getting bashed by the senseless masses. And Akatosh knows you've gotta appease the senseless masses...



Heck I'd even like to choose my character's age, instead of just that "Make look like an old leather bag or a Barby doll" meter. It could even change how people act to you and how seriously they take you("Pft, you're just some punk youngster, i remember in my die when we killed xivilai for our morning exercises" blah blah). Though of course there would have to be a low-end cap for the player, a twelve year-old killing daedra would be kinda silly.

You don't understand! Those resources are going to be poured into making more characters that feel and act the same as their race. They might as well get the diversity going and create children.

The hardest part for making children in the game would be casting voices. And lets be honest, its as difficult to cast a 20 year old argonian male voice than it is a dunmer child's voice. It wouldn't be too hard to make a "child race." Because thats essentially all it is, if you're familiar with Bethesda's tool sets.

Everything and anything that needs to be done will get done. This isn't EA we're talking about. Bethesda will release stuff when they're good and ready.

_{My only reason for typing all that was to say you don't understand to Idontunderstand.}

Earlier Fallout games had children from the start, so I don't think that Fallout 3 having them is any sign of a pattern. People need to stop assuming that simply because Bethesda does something in Fallout 3 means it will appear in the Elder Scrolls too.

But as far as children in the game goes, I don't actually much care if they're in or not, sure, having children would be more realistic, but it's not something I wouldn't see much about, it's a bit like the fact the lack of anything to serve the function of toilets in the game, it's one of those details that, if I don't see it, I'll just accept is there but simply happens outside of my sight. Certainly, having children would add realism to the game, but if Bethesda doesn't do them, I can still accept that they exist in Tamriel, I just don't encounter them during gameplay because they have no importance in the game.

However it seems to me that when fiction introduces children characters, it can encounter a number of problems, the most obvious, perhaps, is the difficulty of finding good actors to play them. However, this I think would be less of a problem in animation and by extension video games then in live action movies and television since you don't need to have actual children appear on screen, the problem then is simply to find someone to perform the voices of children, which I'd imagine would be a bit easier. Another problem is that all too often, children in fiction end up having either no personality, or being extremely annoying, I guess a lot of writers have a hard time convincingly writing children in a way that won't become annoying, and if I had to choose, I'd rather have them just be absent than be characters I'd hate, or characters that will still seem unbelievable anyway. For me, though, the most important problem with having children in any given work of fiction is that their presence can have a considerable impact on the tone of the story. While having children be threatened can potentially add a sense of urgency by taking advantage of people's tendency to see harming children as worse than harming advlts, and potentially emphasize how much of a bastard a villian is by showing that he is even willing to harm children, I find that the presence of children can also end up making the story seem less mature and less serious. I think it's the fact that if you want to portray children believably, you need to give them childish dialog (By which I mean, they talk like how you'd expect childen to talk.) and introduce the kind of concerns real life children might have to deal with, potentially distracting from the main focus of the story and changing its tone.

But it wouldn't really bother me if children exist in the game as long as we don't get an entire city consisting of them, seeing that once in Fallout 3 was already one time too many.



To be honest, if I had to choose, I'd rather an advlt character without personality than child without personality, at least the advlt is probably just flat and forgetable, the child is more likely to be incredably annoying.

Where does this stigma attached to killing kids in video games come from?

I find it really, really weird that of all the sick-depraved things you can do in video games, killing children is where they draw the line.

They're just like other people, only more useless. And they're not innocent, they're cruel. Cruel and useless. So, if you can kill goblins, you should be allowed to kill kids.

Not to burst any bubbles but discussing child killing is not allowed...It has gotten other threads locked.

Just an FYI.

oops, nevermind, didn't realize.

EDIT: nevermind too.

I haven't played Fallout 3, but the youtube videos seem like they handled children well enough.

why can't you kill the kids? itsa goddam VIDEO GAME if i wanna shoot little tammy in the head with a Rock-it Launcher she should die.
like at least let us knock them out or sumthin cuz its hilarious!

I personally think children would just become annoying and brattish unless they were the disciplined, seen-and-not-heard feudal sort. This could be kind of cool and in akin to the rigid, disciplined social systems of Morrowind.

Little Lamplight. That settlement is the whole reason I don't want kids in tes now. Because I know bethesda would put something like that in tes just to remind us of that annoying settlement.

Except a lot of Fallout 3's engine reminded me of Oblivion. Adding children was a fantastic idea, and Bethseda's all about improving their franchise, so why shouldn't they include children in the next Elderscrolls? Children shouldn't be a main focus of course, but they added depth to Fallout's world, and other games that also included kids too. I also like the teenager idea, but honestly, maybe four or five scattered around would be good enough.

I think it would be great to add children, but it should be more creative than in Fallout 3. The children in FO3 were always indoors, except for Bryan Wilks, who eventually stayed inside too. Children in a potentially dangerous open world as Tamriels would be well protected by their parents, but that doesn't mean nothing goes wrong. You could rescue the abducted child of the duke for instance or go find a little lost child in the middle of the woods and bring it back to the city, but it would also be nice to see 3 children play tag or hide and seek in the streets or a child stealing some candy or bread.