I know these kind of threads have been made before, but seriously. Why make the children such brats in Skyrim? I mean, most kids I have run into in Skyrim have badmouthed me, and it baffles me how some kids can voice threats that you can't do anything about (ie; Riverwood kid's 'Don't get on my bad side...')

I can understand why Bethesda chose to make children invincible [What I understand, it was to divert from their past reputation of their games allowing children to be murdered], but I still can't understand why they chose to make the children seem to exploit this fact when around The Dragonborn with no negative repercussions.

None of their games have allowed this. Fallout 3 was the first Beth game to have children and they were invincible then.

Children aren't afriad of you. You need to earn their respect.

Fallout 1 and 2 had the Child Killer reputation.

Edit: I just realized that those weren't bethesda games- nevermind that point.

From a story perspective, I was thinking just the other day that I am surprised there aren't any children in any of the camps you run across. Such as the Forsworn or other such "tribe" type groups. From a gameplay perspective, I can understand, since usually when you venture into those areas you end up killing everyone in the place. But I think that (like how the cities in lore are much bigger) the camps like these, in lore, would actually have children in it somewhere.

Fallout 1 and 2 were not made by Bethesda. They were made by Interplay.

thats kids these days... they have big mouths because they know YOU cannot do anything to them!

getting told off or being verbally harassed by children, random children, is the norm these days... least in my area...

While we're on the topic of the fact that kids are immortal in-game, I personally think Bethesda is tackling the dilemma from the wrong angle.

A gamer's mentality: They wanna do something in a game that the developer doesn't let them do. The developer continues to restrict it, which makes the gamer wanna do it even more, and they succeed in making mods for it.

What I feel would actually stop the fear of child murder in games; Don't make them immortal, just make the player not want to kill them. It's like when you wanna erase a book from memory, you don't try to eradicate the book, just eradicate the desire to read it.

I realized that and edited my post accordingly.

It wouldn't matter. You could make them the sweetest, most angelic little characters ever, and you would still have people who would kill ever child they came across in the game and post the videos all over YouTube.

The first boy in Riverwood is an brat and should be sacrificed to an dragon.

The rest is ok, yes the kids in Dragonreach is a a bit spoiled as expected of kids of an noble.

Either way, it's an unwinnable battle.

On one hand, you have people who will reverse-engineer a game to allow you to kill kids

on the other, people will abuse the ability to do so.

But back to the topic as it was intended: WHY does bethesda go out of its way to make the kids jerks?

They're just kids.

But in the first case, the onus is on the people who use the CK and other modding tools to make those child killing mods, while in the second the onus is on Bethesda. From Bethesda's POV, it's far better to let the modders take the heat, denounce their actions and prohibit any kind of discussion about it.

As to why they make the kids such insufferable little brats, the developers probably think it's cute/funny, especially since you can't do anything about it. I agree with you in that I find it a lot more annoying than funny.

As far as why gamesas lets modders 'take the heat'...anyone know the difference between 'intense violence' and 'prolonged scenes of intense violence'? The difference is whether or not the ESRB wants to give you an advlts only rating and kill your sales. Put in some child killing and they will want to give you the advlts only rating, and the same slow motion kill cam that would have been rated mature suddenly becomes a prolonged scene.

On why they make them brats...only some...okay maybe most...of them are brats. But just like with advlt NPCs the more annoying they are the more they stick with you. I think there's a pretty good spectrum of kid behavior myself, and it does create some sense of 'making a choice' in populating your house with adopt a kids.

Well, aren't the kids you can adopt without parents, family? Not having parents to really keep a kid in his place can result in the kid not exactly having good manners. And they're kids. Like my good friend Bill Cosby says, kids say the darndest things.

They originally planned on letting kids be killed but I guess they didn't want to be the first to stick their neck out for the milk drinking moms who would whine about it and get the game pulled or an "Ao" rating which would pull it from most stores.

I found this: "If the "setrace" command or mods are used to allow the player to kill child characters, their death noises are voiced. Furthermore, if the player uses these methods to kill Braith, then Lars Battle-Born will run up to the player in Whiterun, thank the player for killing her, and then give the player 50 gold. These lines are all fully voiced. This suggests that the player was originally going to be able to kill children, and the voiced dialogue suggests that this was probably cut late in development."

Society is too soft, it's only game so I should be able to blast a brat with a fireball if they disrespect my evil wizard.

Do you think it's normal for a kid to walk up to a man in full Daedric armor, with a giant mace in hand and a Dremora in tow and tell him "I'm not afraid of you"?

Braith might be the only exception as she's so terribly lonely she may just not care. But that's borderline suicidal and I don't think even she'd do something like this.

Case in point: bunnies.

I blame the parents!

Its a reflection from real life.

You may not be able to kill them but if you kill someone in the area there in and place the body somewhere where they will see it its pretty hilarious to watch them run around screaming. God I have issues.

Agreed, sort it out! LOL

Most of them are annoying as hell, with the odd exception. But no better excuse for a game of tag....you're it!!!

Children are a product of their environment.

Take a good long look at the folks of Skyrim, who call themselves advlts.

In my opinion, they're very mannered considering what they're surrounded by.

No way, your it!

Never had a problem with them. Those that seem annoying and uncouth to others, I just find amusing. They're children for crying out loud, don't expect much else from them in regards to behavior.