Sometimes I think the writer's strike - remember that? - somehow crippled every market for which we use writers. It's silly, I know, but it seems like writing has been getting more and more shit recently. Like all story departments are made of the same people who produce Fear Factor. Either they're entirely hiring at their lake houses, or someone's got the writers' hands tied with barbed wire after first draft.
As for the kid thing, I seem to remember that Little Lamplight was protected by many vicious dogs - realistically even in game terms, as I had to resort to my unique flamer to kill one, but they were killable. I wonder what that means.
On topic, cmon. It's a video game, have you forgotten where these came from? Shoot everything that moves, or it will kill or impede you, or you can get something out of it. I'm pretty sure there's no definition of progress which included the idea of suddenly restricting previously free actions. We could always kill everything before, whether it was a cute little bunny, or a tragically mutated cancer patient. Doesn't matter, let some god sort em out.
Further, to be more specific to the topic, I kind of hate most NPCs. Because they don't do much of anything. They're moving window dressing, from go bot fleeing civilians in a shooter to the meat-chest roombas in a Bethseda game. Fable, especially 2, is an exception because it's people have homes, jobs, families, opinions. But in Fallout they only exist to walk back and forth, on their preprogrammed routes with their preprogrammed actions and quips. They're almost immune to manipulation, except that a weapon reliably causes them to do something new and exciting when applied. Additionally, in many cases NPCs can be an obstacle, catching the player attempting something stealthy, or cluttering the compass with lots of blips. Easiest solution? You guessed it. Then we have the children. Same problems, but no solution, because you can't kill kids.
Let me leave off by pointing something out. In F3, we had the Mesmetron, which gave a host of new ways to make otherwise repetitive enemies and NPCs interactive. Except it could not, despite being potentially nonlethal, be used on kids. Because enslaving kids is monstrous...oh wait. You can sweet talk a young girl, specifically one of the least annoying children, out of the cave into the hands of slavers.
