Extra Punctuation: What Is the Matter with You People?

[Something Amyss]

I just wish people weren't so suicidal in Saints Row. I'm driving on the street and the people dive right in front of my car. What's up with that?

Have you played the Third?

There's a certain event after which some of the bridges in the game are raised, split down the middle. You get to see REAL suicidal tendencies when you watch how drivers handle those....

 

[Ickorus]

If it was up to me i'd not put child killing in my game either, instead i'd make it so that the player can choose to either help the kid out if his family/village has been slaughtered or just leave the kid there to suffer, if he helps him the kid would then be seen in an orphanage (Like the one in Riften, for example) and if they choose to leave the kid there then the kid would later be seen in rags in the town scavenging for food.

If I was to actually allow child deaths on the other hand i'd still lock it out from the player and allow anything else to kill the kid since then the entire argument of the child being there even though the rest of his village is a smouldering ruin would be gone and we'd just be left with the people who actively go through the hassle of finding and installing a mod just to be able to kill kids.

I'd still have kids being able to get hurt, but just like an important NPC they wouldn't be able to actually die.

Skyrim. You're a lvl 45 ranger/mage. You go up to a beggar, or a farmer. Cast paralyse on him. Back up a bit just in case. Put an arrow through his kneecap. Then the other one. Continue hittin targets as You please until You get bored and aim for something lethal.

Because that is exactly how we all kill our enemies in-game.

Speak for yourself buddy, that's pretty fucking sadistic even if it's just a character in a videogame.

 

[Ariseishirou]

Heck I liked MW3's campaign tremendously and even I have to agree that the child dying lacked all shock value. Anyone with a brain in their head knows children have died in the MW series - in the nuclear explosion, in the rocket attacks that have killed "hundreds of villagers" in Russia, in the invasion of DC, in the airport massacre, etc., etc. - even if we didn't see them on screen directly. It's not exactly a series with a low civilian body count. By the end of the game I'd forgotten that scene even happened. I mean, who cares? I'm sure thousands of other children died during the gas attacks. I'm trying to kill Makarov, here. It's irrelevant. Whereas both the nuclear blast and the airport massacre were key elements of the plot, and you didn't see them coming. You thought that surely you'd escape the blast. You can't believe it (unless you've been told in advance, obviously) that suddenly you've got a machine gun and are expected to mow down hundreds of helpless people who can't fight back. Those things have literally never happened in an FPS before, to my knowledge.

But watching one kid die, out of thousands? Meh. What does that have to do with Price or Soap?

RE: the Skyrim thing. That's really disappointing, too. One of my favourite aspects of Fallout 3 was that you could kill anyone you wanted. Not that I wanted to or ever did kill children, or many other NPCs for that matter, but the knowledge that you could and that actions have consequences made the whole experience feel so much more immersive. My first character was Neutral-Good, but what if I wanted to play an Evil one? Do I just randomly have some magical aversion to child killing, like some Hollywood assassin trope that's meant to make the character more "likeable"? No, fuck that. There's nothing more morally wrong about killing a young human being than killing a slightly older one. This is purely moronic terror of censorship (or why would they have let us do it before?), and it's cowardly in the extreme.

Poor form, Bethesda. Poor form.

 

[Arif_Sohaib]

There is another reason to add that mod in, it is easier to make than most other mods.
And for Call of Duty, there is one way they could surprise us, by showing actual interrogation of suspected terrorists by the so-called good guys. They almost did this in Modern Warfare 2 in a scene which lasted almost a second where Soap readies a car battery to interrogate someone and then the shutter closes, it goes so fast that most players will not notice it.

 

[Ariseishirou]

There is another reason to add that mod in, it is easier to make than most other mods.
And for Call of Duty, there is one way they could surprise us, by showing actual interrogation of suspected terrorists by the so-called good guys. They almost did this in Modern Warfare 2 in a scene which lasted almost a second where Soap readies a car battery to interrogate someone and then the shutter closes, it goes so fast that most players will not notice it.

They have you stuff glass in someone's mouth and then press a button to punch him repeatedly during an interrogation in Black Ops - was that not good enough?

 

[Schwenkdawg]

And who the fuck asked for your input? Especially if what you have to say is completely not what we were talking about and insulting to boot.

In game, you can kill anyone you want however you want, and pretty much everything is pretty much equally powerless to stop you.

But he didn't ask that did he you tard, he asked, aside from everything, as in for real, how is child murder worse then regular murder, and what happens? You DEFEND that point of view. You're the kind of thing that makes people feel bad to be a gamer. I'm really not gonna take being trolled on this subject, and I reckon that another ban will be heading my way if I say what I actually want, so please do us both a favour and not quote me on anything, again, ever.

Wow. Classy. You might also rethink the "posting on a public forum" thing. Yeah, I AM going to quote You on what I perceive to be bullshit. It's a discussion board, not a soapbox.

It's really quite the same thing in real life, in any case. Both of Your arguments are just emotional appeals, having little to do with reality. If some random psycho decided to bust into my room right now armed with a gun and kill me, I couldn't defend myself either, and I sure as hell didn't do anything to him. Does it really matter whether I am 8 or 28 in that situation? It's the murder of a defenseless, innocent person.

Yes, I defend that point of view. I defend the point of view that murder is wrong, terribly wrong, and it does not get any more wrong. You say there is a reason "why the most heinous, depraved and disgusting criminals are child killers." Yes. The reason is that we view them as such. But that's not a rational reaction, and not a reasonable one, either. In a prison, regular rapists despise child rapists, regular killers hate child killers - what gives them the right? How dare they? How can they seriously think "Well, I am a killer, but at least I'm not a scumbag child killer?" Bullshit! You really think they are right to feel good about themselves?

That makes ME sick. Killing an innocent person is despicable. It does not matter whether the person is 8, 18, or 80. And as long as we think that killing a child is somehow the worst, we indirectly encourage the line of thinking that killing an adult is not that bad. This whole Skyrim thing actually goes to show it. That is not a position I am willing to take.

~Sylv

The reason even prison inmates and convicted murderers despise child killers/rapists etc is because there exists a certain threshold of self-defense. Now, I'm not saying that murder in any form is right (occasionally justified, maybe, but definitely not right), but to use your own example, if a psycho burst into my room right now in your situation he'd have one hell of a fight on his hands. I'm not a small person, and my room's pretty confined, so unless he could shoot me right off the bat then things would probably get pretty dangerous for him. even more so if he only had a knife or just his fists. A child has none of the size or strength of a grown human, and therefore, is more deserving of protection. The flip-side of this is that those who prey on people who can't defend themselves aren't deserving of even the modicum of compassion given to murderers of adults. To put it in an absolutely disturbing, but perhaps illuminating light, its kind of like hunting. Shooting a baby bear isn't much of a challenge because they haven't fully developed the senses or reactions necessary to survive against you (hence why they're protected by the mother bear), but if you go hunting for a full grown bear, it's much more dangerous/challenging.

 

[w00tage]

Welcome to the age of Hollywood video games. It's an open secret that there's a lot of wanna-be Hollywood directors who have gotten into the video game industry, and this kind of B-movie storytelling is a result. Also to their debit are the cutscene-heavy "storytelling" and QTE-mode gameplay, both of which let them "express their vision" without interference from those pesky players, but that's another rant.

 

[Odecey]

I have several problems with this reasoning, and I'll talk about at least some of them. First of all, this isn't a question of realism. Fuck realism. When I play a game like Skyrim, what I want is immersion, a concept which in gaming seldom goes hand in hand with arbitrary limitations of the real world. Speaking for myself, I find that being able to put an entire household to death apart from the children because of the game director's sensibilities to be a jarring immersion breaker. This is the reason you're seeing these mods; not being able to kill children does not make sense within the context of the game, and thus, some of us are taken out of the experience by it.

Secondly, morally there is nothing worse about rape than murder. Consequentially, I see no reason that a game which allows you to kill someone, shouldn't also be able to allow you to rape someone. Oh, but do you think you should be able to do so to a child? I hear you say. Well, of course! The notion that a child's life and well-being is somehow more sacred than that of an adult goes against the principle that all lives are equal in worth, so in my eyes it's an utterly ridiculous stance to take. Indeed, from my point of view, anyone who rails against violence against children without simultaneously speaking against the murder of adults is a hypocrite.

In short: There's nothing wrong with us, you're just holding a double standard.

 

[Arif_Sohaib]

There is another reason to add that mod in, it is easier to make than most other mods.
And for Call of Duty, there is one way they could surprise us, by showing actual interrogation of suspected terrorists by the so-called good guys. They almost did this in Modern Warfare 2 in a scene which lasted almost a second where Soap readies a car battery to interrogate someone and then the shutter closes, it goes so fast that most players will not notice it.

They have you stuff glass in someone's mouth and then press a button to punch him repeatedly during an interrogation in Black Ops - was that not good enough?

I was under the impression that most COD fans only consider the Infinity Ward games as real COD, otherwise both World at War(Russians are shown shooting unarmed Nazi prisoners, Japanese are burned alive by Americans) and Black Ops(the player is repeatedly shocked by his interrogators) were more brutal and bloody than the Modern Warfare series.

 

[EvilRoy]

"If some random psycho decided to bust into my room right now armed with a gun and kill me, I couldn't defend myself either, and I sure as hell didn't do anything to him. Does it really matter whether I am 8 or 28 in that situation?"

Here you bring up the age thing, but deny that the point is that children are drastically incapable of self-defense/security/generally protecting themselves from things that you know are in the world that children don't have a clue about. And while age doesn't factor into that, your general state in life does, of which age is a factor, because aging takes away your naivety, gives you knowledge about protecting yourself, makes you wise to the world and makes you much more physically capable.

Sorry to just jump in here, but I feel it's important to bring up the point in regards to self defence.

The problem is simply that the other guy having a gun or a knife is essentially an 'instant win' button. Sometimes people let movies and cop dramas fool them into thinking that they could potentially stop even a weaker enemy wielding either of those weapons, but 8 or 80 you actually do have roughly the same chance of survival, a bit higher at 18.

Next time you buy a melon from the grocers, pull out one of your pointed butchers knives and, starting at the hip, thrust the knife forward into the melon (you don't even need to hold the melon with your other hand). Now, piercing the melon with the knife was approximately 1.25-1.5 times more difficult than it is to pierce a human. The melon is now in shock from the stab, and fluids from their stomach or bowels are leaking into their bloodstream, poisoning them from the inside out.

So you can't really argue that when faced with a weapon carrying enemy, an older person has much more chance. They don't even need to be skilled with that weapon, simply thrusting forward will most likely cause substantial damage. An 18 year old might have a better chance of dodging the attack, though its more likely that they would just take the damage but be able to survive assuming the attacker stops there. At 8as young as 60 any of the benefits age gave the person are long since gone, and past 70 with the onset of advanced aging diseases and affliction the person is more likely less capable than a child at self defence.

So... Y'know. Just don't think that being older makes you less at risk than a child against attacks with a weapon. It can be very dangerous.

 

[EvilRoy]

"If some random psycho decided to bust into my room right now armed with a gun and kill me, I couldn't defend myself either, and I sure as hell didn't do anything to him. Does it really matter whether I am 8 or 28 in that situation?"

Here you bring up the age thing, but deny that the point is that children are drastically incapable of self-defense/security/generally protecting themselves from things that you know are in the world that children don't have a clue about. And while age doesn't factor into that, your general state in life does, of which age is a factor, because aging takes away your naivety, gives you knowledge about protecting yourself, makes you wise to the world and makes you much more physically capable.

Sorry to just jump in here, but I feel it's important to bring up the point in regards to self defence.

The problem is simply that the other guy having a gun or a knife is essentially an 'instant win' button. Sometimes people let movies and cop dramas fool them into thinking that they could potentially stop even a weaker enemy wielding either of those weapons, but 8 or 80 you actually do have roughly the same chance of survival, a bit higher at 18.

Next time you buy a melon from the grocers, pull out one of your pointed butchers knives and, starting at the hip, thrust the knife forward into the melon (you don't even need to hold the melon with your other hand). Now, piercing the melon with the knife was approximately 1.25-1.5 times more difficult than it is to pierce a human. The melon is now in shock from the stab, and fluids from their stomach or bowels are leaking into their bloodstream, poisoning them from the inside out.

So you can't really argue that when faced with a weapon carrying enemy, an older person has much more chance. They don't even need to be skilled with that weapon, simply thrusting forward will most likely cause substantial damage. An 18 year old might have a better chance of dodging the attack, though its more likely that they would just take the damage but be able to survive assuming the attacker stops there. At 8as young as 60 any of the benefits age gave the person are long since gone, and past 70 with the onset of advanced aging diseases and affliction the person is more likely less capable than a child at self defence.

So... Y'know. Just don't think that being older makes you less at risk than a child against attacks with a weapon. It can be very dangerous.

 

[Athinira]

I'm not saying that there are some IRL violent people here and games are to blame, I think i've put myself across in a less than ideal way...

Fact is, as far as I see it, if seeing dead kids is something you need to have a game world feel complete, you're a pretty desensitized individual. And that is what I'm trying to say.

And you are wrong.

Imagine for a second that the next GTA came out and people suddenly realized that Rockstar had decided to remove the ability to kill cops in the game. It isn't rocket science to figure out that this would cause a massive outcry and have a massive impact on the sales of the game. But by your argument, those people are just desensitized individuals if they can't play GTA without killing cops, right? Well, wrong, because GTA is a world where cop-killing is part of the fun.

Listen. Every single game-world invites to specific kinds of action (like GTA invites you to go on a kill-frenzy rampage), and there is no universal rule that says that child-killing in games are wrong. It differs from game to game. Modern Warfare 3 did it in a cutscene (not to mention the airport level from the previous game).

And in Skyrim, the children happen to be set up as a kind of antagonists, for the simple reason that they're simply annoying, and there is nothing morally wrong with removing annoying elements that detracts from your gameplay experience. As another poster pointed out earlier, the game even has a mechanic where NPC's can report you if you commit any crimes, which can be countered by killing any witnesses.... except if a child happens to be the witness, in which case you're screwed.

So the game gives you two heavy incentives to kill the smug pricks (a third, if you consider the incentive to just go nuts and murder everyone GTA-style), which basically makes them antagonists to your fun, and there is nothing wrong with killing antagonists in any way, whether they be children, cops, or aliens from space.

Finally there is the point of story consistency (note: not 'realism', CONSISTENCY, which is what creates immersion). As someone pointed out earlier, when a dragon attacks a village, your first thought should be "Get the women and children to safety", not "Lets use the children as a diversion while i pump the dragon full of arrows". Immortal children also raises several questions that breaks consistency, like for example why no-one would use them as a fighting force since they are basically untouchable. Even if you were a good king who wouldn't want to use children that way, sooner or later one of your enemies is going to. It raises questions, questions that the game can't answer, which equals broken immersion.

.

As for the people who just want to see dead child for the reason of seeing a dead child, it's the same as i said earlier: Who you are in a game doesn't equal who you are in real life. It's not uncommon in games to do things just because you CAN, like going nuts in GTA, turning on godmode and infinite ammo in any FPS and start shooting everything. It's a kind of sandbox-mindset, but it has absolutely NOTHING to do with being desensitized.

 

[Ariseishirou]

I was under the impression that most COD fans only consider the Infinity Ward games as real COD, otherwise both World at War(Russians are shown shooting unarmed Nazi prisoners, Japanese are burned alive by Americans) and Black Ops(the player is repeatedly shocked by his interrogators) were more brutal and bloody than the Modern Warfare series.

I can't speak for other CoD fans obviously, but as for myself and all of the fans I know personally, we love WaW and Blops, and don't have a terribly high opinion of those who engage in IW = "True" CoD snobbery.

WaW and Blops were excellent. And yeah, they both had torture and cruelty. So...

 

[Schwenkdawg]

"If some random psycho decided to bust into my room right now armed with a gun and kill me, I couldn't defend myself either, and I sure as hell didn't do anything to him. Does it really matter whether I am 8 or 28 in that situation?"

Here you bring up the age thing, but deny that the point is that children are drastically incapable of self-defense/security/generally protecting themselves from things that you know are in the world that children don't have a clue about. And while age doesn't factor into that, your general state in life does, of which age is a factor, because aging takes away your naivety, gives you knowledge about protecting yourself, makes you wise to the world and makes you much more physically capable.

Sorry to just jump in here, but I feel it's important to bring up the point in regards to self defence.

The problem is simply that the other guy having a gun or a knife is essentially an 'instant win' button. Sometimes people let movies and cop dramas fool them into thinking that they could potentially stop even a weaker enemy wielding either of those weapons, but 8 or 80 you actually do have roughly the same chance of survival, a bit higher at 18.

Next time you buy a melon from the grocers, pull out one of your pointed butchers knives and, starting at the hip, thrust the knife forward into the melon (you don't even need to hold the melon with your other hand). Now, piercing the melon with the knife was approximately 1.25-1.5 times more difficult than it is to pierce a human. The melon is now in shock from the stab, and fluids from their stomach or bowels are leaking into their bloodstream, poisoning them from the inside out.

So you can't really argue that when faced with a weapon carrying enemy, an older person has much more chance. They don't even need to be skilled with that weapon, simply thrusting forward will most likely cause substantial damage. An 18 year old might have a better chance of dodging the attack, though its more likely that they would just take the damage but be able to survive assuming the attacker stops there. At 8as young as 60 any of the benefits age gave the person are long since gone, and past 70 with the onset of advanced aging diseases and affliction the person is more likely less capable than a child at self defence.

So... Y'know. Just don't think that being older makes you less at risk than a child against attacks with a weapon. It can be very dangerous.

to counter that, if both the attacker and I (i'm 23) had knives the stakes would be, barring outside training/quality of the weapon, etc, essentially equal. this is not so at all for a child. yes, there are child soldiers out there who know how to wield a weapon with relatively deadly efficency, but in this case the children are just that...children. I'd expect people to be sad if I got killed by some dude with a knife, but if I also had a knife in the engagement, then it was, at least to some degree, a "fair" fight. Discounting the child soldier thing above, there's no way an 8 year old with a knife against a 24 year old with a knife is as "fair" of a fight

 

[EvilRoy]

"If some random psycho decided to bust into my room right now armed with a gun and kill me, I couldn't defend myself either, and I sure as hell didn't do anything to him. Does it really matter whether I am 8 or 28 in that situation?"

Here you bring up the age thing, but deny that the point is that children are drastically incapable of self-defense/security/generally protecting themselves from things that you know are in the world that children don't have a clue about. And while age doesn't factor into that, your general state in life does, of which age is a factor, because aging takes away your naivety, gives you knowledge about protecting yourself, makes you wise to the world and makes you much more physically capable.

Sorry to just jump in here, but I feel it's important to bring up the point in regards to self defence.

The problem is simply that the other guy having a gun or a knife is essentially an 'instant win' button. Sometimes people let movies and cop dramas fool them into thinking that they could potentially stop even a weaker enemy wielding either of those weapons, but 8 or 80 you actually do have roughly the same chance of survival, a bit higher at 18.

Next time you buy a melon from the grocers, pull out one of your pointed butchers knives and, starting at the hip, thrust the knife forward into the melon (you don't even need to hold the melon with your other hand). Now, piercing the melon with the knife was approximately 1.25-1.5 times more difficult than it is to pierce a human. The melon is now in shock from the stab, and fluids from their stomach or bowels are leaking into their bloodstream, poisoning them from the inside out.

So you can't really argue that when faced with a weapon carrying enemy, an older person has much more chance. They don't even need to be skilled with that weapon, simply thrusting forward will most likely cause substantial damage. An 18 year old might have a better chance of dodging the attack, though its more likely that they would just take the damage but be able to survive assuming the attacker stops there. At 8as young as 60 any of the benefits age gave the person are long since gone, and past 70 with the onset of advanced aging diseases and affliction the person is more likely less capable than a child at self defence.

So... Y'know. Just don't think that being older makes you less at risk than a child against attacks with a weapon. It can be very dangerous.

to counter that, if both the attacker and I (i'm 23) had knives the stakes would be, barring outside training/quality of the weapon, etc, essentially equal. this is not so at all for a child. yes, there are child soldiers out there who know how to wield a weapon with relatively deadly efficency, but in this case the children are just that...children. I'd expect people to be sad if I got killed by some dude with a knife, but if I also had a knife in the engagement, then it was, at least to some degree, a "fair" fight. Discounting the child soldier thing above, there's no way an 8 year old with a knife against a 24 year old with a knife is as "fair" of a fight

This is true, but the problem is that functionally within the game you are almost always a 24 year old fighting an 8 year old. After only a few hours it becomes generally unusual for you to be defeated, and armed civilians pose roughly the same threat as unarmed children. Sure they have the capacity to defend themselves in a way that children do not, but when so vastly outclassed by an opponent, a knowledge of the basics of stabbing tactics is unlikely to even cause a hindrance.
One might call it a case of bringing a knife to a gunfight, but even if properly outfitted they are still fighting an enemy that is smarter, faster, stronger and with substantially more experience in a fight.

 

[Athinira]

Sorry, this is where I stopped reading because if this is the kind of analogy you're making, the rest of your post was probably just going to make me angry.

Thats a horrible example because the pigs in a GTA game are a constant threat and depending on how you play, are probably going to be your chief aggressors.

Then maybe you should not be on a forum if you can't even bother reading peoples post.

If you had actually read it, you would have seen the following paragraph:

And in Skyrim, the children happen to be set up as a kind of antagonists, for the simple reason that they're simply annoying, and there is nothing morally wrong with removing annoying elements that detracts from your gameplay experience. As another poster pointed out earlier, the game even has a mechanic where NPC's can report you if you commit any crimes, which can be countered by killing any witnesses.... except if a child happens to be the witness, in which case you're screwed.

So the game gives you two heavy incentives to kill the smug pricks

If you can't stand arguing in the first place, why are you here?

 

[drivel]

Immortal chilluns running around after a dragon has murdered everyone else in a town doesn't make any sense. Also, how about the added incentive to be careful when blasting off spells or swinging an axe because you might just kill little Susie or Timmy?

My point is there are elements of immersion that can be achieved by allowing children to die that have nothing to do with players wanting to murder children personally.

 

[jessegeek]

I draw the line at watching gamers protest their lack of child-killing options in a game where it is irrelevant to the story.

It's a sandbox game. There's a ton of stuff you can do that's irrelevant to the story. Kind of the point of a sandbox.

Granted, me using the word story there was incorrect: world or environment would have made more sense. My point is pretty much the article's argument about the fact that you are an adventurer, maybe you are playing a scurrilous one but you're still an adventurer as opposed to a sadistic psychopathic, Manhunt-esque character, where a child-killing mechanic would make complete sense.

But you can be a sadistic psychopath. You can run around killing every single adult you come across.

There's a video of a player in Skyrim who literally keeps decapitated heads in his house as trophies. I don't recommend watching it it's creepy as all hell.

I've seen that video (the title is the worst thing about it, imo) but just because that player has been physically able to do it does not mean it's in-keeping with the game's internal world. Whilst he's been able to do it, it somewhat defeats the "point" of the game. I know you can choose your own destiny etc, but within the context of the DnD-esque type roles. It's like if he played Saints Row II and just walked around the city observing the green cross code; even if you can, it seems like you're probably playing the wrong game if that's all you want to do, therefore adapting the game world to include aspects of gameplay that facilitate it seems kinda redundant to me.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

I've seen that video (the title is the worst thing about it, imo) but just because that player has been physically able to do it does not mean it's in-keeping with the game's internal world. Whilst he's been able to do it, it somewhat defeats the "point" of the game. I know you can choose your own destiny etc, but within the context of the DnD-esque type roles. It's like if he played Saints Row II and just walked around the city observing the green cross code; even if you can, it seems like you're probably playing the wrong game if that's all you want to do, therefore adapting the game world to include aspects of gameplay that facilitate it seems kinda redundant to me.

The thing with the Elder Scrolls series is that aside from a main quest to provide a driving force behind the game and a dramatic question, and the plethora of lore available at the player's perusal via dialog and in-game books, it's a largely context-less fantasy RPG setting. The very point of the game is to maximize player choice vis-a-vis nonlinearity and a relative stripping of context that subconsciously shoehorns the player into a necessarily heroic or villainous path. Even upon completing the main quest in later Elder Scrolls games, there's a perfunctory "well, you're destiny's complete. Go do whatever it is you really want to do now" scene.

Being able to be a serial-killing psychopath is perfectly in line with the game's internal world. Look at the Morag Tong (ethical assassins), Dark Brotherhood (religious zealot assassins and psychopaths), the "Blood on the Ice" quest, and the cults of the Daedric Princes (especially Malacath, Boethiah, Molag Bal, and Mephala). Some of these quests and plotlines actually have an (unspoken) prerequisite of the player-character being mentally-unbalanced at best and an utter, unrepentant sociopath at worst.

Really, look no further than "Blood on the Ice" which is in Skyrim itself (big time spoilers ahead):

Spoiler

First, you have the implication Calixto rapes and murders his victims...and the order of those events is highly questionable. Then you have the Butcher's Journals which describe his victims in purely sexualized terms; he wants their body parts because they represent to him sexually-desirable features, he's trying to Frankenstein the perfect woman. The final Butcher's Journal reveals the identity of the woman he's trying to use necromancy to bring back from the dead...it's his dead sister he's trying to bring back in the "perfect body".

Yuck, yuck, yuck.

 

[MimeticLie]

For me the issue is that NPCs in Skyrim have 3 major functions. They talk, they fight, and they die. Children don't do the latter two, and they barely do the first. Aside from a throwaway quest in Whiterun and a game of tag in that first village, all I've gotten from children are single lines of dialogue.

If you're going to put them in the game, make them a meaningful part of the game. They don't have to be killable. Children in Fallout 3 couldn't die, but they did more than take up space. There weren't many around, but the ones that were there were as characterized as their adult counterparts. In Skyrim, they just feel like filler. I'd rather have a mod that took them out entirely than a mod that let you kill them.