Hey all, here's a rough quote from Mark Lampert on what Max vod Sydow particularly enjoyed about the voice work:



If Esbern died as part of the story, this would never be included as it's such a big spoiler. It sounds much more like your character will be able to betray and kill Esbern if you wish, even though he is a key character. Also, he mentions that there are fighting and dying scripts for every character, and in light of the comment "the player can do anything at any time", all this strongly suggests that no-one is safe in Skyrim Except, of course, the children.

Do you want main quest NPCs to be killable without breaking the quest, or would you prefer they could be rendered unconscious, but never dead?

And just because I can, here's a transcript of Esbern's beautiful soliloquy:

Not necessarily confirmed, but I'd say more than likely.

It would certainly sound that way, and he did say Max liked it because he wasn't the typical 'mentor that dies.'

well you can attack any NPC in Oblivion and knock them out.

could be what he was talking about :ermm:

Well aparently the story is dynamic, so maybe we CAN kill important NPCs.

It's definitely true that they would be knocked out in Oblivion. But Mark specifically says Max recorded some lines for Esbern's death. He's a MQ character, but he's able to die - and if it was part of the story, Mark would not have revealed it.

^^This most likely

You can attack any NPC. I mean it's not like they are behind a window Bioshock style. So it would make sense that Max would have to do the grunting and dying noises. If this means he won't wake up like an essential NPC in Oblivion waits to be seen. So all in all i'd say the comments don't mean anything so far.

Well, there would have to be an incentive to want to cut down poor Esbern. That and consequences, obviously. I don't want just "Oh, you broke the game 'cause you offed this guy. Reload or not, doesn't matter."

I hope this implies you could choose to fight for the "wrong side" and killing Esbern is your first directive or something.

Yes, there would not be dying scripts for every NPC unless all of them were killable. That said, I'm sure when certain quests are activated there may be brief period when a particular NPC is set to essential and unkillable.

As a point of reference, all the NPCs in New Vegas were killable except...

I'd like to see the essential flag split into two so you can choose whether or not either NPCs or the PC could kill them.

Edit: make that in three so you can choose if the environment can do them in as well.

It certainly seems to suggest killable NPCs (kudos to Bethesda if this is true...and thank goodness, enough of the nonsense). But the way he stumbles after he says it suggests that he either realized it was a spoiler or realized that it sounded like one and he was covering his ass.

If you kill one of the main quest NPCs, there should be consequences for your actions. If you play New Vegas like a psycho and kill everybody, you lose your chance to complete a lot of quests.

With respect to the main quest, the comment from Todd that if you kill a shopkeeper then his daughter inherits his shop suggests that perhaps instead of making main quest NPCs essential, the devs have a more dynamic quest line that incorporates your actions and choices along the way, however vile.

This.

In Morrowind, my first playthrough was a complete wreck. I killed caius cosades(sp?) and completely wrecked the main quest for myself. I thought that was just awesome, and I just rolled with it. I still pick up that Dunmer from time to time, and Morrowind is just doomed on that save. It adds immersion to the game, and makes it feel like there are some consequences to your actions.

Back Door Baby! Back Door!
I recall killing a main quest NPC with a character after having invested about 400 hours into it. Since I had no idea when I had killed said NPC simply reloading wasn't really an option. When I found out that there was a way to still complete the MQ I freaked out. It was like the most awesome thing I had ever experienced in a game.

Sorry, sooooooo off topic but I had to comment =)

I hope that's how it is. It will be very interesting to see how that works for the main quest and faction quests. And quite interesting to see just how far I can push the shopkeeper thing. By that I mean, I plan on killing the shop keepers entire family and friends until the shop is closed for good.

LMAO you are a mean basterd

It may just be that you can make choices during the course of the main quest that would make him killable at some point. Now if it's that way, meaning quest NPCs are not generally killable, it would still be awesome. It'd mean that you can choose different paths to take for the main quest.