Poll: A compromise for Skyrim's children

[rokkolpo]

I think Skyrim is awesome.

And that not being able to kill everything in the world might piss me of a bit at first.
But then a dragon comes along.

And I just stop caring about such little things.

 

[Terminate421]

Abusing children over and over but they never die? That...sounds too unsettlingly like Mai-chan's Daily Life for me.

Sounds more like a deadric quest where:

Spoiler

Beat an old man to death with a mace only to be ressurected so you have to do it again, personally I would have thrown it on the ground and said fuck off to the person forcing me to do it.

 

[Darth_Dude]

Have we really gotten to the point where people want to kill kids?

Imagine all the shit we'd get from the media, "CHILD MURDER IN SKYRIM!"

Killing kids is plain wrong, even in a game. Wrong.
Screw immersion, anyone who wants to argue otherwhise needs to get their head checked.

 

[Adventurer2626]

My solution: make a mod where they will shut up and mind their manners. Then maybe less people will want to kill them. Another good option would be that if you attack them, they run off before you can catch them and in about 10 levels an insanely powerful NPC pops out of nowhere to take his/her revenge upon you. It's a fantasy game right? So fair's fair. We get to grow up and take revenge upon the npcs who kill our npc parents? Now so do they...muahahahaha!!!

 

[Kopikatsu]

If you are on the "child-immortality breaks my immersion" side of the debate: Would this be sufficient to sustain your immersion?

No... However I got my own idea... Well, an idea I stole and modded a bit... Fair use and all.

Someone said this in another thread... Link a child to an adult, if this adult dies, this child disappears aswell. This I like, however I would suggest that the child would go to an orphanage instead of just disappearing.

If anything this would add more to immersion than anything else you can offer (deaths are of course excluded in this assumption). So if a whole town is destroyed by a dragon, you will see if you visit the closest orphanage that it is now full of new children that cries, and mourn the death of their parents (that part I really like ). This could also work together with them being killable... Maybe you would not kill the child if you knew he would suffer in a bad orphanage for the rest of his life if you just killed his parents... Oh the sweet anguish!

However another way to solve this is to make the childs well... Likable, Bethesda could at least try not to make me wanna kill those little fuckspawns!

I am pro-child killing btw. They are just small adults. - EDIT: Wow, that sounded horrible if taken out of context... Well, some will argue that it sounds horrible even in context.

Yeah, that was Dastardly who suggested that. He's a teacher!

I then modified it to 'Child vanishes when both parents die'. Which seems more reasonable.

 

[mavkiel]

Didn't read through all the posts. All I would use the child killing mod is to allow OTHER npcs to kill children. If I come across a burned out village with a pissed off elder dragon in it, by god I better not find some children playing tag next to it.

 

[1blackone]

On a side note, the complete lack of teenagers is also jarring. People go from 10 years old straight to 30, and it's really noticeable when you have a semi-crowded street. No people my own age, it's quite odd.

A large deal of immersion could be had by giving you the ability to AT LEAST intimidate children into not being assholes, or the ability to speak to their parents about how disrespectful they are (which is what real life would allow). Bethesda has added all the bad parts about children without any of the abilities to actually deal with them or get them to stop.

The game does have ONE teen (arguably): the apprentice of the blacksmith in Winterhold. You are allowed to be a woman and fight in skyrim, but she wasn't. One can only logically conclude that she isnt considered to be of "fighting age". Adding that to the fact she clearly isnt a child model BAM, there ya go, your teenage companion! Now off ya go with her, get tragic and make little comments on the passer-bys =)

 

[Zeren]

Nope. I find it too amusing to make them attack guards and get impaled for it. My mod stays.

 

[Belaam]

The fix isn't to make children killable. The fix is to make them options as companions.

"Go tank that giant for me, Betty Sue!"

 

[Biodeamon]

i mostly just want the kids to die if you attack them mostly cause it's annoying if you accidently steal something by pressing a wrong button and then have the whole entire game with kids screaming to flee everytime they see you for the rest of the game.

 

[joshuaayt]

Why don't they just get rid of the kids? Morrowind was fine without them, as was Oblivion- they don't ADD anything, except annoyance.

Kids that cannot die are exactly as immersive as kids that don't exist.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

have you ever hit a child in skyrim?
they just run
and it ruins my fun
so i watch bloodsport
of a very different sort,
i force a fight
all through the night,
until i run out of magicka.

 

[Muspelheim]

Maybe I'm just an easily impressed tool, but I certainly don't get thrown out of the immersion just because I can't vaporize children...
Yes, I imagine it's rather silly whenever they end up kiting dragons around their burning village, but the simpler solution would be to find a way to "remove" them from the game whenever that happens, simply teleporting that particular NPC away in a discrete way. That way, we can assume the kid bit the ice without having to explicitly depict it. If Bethesda isn't on the same track and patch that in, then it could be a possible mod.

Of course, the whole question of adding children in a videogame where you mostly get around by employing different flavours of violence will always be a tricky one. Bethesda was pretty much stuck with two alternatives, both of which would attract complaints.
Last time, in Oblivion, they went with simply having no NPCs younger than 16 present in-game, all children presumably hiding in cupboards or under mudcrabs whenever the player was on the prowl. That worked, but the immersion took a hit.
Now, in Skyrim, they went with the other possible alternative, namely having children present, but made invulnerable. Not the best solution from an immersion/realism viewpoint either, but honestly the best of the two. Neither is perfect, both will be an immersion-hit, but it's what we've got to choose from.

Now, let's all just hope by Sheogorath's beard that Fox News don't find out about this...

Of course, I could be disqualified on this subject altogether by virtue that I never really kill an NPC I don't have to. I don't know why, live and let live, I suppose. Some random farmer in Rorikstead never did me no harm, so I'm more inclined to save that incinderation for someone or something that deserve it.

 

[Conza]

Hiya escapists.

The Skyrim child-killing mods have spawned some outrage lately, because it's apparently not okay to pretend to kill children in games.

Spoiler: My own opinion. Spoilered because it isn't really necessary to the thread.

Written in response to the recent Extra punctuation article.

Sorry. Yahtzee's articles are normally enough to convince me on an issue, but when it comes to child-killing. Nope.
To explain in terms of Yahtzee's "Not all roles can be available to you"-argument: When one of the roles available to you is "horrible indiscriminate murderer of innocent men, women, beggars and wildlife", it creates a dissonance when there is something you can't kill.
Even if those things aren't normally morally acceptable to ki- Hold on a fucking moment there. Since when did it become morally acceptable to kill defenseless adults?
This game lets you decapitate innocent people and carry their heads with you to store in your home where your thane is honour-bound to stay with the faces of their dead friends and relatives watching them from the walls to which you have crudely nailed their heads with arrows, but when you complain that there being immortal characters in the game feels odd and artificial the answer is "You can't have the option to kill children. That's just disturbing."
Fuck off, I'm not buying it.

I don't think the love-making mechanic simile holds up either. You don't necessarily hurt people by having sex with them, so if the game included a mechanic to sex npcs up, I would not expect it to include a mechanic that would let me sex the children.
If the game included a rape-mechanic, however, I would expect it to also be possible to rape children, yes.

Like some other poster said. It's not about having a desire to kill children. It's about wanting the rules presented to govern our experience to be consistent.

I would like to see what the different sides in the debate think of a compromise:
Let's say the game was released without the option to kill children. Fine. The children would, however, react to your blows in the same way that quest-essential characters do: by falling to their knees and recovering for a while before returning to health.

What do you think of this system?
If you are on the "child-killing mods are bad" side of the debate: Would this be suitably inoffensive?
If you are on the "child-immortality breaks my immersion" side of the debate: Would this be sufficient to sustain your immersion?
(Let's say you don't have the option of modding to affect your decision.)

Hi, maybe you can help me here.

(this is all about 'in game')I have no interest in killing children, but I don't care if other dovakin do, what they do is there business.

My question is why? Do these children carry rare items? That wouldn't make sense, since they weren't designed to be killed. Are they very difficult to kill (eg. high health), and thus give lots of experience? Also unlikely.

I just don't see it adding to the gameplay at all, so I'll focus my game mods on cool things, like custom dragon and horse skins, stability mods, ect.

I haven't read your spoiler yet, so I'll ask, 'why do you think people want to have this in game'? (see I avoided using 'you' in there).

 

[Duskflamer]

I basically agree with that original comment, to quote myself in response to Yahtzee's article:

The problem with the argument that children shouldn't be able to die, is that they're no more innocent than any of the adult townspeople who CAN die. The children are no more unworth of death than the adults who can be killed, and to a gamer who decides to go on a rampage killing an entire town, hitting the block of "you cannot kill children" is rather frustrating. Why not just make all the noncombatant townspeople immortal if you're trying to establish some kind of morality?

And in line with this and the original comment, no. Giving children the plot-armor that significant NPCs have would not be enough (Hell, I don't like that plot-armor in the first place. When I do end up getting Skyrim, first two mods I'll grab will be to make children killable and to replace plot-armor with a "The plot cannot be finished now" message if you kill someone important).

I haven't read your spoiler yet, so I'll ask, 'why do you think people want to have this in game'? (see I avoided using 'you' in there).

Consistency. All NPC townsfolk need to have the same amount of mortality. Killing a child is no more evil or brutal than killing its defenseless mother. If the developers are trying to enforce some sort of morality, than both of them should be immortal. Otherwise, neither should be.

 

[lionrwal]

While normally I wouldn't care if we could kill children in a game, in Skyrim I do, all because of one little quest line.

Spoiler: Just in case this spoils anyone...

There is a quest where you have to investigate this person who is trying to summon the Dark Brotherhood. When you get to their house, you see its a child, and that he has somehow found human flesh and heart to perform the Black Sacrament. He want's you to kill someone, and as far as I know, you can't refuse the quest. I tried to kill the kid, only to have guards enter the house and try to kill me, forcing me to reload my last save. That's the only reason I want the child-killing mod in Skyrim.

 

[MaxwellEdison]

Why are people so against having the kids be mortal like the rest of us?

The dragon killing everyone but immortal kids situation is still a problem, and that's what bothers me.

 

[Peteron]

Honestly, its worse that they have to experience the torture of Wuuthrad and live as I repeatedly butcher them! Killing those bastards would put them out of their misery! Either way, I understand why they don't allow characters to do this in the game, that's why we have mods! But, honestly, did they have to make children the characters you want to kill the most? Seriously, they always have something stuck up to say that makes me want to destroy them!

 

[Talshere]

Two things I change is one.

Make them less annoying. Remember this one "Someone one else to lick my fathers boots."
Maybe after a beating the kid run in terror.

I think the main thing people are upset about is the attitude the children.

Fact is irl a kid with that mouth would have to have fast feet to avoid a beating. I one of my hypothetical future kids ever muttered that to a passer by you can be damned sure Id belt the foul mouthed brat on the spot, I sure as hell wouldnt doubt or even call out the person they said it to if they clipped em round the ear-hole. Kids need to be educated as to the proper manners and etiquette. Failure to do so leads to the many council estates that can be found around Britain.

 

[Risingblade]

Have we really gotten to the point where people want to kill kids?

Imagine all the shit we'd get from the media, "CHILD MURDER IN SKYRIM!"

Killing kids is plain wrong, even in a game. Wrong.
Screw immersion, anyone who wants to argue otherwhise needs to get their head checked.

Finally someone with some sense!