A THING THAT REALLY REALLY ANNOYED ME WITH OBLIVION WAS THOSE UNKILLABLE NPC'S!
I NEVER LIKED THE KING OF BRAVIL SO I DECIDED TO KILL HIM... WOW... I DID IT! HE'S DEAD!... WAIT WHY IS HE STILL ALIVE! I JUST SAW HIS HP VANISH... Oh... now I see... he was just taking a nap, because it would be so sad if we couldn't get his help for "allies for Bruma" or if we couldn't complete some fighter's guild quest. In Morrowind we could kill whoever we wanted! If you killed someone needable for the mainquest a thing would pop up and explain its now incompleteable, but atleast they would DIE!

Cut out the child part, or there's a danger this will be locked. This is a major reason that many people don't want children in TES.

:slap: (Because I can)

Children are in.

As long as there is some way in how to distinguish VIP NPC's like how Oblivion had a crown then im all for it.

Yes, the unkillable NPCs were kind of unrealistic. I have no major opinion should this effect to be removed. But I liked also the FO:NV style where weren't unkillable NPCs, but you got a "quest failed" message if NPC was involved to a quest.

Skyrim seems to be abandoning the unkillable NPC thing for most non-important characters (aka people who are crucial to the main quest I bet will still be unkillable).

The article mentions that if you kill a shopkeep who has a quest, eventually her sister will replace her, remember you killed her sister and give you a worse reward for the quest (if at all).

This sounds much better and more seamless for day-to-day encounters with NPC's. It reminds me of a game for PC called Queens where it was a super hard platformer that gave you infinite lives. The catch was though each "Queen" you play as would be different every time you respawned and have a different "backstory" to her. It was subtle but in effect it made it so you had a much stronger connection to the Queens, because if you died then the current "queen" you were playing as would be replaced by a different queen with a different backstory (but in the same circumstances). It's a great way to "fake" the connection players have with NPC's and make it seem like choices are more permanent, even if you still can do the quest itself.

Like a mixture between morroiwnds "You killed the shopkeep and the prophecy threads have been broken" message that popped up, and Oblivion's "Well you can't kill him cause that would svck and you'd miss out". Now there is real consiquence to killing and you CAN do it, it just won't outright block you from completing large chunks of some questline anymore, and instead will simply be a minor "Oh damn, AWKWARD!" moment for you character if you have to go back to the sister of the shopkeep you killed to do some quest for the fighter's guild (for example).

Not to mention she might not give you a reward at all, but you might still have to do the quest to make somoene else happy apart of your guild or something.

It would be really interesting if there was some kind of temple questline that required you to "redeem yourself" by doing selfless acts for people you've killed for no clear reward, and get something else in return.

Bethesda fears of people breaking their games and complaining afterwards. So I guess it will still be there. But I think it would be much better to label the important NPCs in a way and to give you a BIG warning when you kill one, that your game will be broken if you don′t reload. If you decide to play on, this message shouldn′t appear anymore, since it′s obvious that you didn′t care, the labelling will be enough then (maybe the player is one of these "I kill every living soul in Skyrim" and doesn′t give a **** about quests; this should be possible, it′s a sandbox game after all).

But since children are confirmed for TESV, we're not allowed to talk about a feature in the game?

Think of it as rules 1 and 2. (The killing part that is)

You can talk about kids. Just not violently.

This whole 'inheritance' issue seems kind of cheap to me. While it is a decent idea it also has its problems. So we can get or complete quests with someones relative? So every single person on the land of Skyrim have relatives they're in contact with. What if the quest was to save that relative? And you fail? What happens then? Does this mean that no quest will ever involve a hermit or person without a family? What if the person who inherits the forge is a 12 year old kid (as kids have been confirmed).

Are relatives procedurally generated to fill in a position as you 'open' them?

I'm not really sold on the issue just yet. I

If it's that forbidden, why did Bethesda make it part of the game?

Yeah, I'm dissapointed that they included kids in the game. Just breaks the immersion of the game completely. Should have left them out.

I hope you're being sarcastic.

Yeah, it breaks immersion, 'cause, you know, children don't even exist in the real world! When a man and a woman love each other very much, a full grown offspring just magically appears-that's the way things work in Nirn, 'ya know!!

I think that the amount of realism that including children in the game world adds far outweighs the trade-off of them being unable to die.

I'd still rather see the "essential NPC" aspect handled differently or even done away with entirely for the advlt characters however-just so long as any companion/follower-type NPCs having good enough AI for me to not worry about them dying.

realism and im sure they have some quests of their own.

Yes, it breaks immersion when you can't kill every single person in the game. That's what I'm talking about.

based on what they said about killing the quest giving shopkeeper, i think not all quest givers will be unkillable, they might have back up npcs to give the quest, or alternative ways of getting it.

Ugh, not this "y can't we kill kids?" thing again. Haven't mods made this plain as day, clear as crystal that it's not a good idea to talk about child killing?

I'm actually glad there are kids in the game, simply because it looks even better than Oblivion's "give birth to 16-year-olds!" thing. Now Alga can feel like an actual heroine when she defends a group of children from a bandit. Hopefully she'll be able to live in an inn with her own permanent room so she can be the inn's caretaker by going out to hunt for food.

REALLY? Think of this: "I forgot my teddy bear in "BLA" cave %PCName, will you go get it for me?"
Then since level scalings back you enter a cave and its filled with wolves... I MEAN HOW COULD A KID HAVE GOTTEN INTO THAT CAVE IN THE FIRST PLACE?

You don't need kids to make a game reaslistic. Morrowind didn't have them, Oblivion didn't have them. Morrowind was one of the best RPG's that Bethedsa made. Kids are not needed in Skyrim or any TES game.

The question is WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO?! Sure, it might be fun for a short while to go on a little Grand Theft Auto-style killing spree and revert to an earlier save but isn't doing something like that a little immersion-breaking in itself? Maybe they'll all run inside their houses and lock themselves in or something if you want a little more realism, though-I think that would be a somewhat reasonable middle ground.

Having non killable NPC's breaks the immersion of the game. I would never do that, but that doesn't make any less a bad thing to have unkillable NPC's. There are some who might want to do that. Maybe someone role playing a Dark Brotherhood character would like to.

I won't comment further because we can't for obvious reasons, but I stand by my comment that kids do not belong in TES games.

There is no way they will make children killable, that was the whole issue before when they had to choose not to include them.

I'm sure there will be some way to stop you killing them.

Rather than them just get knocked out I'd like to see a animation where your hand stops before contact and shakes for a second and a little message at the top of the screen says "I just can't bring myself to do it".

True, but it undeniably adds a level of realism to the game, and a bit of depth and variety to the NPCs. I doubt they'll be doing anything too unrealistic in terms of a "save a child from a dungeon" scenario-those can be a bit cliche anyway.



So you dislike it simply on principle? Sure, you have a right to your opinion but if you play the game and there's children and you aren't going to harm them what difference does it make to your actual gameplay experience?

Also, Dark Brotherhood isn't a good example-at all. Dark Brotherhood are assassins that work off contracts, which 99.9% of the time I think I can safely assume are put out on advlts.

Of course not. I'm sure there will be certain parameters as to which NPCs can give random quests and of what types. The game isn't going to be constantly churning out kidnapped children, it sounds more as if it'll search through NPCs in towns who have kids and they'll be a candidate for that quest.

As for the questgiver inheritance thing, it isn't just going to be relatives, you know. If the head of the Fighter's Guild accidentally gets plowed over by a dragon, you'll probably be able to report to the second-in-command for your orders.

In Morrowind I'm making a charecter who, once in level 2 is going to kill every NPC ingame! Thats another way of completing it! And haven't you ever wanted to kill everyone in a Corrol ("That I'll teach ya' not to think your better than me!"), (I also want some un-endless respawning guards.) and mark that town as your property...
This reminds me of another thing... back in daggerfall there was a really cool (and illegal) way of opening locks: You could SMASH 'em with your weapon!