Been known to happen ...

A gigantic troll approaches you and kills you.

"Crap! My last save is 5 hours ago."

You can lose progress anyways.

Why do you kill questgivers ...

If I killed Casidus Cosidus in Morrowind I always saved before hand because I did know he was a essential character ....

And it's jarring.

It's just an example of how it could backfire.

"I'm an important plot character that you must escort to the nearest castle. Look, a monster, I must attack it! YARGH, I'm dead"
*You have killed an essential character. You will not be able to continue the main quest. Please load to a previous save or continue on with your doomed path.

"Crap! My last save is 5 hours ago."

well it svcks on the other hand it's on ly a game i had plenty of corrupted save games, bugs, mods who didn't work out that well ... It's annoying , but good for anger mangement ...

Making someone you escort essential is kinda lame as then all you have to do is sit back and let them do all the fighting while you watch from a safe distance. At the same time having them die is a bummer. I generally tell them to wait here, clear the area, then bring them along. Also saving often should be a given.

Not really... there were plenty of essentials who had nothing to do with the main quest, like Abraham Washington & Harkness.

And this is why "escort quest" is one of the most hated quest styles in RPG history.

This! Exactly my thought.

A lot of you guys seem to not realize why NPCs are essential. It's not so the player can't kill them. It's not to replace the situation in Morrowind, where you'd get the message that you killed an important NPC and the world was doomed and whatever.

NPCs have schedules now. They have Radiant AI. They move around and fight each other and can walk from Point A to Point B and get killed without you ever knowing about it. A quest can get totally screwed over without the player doing anything.

Trust me, if they made no one essential and kept with NPCs have Radiant AI and schedules like they do, it would be the death of half the quest-related characters, and the same people that are demanding non-essential NPCs here would be returning to the forums to complain about how they didn't get to complete/experience half the quests in the game due to dead NPCs. I can't tell you how many times I've just been walking in the wilderness and seen "So-and-so is unconscious."

I enjoying playing a self-focused evil character, I only look out for myself I kill those who challenge me or seek to anger me. If i want to kill someone i should be able to, not LOL UNCONSCIOUS.

I would like this also but I also would like to know which NPCs are tied to quests.

So many characters I find in Oblivion, when I was playing an evil character so I tried to kill them, and they coudn't die? WTF?! Later I found out they were "essential" characters, but another thing that was lame about Oblivion. Loved the game still though.

This is the same thing I have herd before. The same talk we are having about a NPCer stealling a piece of bread would be killed. Thing is this happened alot in Oblvion and Bethesda had to take it away. I believe it will be taken away from Skyrim as well, or will be really watered down.

I don't have much confidence in what Todd is saying. Herd it all before, just take Skyrim out of it and insert Oblivon and it's almost the exact same stuff he is saying over again.

Still going to love Skyrim for sure, but just saying, same old same old, Todd "blah blah blah this will be great, AI will be awsome will do that and that"

Essential NPCs are already confirmed by Todd for a few characters. I mean, you can't kill the king in the first 10 minutes and still have a playable story.

Plus, children will be unkillable.

Oh, right all those lines about the radiant AI will be line. All 0 of them.
Seriously they've said NOTHING about this, so what are you talking about?

And NPCs that steal bread do get killed in Oblivion.

What culture am I from? Western culture (British).

It's not a case of wanting a game where I can "just kill things". I just think the whole issue is completely pathetic in a world that should be more tolerant in the year 2011. At the end of the day, it's just a game. Wanting to kill people in a game does not equate to wanting to kill people in real life, despite what some politically correct morons would have you believe. I'm in favour of anything that pushes the boundaries of social tolerance in any form of media... be it comedy, film, music or videogames.

I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that you're probably one of these people who thinks the Grand Theft Auto series is "evil", am I right? :confused:

Not a problem there is trademark solution just hit Tilde key select dead and type resurrect? ask at your local Necromancers guild right now :teehee:
Well I'm OK with essential actors from MQ but better if essential actors will have longer time of wakeup then before at last so player will not think they see immortal Highlanders or robots.

Well thats problem of implementation if guards will able arrest NPC instead of killing thats will be much better and reduce city riots as well.

Well you can't kill children in GTA either...

Might want to step away from the topic of children, you guys, unless you want the thread locked.

Don't know really. As soon as I knew you could kill police officers in it I didn't want to play it. I guess I have a little too much respect for those protecting me and my family to find that at all fun.

My son is a Army Combat Medic now and I can tell you that I really don't like modern shooter wargames either. Not going to trash people that do though, I understand that shooters are fun (I played plenty of UT back in the day).

I suppose making Skyrim into something like a moving shooting gallery would be fun to play, but it certainly wouldn't be an engaging RPG if it was that way.

Funny, I don't recall seeing children in GTA...

Anyway, that series has pushed the boundaries a lot even if it hasn't tackled the children issue yet. Politically correct idiots (usually religious, politically correct idiots) condemn the series. Does that stop Rockstar? No.

Too late, think its been confirmed there will be. No point in countering your "arguement", they're in