People... this game does not tell you what to do like other RPG's that are more scripted. The story is nto the quests, but what you did with your character as a whole. If your experience is bad , either you tried to go beyond what the game will allow ( killing everybody is restricted because if you kill a dude from the main quest or factions, you can't do that quest ... so they make sure he can't disapear, they have done that since morrowind), or you play the game like if it was freaking dragon age. Besides, meaningful choices and consequences are only as meaningful as your interest in them. Dragon age wasnt interesting, so the choices were not as well. I'dd rather have the choices of... the whole game world... then " DO I WANT TO BE PANZY AND SAVE THE WORLD FROM THIS EVIL UNDEAD DRAGON DUDE!?" or " rrrrr i'm evil i want to kill the bad guy and take his places and rule the world rrrr" ... smoke and mirrors people, thoses arent REAL choices.

That is why i believe this type of game to be the purest forme of rpg's. IT still has a LOOOONG way to go before it attains a "dnd-esque" level of freedom, but it remains the closest thing to it. Ai could and will get better with the years. But right now i'm immensly satisfied of walking around the best game that BGS has ever made.

This is typical of at least the last three Elder Scrolls games. Were you expecting anything different?


What is it with people wanting to mass murder everything in an RPG? I don't get it.

I think for Bethesda's next game, they should give you the freedom to kill anybody you want, and then have the next guard you meet slaughter you on sight. If you want to play as a homicidal psychopath then the game world should at last treat you like one.

After coming from Fallout New Vegas, i expected to have the same freedom, if i killed a named NPC i knew there maybe a chance i'd get the *x Quest Failed* notification. But that's fine, it's my choice if i do that.

Why is this not the case in Skyrim!?

Some NPCs im sure barely have any significance and you can't even kill them

In Riften for example, i was 'greeted' by a man named Maul. I though "pfft, i dont have to take this crap from you" drew my sword and took him down.. except he didn't die
im sure he has nothing to do with any major, or even minor quests. so if i can't kill someone like that, then who can i kill!?

Fallout: New Vegas was not made by Bethesda.

I have to strongly disagree. Dragon Age: Origins was one of the deepest, most interesting, most satisfying role playing games to come along since the gold age of computer RPGs and games like Fallout and Planescape Torment.

Agreed, way to break the immersion. As if it wasn't enough to give the little immortal brats annoying American accents, they had to ruin roleplaying even further.

I never said it was?

Skyrim, much like the other Elder Scrolls games, is an open-world game, not truly a sandbox. The possibility to go where you want and in which order to do the offered quests does not change the fact that almost all of them follow a strictly linear lines of progression and don't allow for multiple outcomes that affect the gameworld in a tangible way. A sandbox confronts the player with a given setting or situation and then develops dynamically depending on what actions the player takes. One game that does this is Mount and Blade: Warband, where no two playthroughs are the same and you can never truly predict how the game will progress.

Then why were you expecting features from a game not made by them to be implemented in this one?

Lol'd.

Anyway I don't go on mass murder sprees, but this did cause a problem with

Derp.

Since what game did it 'become streamlined so 5 year olds can play it'? I'm curious.

EDIT: Just so people know, I'm not defending the game, I DO think that there are a lot of flaws with the NPCs etc.

I'm sorry but what kind of excuse is this?

An NPC being essential requires EXTRA work from bethesda. They have to click a little box that says "essential" so the character can't die. It's not a matter of work, where it'd be too much work to make each character non-essential, it's just piss-poor decision making by the developers. The riverwood trader for example, why is he essential? Because he HAS A SIDEQUEST. A sidequest that awards an amazing 500 gold.

Are you serious Bethesda? Essential NPCs related to the main quest, sure. Essential NPCs related to faction quest chains, why not. Essential NPCs related to quests with incredible awards, meh I guess. But essential NPCs so I can earn a few coin? Wtf...

They've implemented a load of other things from other games, and the two are similar in ways. so it seems odd to not have something simple like this. It's like they're going backwards not forwards.

Morrowind had a good system. you kill a quest NPC you got a message saying "you have torn the fabric of fate" (or some such), giving you a chance to re-consider your actions/re-load.

OB/FO response took too much choice and randomness out of my hands.


This is why I would love a start option outlining the 'hardcoeness' (meh) of your game:

1. EZ-PZ mode - all quest essentials are essential and unkillable

2. Opps mode - only main and major quest NPCs are essential

3. Stab-stab mode - everything bar the main quest is killable, have fun breaking your game.


Simple to code in, ups the funsy factor by alot.

I think the OP has made two mistakes:

1. Over estimating the capacity of video game AI/development
2. Under estimating the inventiveness of players

Just because you can dream it up that shouldn't mean that it should be implemented.

This. I don't run around killing people for no reason so I don't know, but if that many actually are essential it kind of svcks. Only those important to the main quest should be essential, if there are no replacements. And a note saying you've broken a questline would suffice for the guilds.

WAIT......You Mean :cryvaultboy:

yeah, I wanted to be a mass murderer in Uncharted and assassin's creed, why can't I kill anyone I want, those games totally svck. :rolleyes:


There are much, much less important characters than in oblivion. It's much more like a hybrid between morrowind (kill anyone and break all quest-lines so you can't complete anything) and oblivion (all quest givers in the entire world, even those who just need you to fetch an apple for them, are essential). Wanting everything to be killable is like wanting to have the main characters in uncharted be killable in the first mission, making it impossible to progress in the game. Immortality for highly important characters is a good way to stop the players for destroying the game for themselves.

I have personally only tried to kill one unkillable character and that was self-defense, the quest didn't want me to break an awesome event ahead by letting me kill him and instead force me to surrender. Two complete randoms I wanted to kill were killable. I can finally even kill guards with caution without getting caught.

Dude I WORK IN GAME DEVELOPMENT. As a coder in fact and I have implemented AI that is far more in advance of what Bethesda have done on the whole (I mean in terms of AI reaction and stealth mechanics BTW. In fact my AI and stealth mechanies [censored] all over this game's). The animating and graphics department have done a top job but the AI and game design are a huge let down. Have you played Fallout 3? Hell have you played Fallout 1? They do exactly what I'm talking about. If an npc dies and it kills a quest chain it is piss easy to inform me of my mistake. Then if I want to undo my action I load a previous save. It's not hard at all. In the Fallout games you get different quests depending on your actions. You can take a contract to kill bandits but actually go and side with the bandits, go back to the contracter and kill his entire town. You have choice and your choice impact the game world and have people react to you. Joining a faction means other factions treat you differently. This kind of stuff happens in Fallout, Dark Souls, Deus Ex and others. So why not in supposedely the 'greatest game ever'?

Are none of you guys even a little pissed off that you've been lied to about countless features? Are you not annoyed that in terms of choices you absouletly no control over how to react to situations? If I talk to a person I generally get one response to give which is always 'Yes I'll bend over backwards and be your [censored]'. What kind of system is that? It's been said by previous people in this thread that freedom is an illusion in this game.

And the reason why I wanted to go around killing is because the main story and most of the side quests are repetetive garbage that I have no interest in. After a while I accepted that I couldn't kill everyone so I decided to hunt down some bandits. I found a great fort full of about 15 of them. Killed 13 while they were sitting in chairs and one guy when he was about to hit a practice dummy. Was awesome to wait until he was about to strike and then slit his throat while he was mid strike. THAT IS AWESOME. But that is the only time I've felt pumped about being an assassin, even killing targets that are killable. The stealth system is totally half baked.

In that same fort I went up behind the main bandit and tried to slit his throat or put knives through his chest in a stealth kill. What happens? I hit him in the back and he turns around and kicks my ass. Why does the stealth cinematic only happen as a reward if my one hit is going to kill the bandit? Surely as a reward for not being seen and sneaking up behind someone I should GET A ONE HIT KILL on a bandit. Tenchu did this brilliantly. You were rewarded for good play by flashy one hit kills. And why do I only get one of two cinematics? I'm sick of seeing me slitting someones throat in the same way over and over. Would it have killed them to add soem variety?

Going back to the earlier point of the one hit kill system. Not having it happen as a sneak attack every time I hit an unsuspecting enemy (within reason, just humanoids is fine) means that stealth characters are totally gimped. What option am I left with after I hit a guy with my strongest attack from behind? I then have to fight head on and as I'm not a warrior I get hammered. There are other problems as well. If I stealth kill someone or sneak attack in anyway, I DON'T GET A ONE HANDED STAT POINT. That is totally [censored] stupid. That means I can't improve my damage output without fighting people head on. I'm an assassin for [censored]s sake. Fighting people head on results in death.

I had hired thugs come after me while I was attacking a bandit camp at night. I was in shadow, in sneak mode, on top of a turret a good 50 meters above them. But after thye murdered the bandits they just strolled up the stairs and found me like it was obvious where I was. What kind of [censored] is that? I have a sneak of 100 for [censored]s sake. I'm basically invisible in the dark. To make matters worse they walked right up to me and then lost where I was. So what they could see me through stone but they can't see me when I'm ten feet away? At this point I went behind one of them and one hit executed him. He screamed out and blood sprayed out right in front of his two mates, and THEY JUST STOOD THERE. I did exactly the same thing to the final two. Not seeing me? Maybe. Not seeing their mate die right in front of them? [censored] stupid. Completely ruined what might've been cool. Bandits coming to hunt me I like. What occured after they turned up was a mood killer

The final straw for me was when I snuck up behind someone while they were in bed (a woman actually). I hit her with my best attack and she just got up and killed me in two hits. Game then reloads my autosave just before I hit her. She's laying in bed like she should be but obviously some [censored] has broken reset rule number one which is 'thout shall remember to set all variables back to default'. They obviously haven't because a woman that had been sleeping immediately attacks me because her alert state had obviously carried over from the previous play through.

This kind of [censored] isn't acceptable when you're building on a game like Oblivion, you have a huge team, massively development time and you charge me ￡50 pound for the game

edit: Guys seriously. Try going around and killing anyone in the game. It seems like you can only kill 10% of anyone you meet who is human. On the flipside a dragon can appear and kill everyone in a town, invincible NPC's included. So a dragon can kill people but I can't?

Couple of final points on this. It seems that you are either low level sneak and [censored], or high level sneak and literally invisible. This is not stealth. Why not have the option at the start of the game to not only choose a race but also a rough class type? You know the usual warrior, thief, mage archetypes. Then alter stats depending on what I chooce. Go warrior? Boost to damage output. Go mage? Magicka starts higher and so do the schools of magic stats. Go thief? Sneak, lock picking and whatnot go up to a resaoble level but damage and magic drop down. It seems if I go thief I have to play as a warrior and slog it until I'm good enough. Meanwhile warriors can just hammer through.

Final point is some simple things. What good are Khajit? Their race description says they can see in the dark and are quick and agile. And yet they can only see in the dark for 30 seconds a day and are no more quick or agile than anyone else in the game, including [censored] old ladies. Wouldn't it have made sense to increase carry weight for orcs? Increase speed and jump height for Khajit? Complete laziness on the design side. Not good enough

Because you didnt earn the kill - your backstab didnt do enough damage to be a 1hko, so you're not gonna get the neck-slit animation. :spotted owl:

this

Good points above. The Khajit darkvision thing bothers me to no end. They can see in the dark for a LIMITED time in a world which is NEVER DARK! What?!?

I have never found a place where you cannot see anything due to darkness. Torches are for mood only and the light spells are pointless. Bah.

I hope there will be a mod soon to remove this unkillable [censored]...

Just noticed there is already a mod that enables children to die. Im not going to argue about ethics or what not, but in spirit of a real elder scrolls game, everything should be killable!

EDIT: Hmm turns out, there already is a mod to remove essential npc's: http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=666&navtag=file/images.php?id=666&tab=3

Because it's just a video game, so why would we care that much? This isn't anything that is going to have any affect on our real lives at all. And we still get a lot of enjoyment out of it, so…
Also, some of us have lower standards.

And it svcks if you don't get any (or a lot of) enjoyment out of it, but that's the risk you run when you buy anything. Unless you thoroughly research the product before you buy it so you don't end up with some buyers remorse. But even then it can still happen.