As we know, there are certain NPCs that can't be "killed" by other NPCs in Skyrim and other NPCs that can't be killed by anybody, including you. I've never actually gone on a Cyrodiil-wide killing spree. I started a character who was supposed to do that, but I got kind of bored. 
 
Now, I like the idea that my crucial NPCs can't be killed by falling, drowning or random townsfolk. But while I don't feel like actually killing every NPC in the game, I like the idea that the option is there. So why don't we do it like Morrowind, where you get a warning message after killing a main-quest NPC so you can reload a save, if you actually care? If you haven't yet figured out that you need to have multiple saves and save often in TES, it could be a "hardcore" option you could switch on. I get it, we have to put training wheels on for people who can't handle an open world game with tons of freedom, but can the rest of us have a way to take them off?
 
Why the heck not? 
 
  

Feel like there was a thread about whether or not children npcs should be killable. Anyway, I kind of agree.. why not - but I guess I'd rather ensure that I don't accidently kill a major quest giver.

Yeah, more killing = more realism. Because every game should be GTA.

Sometimes developers like to ship a game and not just a free-form murder sandbox.  
 
Besides, imagine how much worse it is for those few who can't die while everything the know and love is being destroyed around them. 

Because you can't trust a Bethesda game not to flip out and accidentally kill somebody critical. Then corrupt all of your old saves for a laugh.

Tsk, tsk, tsk...

Yup, it's fully immersion breaking to have a shotgun blast to the face render a crucial NPC unconcious in a game where you can cut the limbs off everyone else.

While I would prefer that all characters be killable in some way or another for the sake of "realism" I still think it's a good idea to make essential characters invincible to avoid breaking the game and/or storyline purposes. The Elder Scroll series, being notably buggy, especially so if you're on consoles. What if a character essential to a quest dies for some reason you're not aware of? Then there's nothing you can do. If you're on a PC you can just pull down the console and fix it but even that may not be fool-proof. Besides, Oblivion had invincible NPCs and it never bothered me at all. I doubt it'll be any different from Skyrim and they use Radiant Quests to repopulate the world to keep (side)quests from being broken.

Or you know, you could wait a week for a mod that makes all the npc's killable on the PC.

wouldnt that mess up the economy of the game and kill a bunch of quest givers in the process?

 Besides, imagine how much worse it is for those few who can't die while everything the know and love is being destroyed around them. 

Yeah, more killing = more realism. Because every game should be GTA.

Now, I like the idea that my crucial NPCs can't be killed by falling, drowning or random townsfolk.

wouldnt that mess up the economy of the game and kill a bunch of quest givers in the process?

 it could be a "hardcore" option you could switch on. I get it, we have to put training wheels on for people who can't handle an open world game with tons of freedom, but can the rest of us have a way to take them off?

I suppose it wouldn't harm the game to let you kill everyone, I'd be fine with that as long as there was some sort of marker indicating who was important.

Bethesda RPGs are buggy enough as it is with quests that can break. This sounds like it could make them even worse.

@Simmse said:

Or you know, you could wait a week day for a mod that makes all the npc's killable on the PC.

FTFY. Seriously, this is what will happen. Also, they'll all be naked.

Being able to kill everyone (minus quest-givers) would be nice. It would be even better if new people are randomly generated to replace the dead.

The vast majority would hate it when you accidentally cast a spell with a wide area of effect or swing your sword and manage to kill a quest NPC who is fighting with you. I know it happened to me a lot in oblivion and fallout 3 where the message "____ is unconscious" popped up and I would have hated it if they had died instead.

The developers should allow you to break the game if you want.  It's an open world let the player have fun. 
 
But make it clear that with this character's death, you can no longer continue with the main quest line. 

I would much rather have a quest line that is not broken then be able to kill every NPC. It's not "dumbing down" its just a better design choice. Not ideal, but better in my opinion.

NPCs being killed by other NPCs was a problem for me in Oblivion. Since a few NPCs would roam the world, and accidentally get themselves killed, even while I was on the other side of Cyrodiil. The Marksman master trainer, the countess of Leyawiin and pretty much any npc that ventured beyond the city walls after level 20, were certain to meet their doom.
 
I also had the problem with Fallout 3, where the traveling merchants would fall prey to the various dangers of the wastes, preventing me from getting the 3rd Nuka-grenade schematic.
 
But Radiant story seem to erradicate many of these problems.

I'm not sure that being able to kill every last NPC really adds anything to the game other than introduce a lot of potentially game-breaking bugs. The idea that the devs should let us break the game if we want strikes me as a bit questionable. If we can break the game intentionally, people will break it unintentionally. And then Bethesda gets to field the complaints. I wouldn't blame them for trying to avoid that situation. The idea of an "open world" is mostly illusion anyway. We have all sorts of limits on behavior imposed by the game developers. The question is where they draw those boundaries, and do they kill immersion in the game world or not. I understand the desire to have the option of killing off some NPCs (and dealing with the consequences of choosing to do that), but to go so far as to break the game? I think that's a bit too far.

@gladspooky said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

Yeah, more killing = more realism. Because every game should be GTA.

Yeah, because you can kill at the story people in GTA games whenever you want. Oh, wait, no, you can't. At all. In fact you can't even tell them to go screw themselves.

I think you missed my point.

Remember that quest where you had to escort your Dad across the map in Fallout 3? Wouldn't that be more awesome if he could permanently die from any of the raiders or giant radscorpions he aggros?

mods...

"Oh no i have killed a main quest NPC while he was fighting besides me now i have to restart hours!' or "Oh no i have killed a quest NPC because i was running from the guards and he tried to help them now i have to restart hours!". I honestly don't understand how this bothers you. Bethesda is trying to tell a story and if you go around killing random important people then they could never make a good indepth story that requires certain people to be alive. I don't even understand why you would want to kill them all it would do is close some quest lines and fuck up your experience.

If all you care about in Skyrim to killing everyone. Perhaps you have bigger problems then not being able to kill everyone.

Yes, they should do this because you like to know the option is there.  That seems reasonable.

@Storms:

So because Bethesda wants to have a meaningful story explaining why you're there and the origins of the Dragon born and all of the amazing story they've been working on and building since the creation of Elder scrolls you hate it? Bethesda wants to fill out the universe and tell a tale they've been working on for some time now and i'm pretty sure they can't do that because you decide you want to off him for basically no reason? Bethesda games are all about making your own story and player decision, but if they want to have they're own story told their own way you hate them? Is the fact that you can't kill this random man in a chapel far far away really that big a deal?

At a point you can't just say "Then for no reason my guy murdered his best friend for no reason even though for all of his life he has given no indication that he was going to do this!", i mean, if you're as "hardcore" a roleplayer as you pretend to be then i'm pretty sure that if you can grasp the concept of build up to add weight to a story and the things that happen in said story i'm pretty sure you can grasp why someone wouldn't act out of character.

In Oblivion for instance lets say you role play an assassin who can do no good then you don't do good things right, well lets say that for some reason you decide "Hey i want to kill the emperor cause i'm an assassin" they don't let you because they want to try to tell their story about an assassin in prison who needs to rely on the emperor and his guards while trying to give you as much freedom as possible, they want you to make your own story, but at a point they want to tell their own story too. That's how Bethesda games work. So not killing the emperor in cold blood intrudes on your story eh? Well, too bad Bethesda wants to give you all the freedom in the world and they try to make you as much of a blank template as possible, but at a point how could they tell any story when you decide to act like a person behind a controller with no attachment to the universe instead of a human being.

Edit sorry that last paragraph is so long, it's kinda hard to chop down to size.

Edit never mind i got the bugger smaller!!!

NPCs being killed by other NPCs was a problem for me in Oblivion. Since a few NPCs would roam the world, and accidentally get themselves killed, even while I was on the other side of Cyrodiil. The Marksman master trainer, the countess of Leyawiin and pretty much any npc that ventured beyond the city walls after level 20, were certain to meet their doom. I also had the problem with Fallout 3, where the traveling merchants would fall prey to the various dangers of the wastes, preventing me from getting the 3rd Nuka-grenade schematic.   But Radiant story seem to erradicate many of these problems.

I liked the way it was done in Morrowind. There, if you killed a plot important NPC, the game would give you a message saying "bro you fucked UP!"

@Storms said:

@UnrealDP:

Have you ever played a Bethesda game before? This isn't an on-rails game, the whole point is YOUR story, not theirs. They put a main quest (which consists of a generic, average story) in front of you and then kindly GTFO of your way so you can either do it; or choose to go off and be an assassin, thief, wanderer, etc. instead. People who for some reason go into their menu, toggle killing 'essentials' on, ignore the 'essential' symbol on an NPC and then ignore a warning message afterwards should just be allowed to ignore the main quest (as OVER 9000 people do anyway) , including the "necessity" of the NPCs that were supposed to be important to it.

My experience in this game is not tied to the main quest unless I say it is. That's the way they design their games, so they ought to give us the option to assassinate whom we want, if that's the kind of character we want to play.

You don't have to understand why someone would want to do anything other than put one foot in front of the other and dutifully go through the main quest every playthrough. All you have to understand is that some people don't play that way.

You can still play your way, even though I think it's boring. For others to play their way, you don't have to worry about the main quest NPCs being killed by you accidentally, unless you turn that option on.

@UnrealDPsaid:

@Storms:

So because Bethesda wants to have a meaningful story explaining why you're there and the origins of the Dragon born and all of the amazing story they've been working on and building since the creation of Elder scrolls you hate it? Bethesda wants to fill out the universe and tell a tale they've been working on for some time now and i'm pretty sure they can't do that because you decide you want to off him for basically no reason? Bethesda games are all about making your own story and player decision, but if they want to have they're own story told their own way you hate them? Is the fact that you can't kill this random man in a chapel far far away really that big a deal?

At a point you can't just say "Then for no reason my guy murdered his best friend for no reason even though for all of his life he has given no indication that he was going to do this!", i mean, if you're as "hardcore" a roleplayer as you pretend to be then i'm pretty sure that if you can grasp the concept of build up to add weight to a story and the things that happen in said story i'm pretty sure you can grasp why someone wouldn't act out of character.

In Oblivion for instance lets say you role play an assassin who can do no good then you don't do good things right, well lets say that for some reason you decide "Hey i want to kill the emperor cause i'm an assassin" they don't let you because they want to try to tell their story about an assassin in prison who needs to rely on the emperor and his guards while trying to give you as much freedom as possible, they want you to make your own story, but at a point they want to tell their own story too. That's how Bethesda games work. So not killing the emperor in cold blood intrudes on your story eh? Well, too bad Bethesda wants to give you all the freedom in the world and they try to make you as much of a blank template as possible, but at a point how could they tell any story when you decide to act like a person behind a controller with no attachment to the universe instead of a human being.

Edit sorry that last paragraph is so long, it's kinda hard to chop down to size.

Edit never mind i got the bugger smaller!!!

@Stormssaid:

@UnrealDP: What are you talking about? I didn't say any of that.

Are you trolling now? The point is that this thread says you should be able to kill certain npcs and your point is that in my story i kill these npcs. My point was that Bethesda wants to tell their own story with these npcs and they want you to have your own story at the same time, but at a point you can't just act like a player instead of a person and do something completely out of character like if in oblivion you decided that instead of relying on the emperor and his guards to help you out you murder him for some essentially made up reason and now you have no where to go and the game has no lead up what do you do then? Bethesda wants to keep it your story which is why they have the main quest on the side that doesn't intrude in any way into your good/bad karma or your assassin/champion alignment they're just giving you some lead up and some friendly guidance that in no way intrudes on what you want to do.

Sorry if i didn't sum it up as well as i wanted to, it's just that i assumed you could have the patience to read through what i wrote before, i mean, it wasn't that much text and someone who pretends to be as "hardcore" a roleplayer as you should have been able to read all of that.

@Beforet: Yeah, Morrowind even let you kill gods!

I think this should be a player choice. Perhaps a checkbox in the gameplay menu that says "Prevent the killing of essential NPCs". It would be checked by default, but anyone who wanted to should be able to turn that off and go wild.

It's nice to have the option, but having the freedom to kill whoever you want can really screw you over in games like this. If you ever get the urge to actually beat the game, you might find that impossible if a key quest giver was a victim of one of your senseless rampages.

It would be awesome but you shouldn't be able to kill certain NPCs for certain reasons that I know are good. I DO wish that I could go through Skyrim and kill, literally, all the NPCs in the game.

Starting a game like Oblivion with the intention of playing it just to kill everyone in the game is one of the most mongy things I've ever read. There's hundreds of games out there where that is literally your only goal, why would you do that in one of the few games that tries to do something more?

@Hailinel said:

It's nice to have the option, but having the freedom to kill whoever you want can really screw you over in games like this. If you ever get the urge to actually beat the game, you might find that impossible if a key quest giver was a victim of one of your senseless rampages.

This, just to add to my previous rant i just want to say that this is also a reason, one of many many reasons why it's bad to just shut you out of something Bethesda's worked so hard to make.

That Skrilex song killed this threads credibility, OP.

@avidwriter said:

If all you care about in Skyrim to killing everyone. Perhaps you have bigger problems then not being able to kill everyone.

Holy shit, reading your name and then that sentence made me laugh my ass off.

The reason why this doesn't happen is that Bethesda doesn't want every single news organization writing a story about how their game allows players, specifically children who shouldn't be playing the game in the first place (if they had responsible parents that is), to kill children.  It would be a PR nightmare and a pain in the ass. 

@benpicko said:

@avidwriter said:

If all you care about in Skyrim to killing everyone. Perhaps you have bigger problems then not being able to kill everyone.

Holy shit, reading your name and then that sentence made me laugh my ass off.

The word is avid. Not good.

The reason why this doesn't happen is that Bethesda doesn't want every single news organization writing a story about how their game allows players […] to kill children.

Killing the children sounds very good and awesome, if only that feature was in I would order two Skyrims. 
But seriously, you probably can kill everyone you want, but why? That's not really what Elder Scrolls is about. You don't go around killing everybody in a town. You may kill the odd one or two due to a quest. 
If you want to ruin your own game and finding out all your saves were after you killed the NPC, then do whatever you want.