They still haven't gone that low to kill children on screen.

So why should Skyrim?

If you have your own personal reasons for not liking such games, that's fair enough.

Those sort of games should still be tolerated in society though, and not condemned just because they offend a small minority who will probably never even play them.

Warning : Imminent rant.

Lock it bloody anyway, all this 'I'm entitled to kill anyone I want, and if you take my freedom away I'll throw my toys out of the pram' has been done so many times. They've got what they want, you can now kill quest givers, and have the quest from someone else. TES has been altered to let you get away with stupidity, one more little piece of choice and consequence has been taken away.

They made the guys essential in OB to protect guys who moaned they killed important npcs in Morrowind and therefore missed out ( what?!?), but that wasn't good enough. I really wish this argument could be taken over to the Bioware forums, "can we kill shopkeepers in ME3?" "No we are still working on allowing them to move."

Look, we know you want to kill anybody and everybody, and I appreciate that for some bizarre reason you think it's an unassailable right to do so, and I've heard all the cries of "where's my freedom?". Can we move on now please.

Again, they made NPCs essential in Oblivion so that they wouldn't get killed by other NPCs and by creatures as they walked from one place to another. Radiant AI means anything can happen. NPCs can die without any involvement on the part of the player, and that's why they need to be essential. Or else have a system where NPCs can only get killed by the player and nothing else.

Of course, since Rockstar's "thing" is to push envelopes & court moral controversy, I'd expect that of their games.

Bethesda isn't a "rebel" company constantly seeking "any publicity is good publicity" so I wouldn't expect that from their releases.

Good rant.

And your right, it does appear that Skyrim will be better than OB, so improvement is good right? Moving on.

Ugh. it's a game. They're images - nothing more. Not real children.

Why should Skyrim? Because there's a conflict when it comes to immersion. It's arguably bad for immersion having only advlts in a game and not children. It's also arguably bad for immersion having a load of immortal characters running around in a game which, like it or not, is largely centered around killing (and don't try and argue that it isn't. Beyond the dungeon crawling, there's the dark brotherhood, etc.) Solution? Take a stand against the silly taboo and push the boundaries. That, or just leave them out altogether.

Sorry, you are right and I was wrong, that's what happens when you rant.
Still stand by the point I was making though, why put dev time and effort into catering to people's stupidity?

...centered around killing other things.
They have said before that they won't give more attention to random massacares, so there will be restrictions on that part. Want to kill everybody? Use the console commands.

And if freedom and immersion comes out as killing children for you, I feel sorry for you.

Once again killing children has raised its head, it is a restricted topic on these forums and most of you are aware of it, yet you just can't resist.