I think the best idea is to allow quest characters to be kill-able if you or your summons/companions kill them. If a creature or enemy kills a quest character, then they go unconscious.

If you kill a quest character, a "quest failed' pop-up should probably occur for the quest that character was tied to.

It only kills immersion if you actually try to hurt a kid-or if you're just really bothered by the knowledge that the game won't let you even if you actually wanted to-which is kinda silly in my opinion.

As I said earlier there will hopefully be a more realistic way of making kids "essential" without making it seem unrealistic. It would make sense for them to run away and hide if someone tried to hurt them, if a creature or dragon has broken into town, or if somebody was going around on a murderous rampage-I don't think it would be too huge of a challenge to script the AI for children to behave that way. They might still technically have infinite hit points and there still might be some slightly unrealistic elements but to me it's worth the sacrifice to have the world fleshed out more with children.

If they are planning on including children (which judging from some bits of the GI article appears to be the case-either that or the examples involving children weren't at all based on anything they actually saw in the game), there's really nothing that's going to change that at this point. And there's little doubt that if they are included they probably won't be able to die (or at least they can't be killed directly by the player character)-we can only hope that the way they handle them being unable to get killed is handled in a way that does not totally kill immersion.

Then kill his bodyguards... open your cell with their key... walk out of the prison !YAY! your now a free man!

That would've actually been pretty interesting-you could also have taken the Amulet of Kings and later given it to Jaufree and be like "Oh yeah, the Emperor was...uh...assassinated, that's right! By some weird guys in red robes!!" "Must be the Mythic Dawn." "Yep, that must've been who it was!"

Why you'd even bring the amulet to Jaufree to begin with is an entirely different question but it would still be funny if you could do that regardless. lol

I was thinking that myself. How many relatives can a person have? I doubt that if we keep killing them, more will appear with randomized names.

I wouldn't mind essential NPCs being killable, but they'd still need to be marked. In Morrowind it was way too easy to break quests because you'd killed the wrong random NPC 5 hours earlier.

I decided to take on the imperial gaurd. Everything went great, killed everyone, except those gaurd captians...
Alas, killing spree's are a thing of the past...


Hey! Maybe to make the game even more safe everyone is essential! No quests would ever be broken!

Man, the number of weird ideas people come up with (just came fromthe Real time gametime thread). If you can kill everyone, what is the point of pllaying TES with its quests, just go play an FPS.

#1, turn caps lock off. 0.o
#2, yes, I agree. I do not want unkillable NPC's in this game.

I am always baffled by how much outrage this idea brings with it. I understand and agree that essential NPC's were totally unrealistic after the 5th time they were knocked out, and I sincerely hope that the storyline is created in a much more efficient method, or that the game does not entirely revolve around the MQ (as in morrowind, freedom).

However including kids, and having to protect them, is a small price to pay for what it can offer. I can only think that the 'essential' tag on them will be hard coded in. And it is not like the kids are going to be running around in combat with you, or really be of any significant position in quests and the MQ.There is a certain backdrop that needs to be in place for me to consider myself immersed in a world. The culture, personal encounters, information, subtle ties ins. The ability to successfully kill someone is secondary to that immersion.

people here talking about the "amazing" lore and then talking about killing children in the game.... thats why better estories come from the linear rpgs... because if you give people too much freedom they make the game look like Postal

"oh but the game should be realistic so that we could be able to kill children"

alright...before being able to kill npcs we should worry about having emotional motivations from npcs to do a freaking quest... ill never forget that damn quest from oblivion "A Brush with Death" ... realistic would be see Rythe Lythandas run and hold his wife tigh after scaping the pating, crying perhaps... some emotion please or things like Martin visually was a clone of dozens of others npcs, actually no npc was kinda unique at all... is that realistic? a world of manequins

"oh but the game is about you bla bla bla" yeah the game is about my character and hundreds of plastic repetitive npcs with no emotion at all....

Lore is the culture,history and atmosphere.Killing kids don't break it,nor add to it.
There's of course no way Bethesda could release a game that involves killing children,and they should not.But it's a fact that sometimes people want to save their game and summon an Oblivion Gate at the town center or have a meteor shower.In these cases it's not that fun to see certain people (let it be kids or essential advlts) resisting you.Therefore I can understand the people saying kids should've been left out.
Now,in FO3 the kids were immortal as well but they could be altered through the construction set.I think it should be like that in Skyrim as well and let everyone be happy.

except for the console players...

Why the hell were quest NPC marked AND unkillable in oblivion ?
Seems like overkill.... Let us kill everyone. Don't put kids in.

Of everything we know about contracts in Oblivion, children actually most likely make up a whole 50% of murders. You do remember the Orc (whose name escapes me) saying he got to kill someone in an orphanage and the kill all the children?

My problem with unkillable NPCs in Oblivion is the fact that it closed or made much more difficult certain roleplaying avenues for those who wished to role play in Oblivion. For example, if someone wanted to roleplay as a vampire and kill off an entire city of people, and make the castle their own, they couldn't do it because of unkillable/essential counts and such npcs.

Xbox 360 players could not use codes or mods to make all NPCs killable. Some gamers cannot afford a really good computer or all the upgrades, OR they may not want to because of all kinds of technical problems that often pop up with computers. So, 360 gamers missed out on mods that made NPCs unessential.

Oblivion was a terrific game on the 360. Heck, I started playing it again a few days ago, and have picked it up often during the years I have owned it. But, I think that Betheseda did make a mistake in making some NPCs essential. They should have used a system more like Morrowind.

For those who like to roleplay, limiting the freedom of players by making certain NPCs unkillable is not a good idea.

U just hope they dont "fix" the idea by haveing unlimited relatives. While i dont want shops to close permanently. If I want to go on a genocidal extinction campain everyones out of provence families shouldnt just appear. At least not more than three or four times. Or we're back to the same problem of the npcs being unkillable because aunt edna has a couple of thousand children to take their place.

yeah if i want to kill anyone i choose and sever the thread of prophecy thats my choice

I don't want important NPCs being hermits or going off and getting killed just for the sake of realism.

Imagine not being able to finish the main quest all because one of the characters got themselves killed. That's not my idea of "immersion" or fun. If you can kill them, I hope you can toggle it on. In fact in Oblivion I'd use the console to flag characters I wanted to live, such as the Unicorn, as essential so I wouldn't have to worry about them dying.

Why would the ability to kill everyone also kill "the point of pllaying TES with its quests"? What gives?

having essential npcs in oblivion was unrealistic, i didnt like it imo. :shrug: but i doubt bethesda will make all npcs in skyrim non-essential

On the subject of companions. If they tend to go "LEROY JENKINS" on me, then of course I want them essential, or at least have them respawn somewhere else. I hated that about Fallout 3.

When I play I ignore the quests alltogether. The point of the TES isnt the quests. Its the freedom of choice. And if I want to go on a genocidal rampage I should be able to say "screw the quests" and not have to worry about anyone waking up.

I thought the strong point of TES series was that you didn't had to follow the game story at all .

Bethesda usually learns from mistakes, though, and they ARE on a new engine now, so it's not too far-fetched to believe that the cities (of which there are only FIVE) AREN'T open.