Anyone that is aggro'd should be killable.

Now on other peoples' games if they want so many of the quest givers and companions to be immortal, then fine. I don't care what they do in their game. Just allow us to turn off essentials, or at least remove an NPCs essential status when they aggro. It is lame that there are enemies that can attack me that I can't really fight back against, like angry companions.

These games are all about freedom I had thought. Bethesda should patch an option in without waiting for mods to do their work.

Until you accidentally kill an essential NOC and haven't saved the game for several hours. I can see this never being implemented. Sorry, but it seems like a stupid idea.

It should be your choice whether you want to take that risk or not. A simple switch in the menu.

I can understand why they took this path in this FO4 release.

In prior games one could kill quest NPC's often, Those games I also recall being full of quest game breaking bugs due to the complexity of all that, so many

possible choices.

I imagine they took a choice to lower workload and eventual sure fire game breakage by limiting this here.

I'm sure for PC users this can all be 'fixed' by mods later on and you will be free to kill and break later quest chains to your hearts content.

I'm all for freedom.

But, I'm okay with the choice made here.

they can be knocked down then just run away, better to leave them alive the immortal mechanic seems a good way so that we dont lose quests and stuff.

I like how it was done in Morrowind. If you killed an important character, you broke the quest (the main quest in that instance.) Choices begat consequences. You could either reload a previous game save or live with the consequences of your action by playing a character who is now unable to do the main quest. Not anymore, sadly. :[

I liked that because not only did it give me a choice to absolutely ruin any chance of completing the storyline, but it made me have to pay attention to which character I needed to avoid killing if rolling an evil Nerevarine.

Kill a quest NPC? Quest failed. That's it. Unless it is intentionally part of the quest, quest failed. It is okay to fail some quests, especially since you'll probably end up doing more than 1 playthrough anyway.

Like I said, if people want to take a chance on breaking their game/additional bugs (save game often btw) then why shouldn't they be able to? I imagine creating an option removing essential flags from most NPCs (any that will aggro on you) is not difficult coding-wise. I'm pretty damn sure it isn't.

completely agree with this. There are WAY too many unkillable npcs. Even ones that seemingly have nothing to do with a quest. New vegas did this properly. There was only like 1 non-killable NPC? That game worked perfectly fine. it's completely immersion breaking that there are invulnerable people in the wasteland. It takes away the sense of danger, and if you aggro one, you can only "knock them down." IT should, at the very least, be an option. Everyone should be at risk in the wasteland. If a quest is lost, so be it. Let that be the choice of the player.

I don't think they're as bad as they were in Skyrim, but would be nice for them to have the same system as NV.

However i think due to the settlement attacks it could be very annoying to lose someone.

Yeah. Morrowind handled this pretty well.

Said something like:

"With this act you have unwound the threads of Fate.
Reload a previous save or continue on in the doomed world you have created."

Annoyance is relative though. It should be an option. Player freedom and all...

This kind of mod will work across all platforms. Many other preference changes similiar to this can also be done easily on any platform.

Oh for Almsivi's sake not this again.

1: The main quest had several outs even if you killed a main quest important NPC which is what lets people speedrun the main quets in about 10 mins.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Yagrum_Bagarn_and_Wraithguard

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Hortator_and_Nerevarine

2 remember Din?

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Din

The reason he respawns is the same reason why later games has the essential tag, NPC's can be killed outside of player agency, by animals, other NPC's or falling to their death because of awful pathing.

How convenient that people so often forget to mention these argument undermining facts.

Add to the fact that post morrowind NPC's could move about, travel and could easily get killed en route with no player interaction whatsoever thus making the essential tag a necessary mechanic to prevent unecessary frustration and annoyance.

In one of my Skyrim runs I held off doing a quest for a long time and then when I tried to do it I couldn't find this guy:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Tacitus_Sallustius

Found his remains in the Halls of the dead.

Turns out he had died without the Dovahkiin murderising him, no idea how, probably dragon attack or more likely falling to his death in a moronic way.

A level 6 who didn't have the essentail tag and so no quest, no smithing skill up. So sad.

Dawnguard vampire attacks, no more needs to be said.

Yep, that right there is why we need essential NPCs. So many reloads to resurrect half the population of Whiterun... stopped fast travelling to cities at night during that debacle.

Which is why they should have the tag until aggro'd by player. Not that complicated.

I have to agree with the OP.

As William Wallace said....."FREEEEEEDOOOOOOOOM!".

Well, I'm not sure we should be allowed to break the main plot by killing off critical NPC's (although other games get around it by having alternate quest-givers - eg Wrex in Mass Effect).

I do agree that if someone is not essential to the main plot, they should be killable. That said, my point was not so much abount we ourselves killing off NPC's, but about me hating it when someone I needed/wanted/used regularly gets wiped out in random crossfire and I'm forced to reload to bring them back.

It's a huge pain and I believe it's exactly what Beth was trying to get us out of in FO4 with Essential NPC's.

I'm in favor of it, while acknowledging that we lose a bit of freedom as far as satisfying our inner psychopath goes.

Still, you can always turn on one of your own settlements. They put up a hell of a fight if you gear 'em up.

Never needed mods for this. It's a switch, nothing more, so simple console command does it (or better, a batch file with all characters listed that you run from command console after starting the game).

For those who think that unkillable characters is good and killable causes problems, no, many PC users have turned characters killable from unkillable with no problems with their games. There is no reason for a developer to idiot-proof an RPG; some other games, maybe, but not an RPG. Especially not a BGS game where the entire goal of the game is exploring, not doing various quests, the latter being there only as an excuse/mechanism to get players to explore the world.

I just want to kill Preston, Sturges, Marcy Long, and maybe some other people. It's funny how Bethesda claimed you could kill anyone in the game, but you can't. The whole Minutemen questline is a failed idea in my opinion, gets tired way too fast, with endless quests to Oberland Station.

Source? I've been watching very closely since it was announced and I never saw that statement made.

Yeah idk how they chose which are essential and which aren't but it doesn't seem to make a ton of sense. I liked off the Railroad early as hell and failed their whole questline. I also killed Maxson and jumped off the Prydwen and failed quests. But I can't kill Preston when I turn against the Minutemen lol idk

I remember in Morrowind if you killed a really important NPC the game would say something awesome like you killed so and so, now you are doomed and can't complete your quest. That was great.

People bring up morrownid, but forget one MAJOR, important fact, Morrowind had little to know AI, Characters stayed in place, villages were never attacked in that game. Here, NPCs could die, and there is literally NOTHING you could do about it, literally nothing, thus you lost access to a quest, or even an important main quest character.....because teh AI said "screw you"

Basically, in morrowind, the ONLY way a quest NPC was likely to die, was if you personally killed them, that is not true anymore, and NPCs can and will die because teh game does not like you.

Maybe if they eventually went non-aggressive at least instead of an angry immortal Preston following for eternity because you blew up a settler by mistake.

I like how they improved AI of NPCs, but what is still horrible is - your companion facing you in the middle of fight-it happens so many times that I tried to aim at an enemy just to shoot down my companion who decided in the right moment to turn against me with his big face just stright at my gun...

So I don't know really - should I wish NPCs to stay essential - because of too many "accidents" or just wish to blow them away forever?