Skyrim Child Killing Mod

[Rhatar Khurin]

you can kill children in world of warcraft and have been able to for many years. I don't see why Skyrim is getting all the stick for it.

 

[Amnestic]

As an answer to this, the game is meant to incorporate adult conflict, both with humans and non-humans, and that is one of the things I play TES games for. It's not meant to incorporate child abuse, and it shouldn't.

Really? 'cos I thought it was meant to incorporate freedom. That seemed to be a major selling point, both inside the game mechanics themselves (wide open world to explore, do whatever you like, screw the main quest if you don't want to do it) and with the modding scene which Bethesda has been all too happy to support since Morrowind if not earlier (I never played Daggerfall or Arena, I honestly couldn't say).

I resent your implication that because I want freedom and verisimilitude in my TES experience that I have a deep seated desire to kill children. I don't even want to kill adults in real life. In fact I'm deeply against the death penalty for criminals, no matter how reprehensible their crime. So what now? I want the freedom for children to die - not even for me to kill them, just that they should be able to die - and my positions on death and murder in real life are quite steadfast in being against such things.

If you're on the 'I just want a realistic representation' bandwagon then I still think you should not want the chance to kill kids. If you want realism you shouldn't be walking around with fire balls, killing giant spiders, or instantly healing a percentage of your hitpoints by consuming a plant or combination of plants you picked up off the ground, or imbibing a red fluid. Maybe you should just imagine that in this world, kids reign supreme as a silent mass of influential, omnicient beings.

Asking for a universe to be 'realistic' (in so much that they mean 'internally consistent') is not the same as asking for it to reflect our reality. That shit's got to make sense within the boundaries of that universe. It needs to, from the perspective of the character, not the player, be realistic. Otherwise our suspension of disbelief is broken and our immersion is crushed.

As someone mentioned earlier, it's utterly ridiculous to watch a dragon flap to the ground, incinerate the townsfolk around it only for one child to stand up 30 seconds later entirely untouched.

 

[mjc0961]

It's true that it sucks that modders must fix a game that was released as broken, but not being able to kill kids isn't broken. Try all the bugs, freezing, and other shit that needs to be fixed, and be grateful that you're not playing on PS3, which has the same problem that Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas has with no ability for modders to fix it themselves. Despite what Bethesda says, they didn't fix it in either of those two games, and I highly doubt that they plan to fix it in Skyrim either.

So quit crying so much that you have to mod the ability to kill kids, and be glad you can fix real problems with the game instead of being stuck on a console waiting for Bethesda to release a patch that will never come.

 

[chadachada123]

Its against the law in the uk and the usa too, to allow the player to personaly kill a child themselves, sure with fallout 1 they patched it to remove children to abide by the law, and any game that does allow you to kill children is probabley too obscure for your average joe to ever hear about.
it aint bethesda its the law

[Citation needed]

I don't know about UK law (since they actively censor movies/games that they deem to be too inappropriate for audiences), but the US has no government board for rating media. It's all rated by private organizations.

 

[justnotcricket]

I don't think a child-killing mod is necessary at all, although isn't that what modding is *for*? Why are people bitching about it not being included in the game when that gives them an excuse to make mods?

Seriously, why kill the kids? Sure, they're annoying as heck,and I wish that Bethesda could have included more children who aren't total little shits, but that's no reason to kill them. Much more satisfying would be if there was some sort of dialogue system for pointing out to them that it isn't a good idea to antagonise people with giant swords and hands of flaming magical destruction. Then if they still mouth off at you you could take a pretend swing at them, and they could run off in genuine fear, and maybe avoid you for the rest of the game. It would make things much quieter, and be more realistic and less uncomfortably psychotic than killing them.

Then again, I guess if you're playing an inherently evil character....

Well, All I'm saying is that for those of us who aren't playing homicidal maniacs, it'd still be nice to be able to tell the obnoxious kids where to get off, without going true evil and killing them.

I don't know, traumatizing children for life could be similarly psychotic, like the man that kills pet animals and hangs them in the owners' yards just to get them to scream (hypothetical).

The option to kill should be in for the soul reason that every other living thing is killable or at least harmable.

A good option to keep people from killing them, though, is the option to *****-slap them or get their parents to for being whiny pricks. The fact that every single one (that I've encountered so far) is just as bad as the rest shows that Bethesda is more troll than realism-pusher.

Yes, but in bitchslapping them, aren't you physically abusing them? Isn't that as bad as waving your sword at them or tossing a fireball over their heads?

The point is, I agree, that the kids in the game are, by and large, total dicks. What I would like to see is just some method of dealing with it that doesn't involve actual killing, for those of us that are trying to RP a non-evil character. I may steal everything that isn't nailed down, but I'm not a murderer. Fortunately for my character's conscience, most people you need to kill attack you first. Just because I don't want this character to be a murderer, though, doesn't mean I wana put up with the crap that spouts from everyone under 5 feet tall.

 

[TheMigrantSoldier]

the part that pisses me off is no that they're dicks (i don't own it), but that bethesda is arbitrarily limiting the player's freedom because they're too much of a pussy to take a few publicity hits from people who won't buy their games. come on, fallout 1 and deus ex let you kill children, so seriously, stop meta-trolling and enable it in vanilla

I don't think Bethesda would want to take anymore flak from the public after that whole Fallout 3 drug censorship-fiasco. Do you remember the whole controversy Black Isle had to experience with Fallout 1 and 2 where you can kill children (Often in very nasty ways)?
Mods solve everything but the console players seem to be out of luck, here.

 

[pumuckl]

But they really don't care about gamers in this aspect and that's the thing that pisses me and most others off, they only really care about their image and other such empty things and that is the whole spectrum of consideration regarding this aspect, matters of immersion or consistency be damned.

welcome to capitalism, *hands common sense tophat and reality monocle* you'll need these.

 

[Gitty101]

Well, at least it'll make the world even more immersive. Time to get that smug lil' bastard in Whiterun...

 

[chadachada123]

Yes, but in bitchslapping them, aren't you physically abusing them? Isn't that as bad as waving your sword at them or tossing a fireball over their heads?

The point is, I agree, that the kids in the game are, by and large, total dicks. What I would like to see is just some method of dealing with it that doesn't involve actual killing, for those of us that are trying to RP a non-evil character. I may steal everything that isn't nailed down, but I'm not a murderer. Fortunately for my character's conscience, most people you need to kill attack you first. Just because I don't want this character to be a murderer, though, doesn't mean I wana put up with the crap that spouts from everyone under 5 feet tall.

Oh, agreed, there should be a non-violent way to get them to SHUT THE FUCK UP, because having these purposely antagonizing AND invincible little shits just breaks the immersion completely. A couple of them being annoying (like the Jarl's son) is reasonable. All of them being so is insane.

Me, personally, I play as a chaotic good character, who would absolutely slap an annoying kid if it made the world a better place.

At the very least, give console players the ability to play WITHOUT them since they are entirely useless and serve only to annoy.

 

[viking97]

Its against the law in the uk and the usa too, to allow the player to personaly kill a child themselves, sure with fallout 1 they patched it to remove children to abide by the law, and any game that does allow you to kill children is probabley too obscure for your average joe to ever hear about.
it aint bethesda its the law

you could kill the little sisters in bioshock. sure it was kind of indirect, but removing the stomach slug was fatal. i didn't see 2K getting prosecuted, so i call bullshit.

 

[Spencer Petersen]

Not everything a developer does is done because of the reaction they want to incite/avoid. People have the right to control what is and isn't included in their product, and Bethesda has made it clear that they don't want to devote resources to allow sick people to enact personal fantasies of infanticide. Its the same reason why I wouldn't expect them to include a feature that lets you rape woman and mutilate bodies. Its simply a moral black hole that the game would rather tactfully avoid rather than try to shatter the narrative tone for the sociopath market.

I don't want Elder Scrolls trying to ram hardcore dark fantasy down my throat like every pretentious RPG today, I want the game to be fun, and if people can't have fun without seeing dead children then I simply have no words for them.

Besides the point, if you just really cant get off without seeing dead children then download the mod, Bethesda won't stop you. But don't try to say that you are somehow entitled to your right to kill kids in a videogame. The only way I could see it tastefully handled is if it was similar to the original Fallouts, where killing a child resulted with all NPCs in the area turning hostile, an instant demotion to the special lowest karma rating, most quest givers/merchants refusing to talk to you and occasionally groups of bounty hunters attack, really just a non-standard gameover.

But in fallout 3 you could mutilate bodies, you could chop of their limbs and their head and you could even pick em up and flail em around. You could actually pick up individual limbs while still attached to their bodies, sort of "posing" the corpse in pretty much any way you'd like. I think that's much "sicker" than having NPCs all be equal under the laws of hitboxes and hitpoints.

Fallout and Elder Scrolls may use the same engine but they have massively different tones.

Fallout is about dirty brutality and ultraviolence, dehumanizing its characters by setting it against the lawless wasteland. Mutilation seems acceptable because its a setting where the laws of man have collapsed, and in the subconscious of its inhabitants the Super-Ego that held us in check vanished along with it, leaving only the Id and Ego to battle it out. This left people either killing and butchering each other for kicks, or willingly cheating and screwing each other over short term gains at the cost of an ultimately self defeating long term fate.

The dehumanizing aspect of decapitation, mutilation and mass murder reinforces the themes of people just being used to that sort of thing occurring, which shows exactly how the people exist in that world. Seeing a person (and yourself by extension) not react particularly shocked to dead bodies or mutilation can tell a great deal about the world they inhabit.

Elder Scrolls is a different breed though. Its all about creating a world where the PC can live another life by setting them in an unbroken fantasy setting and letting them decide their methods, reinforced by the background actions and reactions of townsfolk, guards and other NPCs. Order is still held in Tamriel, and as such people treat death more seriously than in Fallout, calling guards and others for help as well as attempting to avenge murders if given the chance. Murdering an innocent in cold blood is treated as a serious manner, with the reach out by the Dark Brotherhood and the massive implications in terms of fine and/or jail time. Removing the sting of NPC murder would degrade most of the perceived structure the gameworld holds, as well as only remind people just how different this game is from real life.

To do this it has to keep the mutilation to a minimum to reinforce the fact that the actors are people first and things you can fight second. Tamriel operates like a well oiled machine, and when a piece goes missing the difference is much more apparent and memorable even without making their arms pop off like Mr. Potato Head.

 

[6SteW6]

It's not about Bethesda being pussies, if they put in the ability to kill children the game would have got an easy AO rating which is pretty much suicide to any big company. It severly limits what retailers will carry the title. No big chains would ever allow an AO rated game in the store, therefore it would be insanely hard to find for all but the most dedicated and that means Bethesda would lose cash.

I don't care if I can kill kids or not in the game. Yeah sure they sass me, so do kids in the real world, you don't see me running for my war axe of paralyze and trying to set them ablaze with my voice...wait.

 

[The Random One]

If not being able to kill children is the only thing 'broken' in a Bethesda game I'll grab my sword and head out to kill the titans, for Ragnarok is upon us.

I would never hurt a child in a game, but I might grab this one only so they might die at random, if I was a PC gamer and if I cared about Skyrim at all.

 

[Phasmal]

I dont see why people are whinging so much about not being able to kill kids.
There are so many other immersion-breaking things in the game, so I dont buy that as a valid argument.

As for the people saying `it's fun`, if I asked you what you did for fun and you replied `I kill kids in video games`, how exactly would that make you look?
Its funny, the people who complain you can't kill whiny kids are probably themselves whiny kids who cant take being sassed by a game.

 

[sbutler1]

Bethesda Game Studios has already tipped its hat to controversy by allowing a player's character within the game to marry either male or female non-player characters (NPCs).

How is that even controversial any more? It's 2011.
It's not related to the article either, why mention it.

And the kids in Fallout 3's Little Lamplight were begging for a beating. Kids in Skyrim haven't been so bad.

 

[Woodsey]

What does it say about your mental health that you want to kill adults in a videogame?

Next time you're on a date/talking with your significant other, tell her about how good it makes you feel to kill adults in a video game, see how it goes.

You wrote an awful lot whilst saying absolutely nothing. Replace "kids" with "adults" and you're Retarded Media Outlet #342 making that same stupid fucking argument about regular gamers. The kids are a shorter stack of pixels than the adults - some people want to kill them because they find them annoying, some want to do it just for the knowledge that they can, others so that its more realistic in dragon attacks, blah-de-blah-de-blah.

If you have such trouble distinguishing in-game motivations to real life ones, perhaps you should see a doctor.

OT: Been done before, not really an issue. Personally, I think it should be allowed in game. All they're doing is showing the stupid shits at Fox News & Friends have a hold on them. Even so, its easily corrected, and certainly not indicative of the game being incomplete.

(And I won't buy any arguments that its out of "taste" either - if they were worried about that then they wouldn't let me slit a homeless man's neck to steal his carrots.)

 

[deathbydeath]

the part that pisses me off is no that they're dicks (i don't own it), but that bethesda is arbitrarily limiting the player's freedom because they're too much of a pussy to take a few publicity hits from people who won't buy their games. come on, fallout 1 and deus ex let you kill children, so seriously, stop meta-trolling and enable it in vanilla

I don't think Bethesda would want to take anymore flak from the public after that whole Fallout 3 drug censorship-fiasco. Do you remember the whole controversy Black Isle had to experience with Fallout 1 and 2 where you can kill children (Often in very nasty ways)?
Mods solve everything but the console players seem to be out of luck, here.

i wasn't around when black isle got flak, and admittedly that is probably why bethesda is not allowing it this time, but they're big enough to take the hit now, at least bigger than black isle. besides, as i said before, they'd only be scaring off people who wouldn't be buying the game anyways, and some people might actually buy it to kill children

 

[pumuckl]

Let me see if I get this right. It's not okay wanting to kill a kid in real life therefore not okay in a game. But it's perfectly alright to join the Dark Brotherhood? That's just silly. By that logic it's cool if you want to kill someone as long as they are adults.

I will not download that mod but if someone feels like getting it, either added realism or just punching the face of some poor kid, then by all means be my guest

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What?

Edit:

I didn't say anything about the Dark Brotherhood. And I have no interest in people saying "Well then why is it okay to kill adults?" That's the most half-assed attempt at coming up with a counter-argument possible.

As an answer to this, the game is meant to incorporate adult conflict, both with humans and non-humans, and that is one of the things I play TES games for. It's not meant to incorporate child abuse, and it shouldn't.

Personally, I would not want to kill kids. I find them to be cool thus this is the first Elder Scrolls game to actually have children so why would I possibly want to rid of such treasures? Now, instead of killing them.. I want a 'mute' spell so I can cast it on those kids who treat me poorly.

"Another adventurer coming to lick my father's boots. Good job-"

"NO YOU!" *Casts mute spell, kid panics and waves his arms widely not able to speak.*

*Internet gives me medal.*

props on a solution well reasoned.

better then your argument of being an asshole

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

But they really don't care about gamers in this aspect and that's the thing that pisses me and most others off, they only really care about their image and other such empty things and that is the whole spectrum of consideration regarding this aspect, matters of immersion or consistency be damned.

welcome to capitalism, *hands common sense tophat and reality monocle* you'll need these.

Oh but that's not a free market effect my friend. Unless you're willing to state that a lot of people wouldn't buy the game if they found out that you could kill kids as well as everyone else, then I may be able to see your point.


They didn't do it cause the game wouldn't do well in a capitalist society, they did it cause other people who are the ones who actually don't want to be in a free market system would cry foul and ***** and moan and bother them tremendously, in effect stifling capitalism and enacting communist thought police practices.

True capitalism is all about supply and demand...and there is no such thing as "negative demand", no matter how much some people may not want something in a game it has absolutely no effect on it actual market power, just because some will cry and moan and go on TV and say a bunch of stupid things they still are just single digits as far as capitalism is concerned, those people will simply not play the game and the rest of them will, that's all.


By making a game rated M Bethesda is already excluding every kid below, say...age 10 or so and those are way more sales than those that would have been lost by including child killing. Why did they do that? Well, cause for immersion and consistency reasons you can't have an E-rated Skyrim, despite the fact that it could sell more. Disregarding wider markets to cater to your trusting fans and followers is not incompatible with capitalism, it is in fact the best way of playing it safe and minimizing risks...and I say that including child killing for consistency and role-playing sake is worth it.


*returns hat and monocle, as his Orcish figure is too large for them*

 

[ThePurpleStuff]

Killing virtual chunks of coding made to look like children is not the same as the flesh and blood, breathing human children we have in real life. Comparing the two is a pointless argument to me, just because you have a desire to kill virtual kids does not mean you're psychotic or wanting to do it in real life. That mode of thinking is close minded, we do things like that in games because of the freedom, we can kill their parents, why give the kids immortality, its immersion breaking like what some people have already said. Sure, your morals may conflict with others but if people have the freedom to do things in games I don't want them to do in real life where the REAL damage happens, then let them go nuts and don't call them out on it or act like if they're near your children they'll kill them.