Poll: A compromise for Skyrim's children

naam

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Dec 16, 2010
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Wait, people actually think this inclusion morally was a good idea?
I must have missed some kind of child-torture simulator in previous elder scrolls games that this is necessary?
 

chadachada123

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Jan 17, 2011
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I'd rather an option to slap them and tell them to shut the hell up.

Them simply falling to their knees does nothing to solve the actual problem, which is them being whiny arrogant shits that TRY to antagonize you, with which you have no recourse. Not even the ability to speak to them and tell them to learn some goddamn respect.

When an adult NPC is annoying me ("Have you been to the Cloud District lately? Ho, what am I saying, of course you haven't), I'm able to murder him so that I don't have to hear his dialog while walking through town. We should at least be presented with an option that would make the same possible for children. It doesn't need to be murder, hell, even a quest or dialogue (persuasion check?) would be fine, just give me the ability to make them shut the hell up.
 

Sewer Rat

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Sep 14, 2008
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What I really would enjoy is the option to Brawl with the children like you can with the drunkards. You think you can beat me little child? Let's see you prove it.
You win: The child shuts up, and talks only when spoken to, and then he is very kind and courteous towards you.
You lose: Your character kills himself and all your save files are erased, cause clearly you deserve it.
 

Irony's Acolyte

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Mar 9, 2010
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I would like the kids to be less of just dicks. I hated most of the little brats in Little Lamplight and it was all the worse because I couldn't harm them.

Kids who run around playing games and have fun little conversations are fine. I don't go on murdering sprees anyway, so it's not like I'll be upset when I can depopulate a town except for it's children.
 

chadachada123

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naam said:
Wait, people actually think this inclusion morally was a good idea?
I must have missed some kind of child-torture simulator in previous elder scrolls games that this is necessary?
Previous Elder Scrolls games didn't even have children (at least, Oblivion didn't, I can't speak for the rest). It's a good idea in theory (immersion! children! like in real life!), but it's screwed over when the kids do nothing but be snarky to you, and are invincible to boot. That breaks the realism quite a bit.

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_Blue_Rider

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Sep 4, 2009
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I love how everyone keeps pulling the "its so immersion breaking when a Dragon burns down a village and children are unharmed", i say to you, thats bullshit, Dragons only attack Villages if you are in them, and when the Dragon attacks, all the non combat NPC's run away while the Dragon focuses on you and the Guards, theres a very small chance the dragon will even get the opportunity to attack them in the first place
 

The Diabolical Biz

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Jun 25, 2009
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The_Blue_Rider said:
I love how everyone keeps pulling the "its so immersion breaking when a Dragon burns down a village and children are unharmed", i say to you, thats bullshit, Dragons only attack Villages if you are in them, and when the Dragon attacks, all the non combat NPC's run away while the Dragon focuses on you and the Guards, theres a very small chance the dragon will even get the opportunity to attack them in the first place
Not in my experience. I have dens in several towns where I don't own a house now because random NPC merchants just ran up to a Dragon, iron dagger in hand, bold as brass, and started kicking the shit out of it only to get torn to pieces and thrown aside in a broken huddle.

So of course I took their key and started using their houses to stash my loot.

OT: It's a decent solution but it still wouldn't solve the children traipsing about after the whole populace had been murdered, telling me about how I lick their fathers God-damned boots.
 

Azure-Supernova

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Aug 5, 2009
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Jonluw said:
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.
How about there are no essential characters, sans perhaps main quest related NPCs which are only killable by the player, not other NPCs. As a compromise why not make it so that only NPCs can kill children, I'd be satisfied with that. That way dragon attacks pose a threat to NPCs without leaving behind immortal children in the world and players don't get to do any of the killing for a media outlet to report on.
 

Shaughn Caso

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Mar 29, 2010
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personally, I am very much against invincible characters in Skyrim.
Let me tell you a story, I was bored while in Windhelm. and seeing how I had been previously waging guerrilla warfare with the Stormcloak army for being racist against elves (my character is a wood elf), I decided to make a final mission to assassinate Ulfric without the aid of the empire or anyone. so i made my way into the castle waited until the time was right and I slaughtered Ulfric and his right hand, then was busy attacking his guards when he got up and shouted me through the door and into his guards.
this completely brok y immersion, I want to be able to kill any character without them getting up and stabbing me in the back, and with the previously mentioned dragon assault on village argument, I would greatly be amazed to come to what I believe is a thriving village only to find the dead of those I used to know, including children. it is not that i want to murder children, but some of them do deserve it. I also want the ability to turn psychopath, kill my wife, and any possible children if the game allows that to happen.
 

Blind Sight

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May 16, 2010
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I think that the most logical solution for me is to not worry about it. There's a mod out to kill children in game now, so what? You play Skyrim the way you want to, and I'll play it the way I like. No one needs to get all morally superior and snobbish.
 

newdarkcloud

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Aug 2, 2010
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How about this compromise:

"You can kill children, but (and this is the tricky part) they don't act like little shits to you."
 

TheBritishAreComing

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Jul 19, 2011
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I want children to die. This doesn't mean I'm a child hating sociopath, it is because it restricts freedom, mostly for the villain-types, and I actually find it sadder to come back to a city full of headless corpses and see the children running around, forced to grow up in a city filled with the corpses of people they once knew. I also would like for essential NPCs to be killed. I found that very interesting about Morrowind, that if you choose, you could completely fuck over the world. As a consequence for killing children, do something like Fallout 1 + 2 did.
 

jack583

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Oct 26, 2010
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look at it this way:
immortal or not, there are players that will try to kill whatever they can.
if the player chooses to try and kill a child, then the player is wrong, whether the kid is killable or not.
allowing kids to die in games is only wrong if the game FORCES you to kill one.
if there is a (side)quest that requires the player character to kill a kid, THEN the game is wrong.

as long as it is a choice, it's not wrong.
because then it's just like the real world.
in the real world, i have the CHOICE of killing.
i just choose NOT TO.

the option to kill doesn't make the world wrong.
but me choosing to kill would make ME wrong.
 

sheah1

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Jul 4, 2010
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So what's the problem with immortal kids? Does it make the game less immersive? Then why the fuck are you playing Skyrim? It's the single most obvious "I'm playing a fucking game" game I've played in years.
 

LaughingAtlas

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Nov 18, 2009
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I think having them kneel down hurt would be enough. I know I'd like to knock some sense into that little ***** in Whiterun, but there's no need to kill her for being stupid/arrogant enough to pick fights with everyone she sees, is there? The guards might want a word with me for doing what her parents should have, of course.
The only time I can think of where you probably should have been able to kill kids was in Fallout 3's little lamplight. Of course, that wouldn't have opened the gate, I suppose. Nor would 15 grenades, for unimportant reasons.

EDIT: About the immersion thing, I'd have a hard time staying in-character as the kind of person who would kill everyone, man, woman, and child, leaving no one to sell loot to, no one to buy lockpicks from, no one to pretend are my subjects if/when I find a crown or find myself in a high-ranking position, the reason for not killing everyone in the magic college when I'm archmage, if that makes any sense. I'm not sure how one would go about playing a town-slaughtering beast and still be able to do anything else. Who could you take quests from if you kill everyone? I could be missing something, but this doesn't sound like an RPG as much as a monster [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CompleteMonster] simulator.

EDIT 2: Fuck, I forgot, I have killed kids in a game before, as a jedi, no less. It was Star Wars Episode 1 on the PS1, a certain mishap with a salesman and a badly-worded pitch led to me chopping up tattooine's citizens with my pixelated spike of a lightsaber. This included the irritating little shits that go around "Booga"-ing at you on your way to meet Anakin, who, I learned, will not agree to help you (thus not allowing for game progress) if you've killed innocents. "I'm not gonna help a murderer!" he would say, not needing to see the trail of his butchered peers I left before navigating Watto's junkyard to know I was the "no-good killer" the gammoranean guards were looking for. When I realized I had fought through the level to reach this boy who wouldn't help me, I killed him too. Rewarded with game over screen.
As far as I know, kids were butchered in a game, and not a single fuck was given that day.
 

jack583

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Oct 26, 2010
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SirBryghtside said:
jack583 said:
look at it this way:
immortal or not, there are players that will try to kill whatever they can.
if the player chooses to try and kill a child, then the player is wrong, whether the kid is killable or not.
allowing kids to die in games is only wrong if the game FORCES you to kill one.
if there is a (side)quest that requires the player character to kill a kid, THEN the game is wrong.

as long as it is a choice, it's not wrong.
because then it's just like the real world.
in the real world, i have the CHOICE of killing.
i just choose NOT TO.

the option to kill doesn't make the world wrong.
but me choosing to kill would make ME wrong.
Hm... what if there was a quest with a choice between killing a child and, say, a plague befalling an entire town? What would yo think of that? This isn't from Skyrim, obviously, it's just a Skyrim-esque example.
good question.
but since i was talking about video games and reality.
what would you do if you were given the same option, but in real life?