Okay, before saying anything else, let us take a look at New Vegas. It is by all means not a perfect game, but it did one thing right: You can break every quest if you kill the NPCs required for that quest (the mainquest is an exception, aswell as kids). Ultimatively, this is very (prepare for buzzword) immersive to me, because I can kill anyone. Sure, I wouldnt want to kill EVERYONE, but theres no NPCs just kneeling down/getting knocked out after I gave them a good blast with the shotgun. I could actually kill NPCs I dislike, bearing the consequences, ofcourse. Im sure many people liked that, too.

Now lets take a look at Skyrim.
There are a lot of annoying NPCs in this game. Thats normal, and I like that. What I dont like however, is that I cant kill many of them just because they are involved in some fetch quest or something.
I actually wanted to cleanse Riften yesterday, and I couldnt kill half of the NPCs, many of them belonged to the thieves guild. Why not? If I decide its worth it to kill someone, why cant I? Everytime I decide I want to kill someone and hes essential its like bethesda saying "nope, you dont want to kill this guy.". Yes, I do! I want to kill him, even if I break the thieves guild!

What is the reason for it to be like that? Why are so many NPCs essential? Why cant I break a quest if I want to?
>>>And now, because I know theres going to be tons of people saying "well a dragon could come and kill a quest-related NPC!"... Why are quest-related NPCs not handled like companions? Enemy NPCs can knock them out, but only the player can kill them for good? <<<<
There is NO reason for it not to be like that.

I agree.

I wanted to kill the Thieves Guild off as fitting for my character, but nope can't do that :/

I guess because for every person happy they could break quests you'd have 5 or 10 others screaming their heads off "zomg game iz brkn!!11!" If you're on PC I'd say take heart, you know before too long there will be a "no essential NPCs" mod or seven out there.

Same here... Frikken thieves' guild. Why can't we get a quest to wreck their [censored] like we can with the Dark Brotherhood?

I wouldn't have a problem with them if they didn't try to conscript me during the main quest.

They're probably essential to make sure half your quests don't break because of a single dragon attack in a city.

Wait for the CS, there will be a mod that removes all essential tags from NPCs.

I want to kill Esbern so I can take over Sky Temple and let Paarthurnax live in peace.

One problem is that you might not realize what quest you're breaking.

"I'm going to kill this guy, I don't even want to do the College of Winterhold! Just slaughter them all!"

"What do you mean I can't complete the main quest or thieves guild, now? This is BS!"

I agree wholeheartedly. In NV I believe, aside from kids, only Yes Man and Victor were essential NPCs, both robots, and your companions if you didn't play on hardcoe mode. I love that. In a sandbox I want to be able to do what I want. If I want to kill an entire outpost, giving up a bunch of quests in the process, then I should be able to do that. In fact, in NV when the "you failed such and such quest" prompt came on the screen you knew you just likely did something of consequence.

So because some people lack self-control, I have to play a game with immortal NPCs? Because some people dont even THINK about the possibility of an NPC being quest-related, the game HAS to limit my freedom?
I remember a time when RPGs were all about freedom and thinking.
But you do have a point, that could happen. But why cant they just learn it the hard way? New Vegas had the same people who screamed BROKEN GAME because they killed NPCs everywhere, they just got told 'deal with it'.


dont post if youre too lazy to read. This makes you look like the biggest dummy, you know.

This is true, I thought we were told this Creation Engine would find substitute quest givers.

Me too.

At some point, the game should let you kill NPCs once you've A.) Completed the main quest (If they are essential to the main quest), or B.) Make it clear you're "NOT INTERESTED" in putting up with their [censored]. (The Thieves' Guild, Blades, Dark Brotherhood, and Enemy War Camps are especially bad with this.)

I know I can clear a certain dungeon because carlial is the only one in there and I can't kill her

Cheers

Just wanted to add, Maven Black-Briar is especially bad. Constantly threats you with the dark brotherhood or thieves guild (even if you completed those questlines, or wiped out the dark brotherhood) and yet theres only one minor quest she has to offer. (you dont even get an unique item, just a random enchanted weapon)
Or enemy war camps, as scow2 said, yeah. Im a stormcloak officer now, the high king tells me to kill any imperials I see.

Why the heck are the imperial generals essential? I am never going to take a quest from them, or even talk to them.

It does. Sometimes. But not always because this requires new voiceovers for the substitutes if available.

Truth be told, I only know of one reported instance that does this aside from Jarls. And I know of another report that the particular instance has some essential protection anyway.

It is absolutely infuriating.

It reminds you you're playing by someone else's rules.
I can understand making sure that you can complete the main quest but a conservative estimate puts that at less than 15 NPCs by my count.

I tried to do like you mentioned and cleanse Riften with fire and like you said, literally 1/2 the city is "essential."

By my count some petty thugs that belong to the a relatively defunct criminal organization do not count as "essential" and deserve boot-to-face service for copping an attitude with me.

Let me know when I break quests (Quest Failed...etc) but don't FORCE me to keep them all viable.

Most sensible option. Once you've turned down an initial quest to join a faction, it should reset the guild members to non-essential. If you change your mind and talk to them to re-accept the quest, flip it to essential again.

Surely not a hard thing for the scripts to handle.

Oh.

Then you simply answered your own question.

I'd love to be able to kill every NPC. I loved doing (quoting you) "cleaning" missions where you just go into a town and just completely destroy everyone and everything in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Consequences? Absolutely. But on my 3rd or 4th play through maybe all I want to do is kill every NPC in the game. I can't in Skyrim and it makes me a little disappointed.

No, my question is: Why did they decide its better to limit EVERYONES freedom in the game, instead of punishing those who are not careful?

edit: thought you are the other person I quoted before, but the question still stands

Agreed on most of this. I liked when in New Vegas I killed someone and all of a sudden I'd fail like 5 quests... usually I go "oh [censored]" and reload an old save. Playing good guy in Skyrim my first thought was to wipe out the thieves guild and make Riften a nice place to live, all to impress Mjoll the Lioness. Nope, no can do, apparently thievery is essential.

Oh god yes. The reason I found out that so many NPCs are essential was because of that [censored]. As soon as first entered Riften she comes prancing down the street all snide and condescending. Instantly I decided she was dead even if it turned the whole town on me. It was not be alas. She is amongst the more than 200 NPCs that are essential according the wiki. That's utterly ridiculous in an open world game.

New Vegas actually had a really interesting design philosophy. You couldn't really break the game that way. Killing everyone was treated as a quest solution. This did limit their narrative ability somewhat.

And there was always Yes Man as an outlet for kill 'em all. You can't kill him and he doesn't require anyone to be alive to complete the game.

But, like I said, this made him somewhat limited. Faction quests become a sequence of unrelated sidequests. They have no cohesive plot. You do one chore then another totally unrelated chore.

Thats to expect when you wipe out every faction there is, isnt it?
Personally, I like that solution better than just making the NPC essential.

How did this limit the narrative? The game had a far more interesting story than Skyrim's MQ and there were multiple avenues to completing it. Scorch and burn being one of them. Or do you mean if you killed everyone you limited the narrative? And the faction quests had some level of cohesion. After you earned the factions trust you generally sent on a mult-quest run to get what the faction actually wanted all along and, even better, it's usually something that adds depth to that factions motivations.