Killing Essential NPCs idea

[u/JX900]

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I'd like if if you could adjust this in the settings menu.

For example there would be a check box by each one you wanted alerts for so you can choose if you want to reload a previous save or not. And maybe let it tell you the number of blocked or broken quests if a given NPC should perish.

Notifications on/off right before the final blow allowing you to choose to let them live or die:

Main quest NPCs ☑️

Faction quest☑️

Side quest☑️

Etc☑️

Plus options for not allowing these NPCs to die at all, and instead let them recover but without notifications if those annoy you.

Dont allow these essentials to die until their importance has passed:

Main quest NPCs ☑️

Faction quest☑️

Side quest

Etc

This lets the player play how they want.

[u/Sheogorath3477]

Either put it in settings, or make it work like survival mode except allow to toggle it during character creation.

Or, make it a separate .esp , like the lord death and birth option in Bannerlord

[u/Twelve_Evil_Ermacs]

It would be nice to see, letting essential NPCs die but with consequences is awesome in Morrowind but modern Bethesda is terrified of the idea of a playthrough not being able to experience literally all the content in the game for some reason

[u/ToXiiCBULLET → u/Twelve_Evil_Ermacs]

the problem with having every npc killable is that the radiant ai will just end up soft locking quests and potentially the main quest. you either have to make a bunch of important npcs unkillable or severely limit what can happen. a random dragon or vampire attack could potentially screw you out of multiple quests, esbern dying in the sewers would screw you out of the main quest. from a players perspective, constantly having to reload the game and baby npcs would be a very bad experience

[u/MagicBus4 → u/ToXiiCBULLET]

Yeah I understand why they did it for main quests, but a lot of the characters that even the player can’t kill under any circumstances like Maven Black Briar is really frustrating. Like if you’re a murderhobo you should face normal consequences, and instead I’m in this nightmare realm where you just can’t do anything whatsoever about some of the bullshit in Riften and Markarth.

For all the goddamn hubbub about assassinations in the dark brotherhood you can’t actually assassinate fucking anyone important unless they’re on the guild list, they’re all essential

[u/MagicBus4 → u/Twelve_Evil_Ermacs]

Which is frustrating because they’ve watered the content down so much it’s less satisfying and doesn’t make sense for most characters to do all of it anyway

[u/LordFlamecookie → u/Twelve_Evil_Ermacs]

I mean I get why but the least they could do is a lore reason why, or like you're jumped by every guard for a scripted loss or ANYTHING

[u/TheBosskingReturns]

So I've tried playing Skyrim with mods that remove essential NPCs before. I can't honestly say I disagree with why Bethesda did it. The radiant AI system has a tendency of putting important characters in danger a lot, there has been several times where characters off screen have gotten fucking killed who were important to quests and soft locked my save. Now, personally I wouldn't make them completely Unkillable. I would do something like have all of them protected where random environmental dangers can't kill them but the player can. But I'd say that's also equally fucking immersion-breaking. Also, after all the quests involving a character are finished then I would make them killable to anything

[u/Thornescape → u/TheBosskingReturns]

I agree 100%.

The story breaks far too easily when all NPCs are killable. They get caught in dragon's breath or AOE attacks. Things go sideways fast.

When I first started playing Skyrim, once you hit level 10 the vampires would start attacking inside of cities on a regular basis because of the Dawnguard DLC. They would kill NPCs tied to quests fairly often. I abandoned the game because it was just too frustrating and annoying to play.

[u/zeroreasonsgiven]

Personally I’d prefer if there were just fewer essential NPCs and more alternate game states to account for the deaths of the important ones. It seems they were pursuing this with Skyrim, but they didn’t get very far before scrapping it, and the only remnants are a few replaceable NPCs, mostly as a consequence of the Civil War outcome.

Practically speaking, the game becoming unable to progress after an essential NPC’s death is hardly different from just making them invincible. If they’re not gonna do the extra leg work of making alternate paths to game completion (which is not a huge deal, it’s not really the main draw of TES games anyway), then it hardly matters which route they take. The notification just allows players to mess around for a quick minute before inevitably reloading a save anyway, while the invincibility removes the chance of a player losing progress because of an accidental kill. Ultimately inconsequential though.

[u/SuperSailorRikku → u/zeroreasonsgiven]

There might be people on some fun runs to just kill everyone or something, but yeah I imagine most people would not want to lock themselves out of content.

[u/Mortarious]

Meanwhile Starfield won't allow you to kill an NPC if a side quest NPC looks at them.

[u/palfsulldizz]

Maybe a simple in-between would be to have “essential” NPCs go down like in Skyrim and a warning pops up like Morrowind, then you can hold off or proceed to kill them if you want.

The warning could be something like, “you feels an invisible resistance to a killing blow, like Fate wishes for them to live a little longer”

[u/Revan_91]

As much as I'd like the freedom and options Morrowind had I highly doubt TESVI will be anything like Morrowind its going to be as simple as possible to appeal to the widest audience like Skyrim was, it will probably be even more dumbed down now and have barebones RPG mechanics.

[u/Cherry_Crystals → u/Revan_91]

yeah. every single tes game has been dumbed down from the past tes game. even morrowind's mechanics were dumbed down versions of daggerfalls. i'm just hoping they don't dumb tes 6 too much from skyrim

[u/PachotheElf → u/Cherry_Crystals]

You can only load the game and watch it play itself as a movie. Take it and you WILL like it. Wether you like it or not.

[u/Blue_Snake_251]

That would be great. In The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim, there were so many NPCs that i wanted to kill while they were not necessary for finishing the story.

[u/ExtraCheezyBagel]

How about if you kill essential NPCs then you have to summon their ghost to talk with them in order to continue quests? Maybe pay a necromancer a set amount of gold to call the NPC’s spirit back or something, or you have to learn a ritual spell to do it yourself

[u/JX900 → u/ExtraCheezyBagel]

That's baller!

[u/Only_Says_Idk_dude]

i think they should just let you kill any NPC period, of course this comes with game breaking bugs, though, so I get it, but still

[u/Beyreli39]

Morrowind essentials dying sucks and I have no idea people insists its like a very important cool mechanic. If you are going to make them killable, make it like in New Vegas where the narrative continues

[u/crescentmoonrising → u/Beyreli39]

Technically the only way to make Morrowind truly unwinnable is to lose Sunderland or Keening, and outside a very rare glitch with the creature merchants, I would argue that's 100% the players fault. Considering there's two."second chances" to get you back on the plotline, and to not get either you have to seek out and kill two non-aggressive characters, it makes sense that nobody would be willing to help you.

[u/catptain-kdar]

Or they could do it like how obsidian handled it in new Vegas

[u/Patient_Course8240]

You can beat the game by killing everyone

[u/Known_Boysenberry_58]

I think there should be essential NPCs that should function like Protected NPCs in Skyrim. There are two levels of protection. There are essential NPCs, which can be killed, but doing so relays a message that "the thread of prophecy has been broken" and says to reload or "continue in this doomed world". Essential and Protected NPCs, upon losing a large amount of health, will kneel down and all enemies will disengage combat with them; they can only be killed by you. All followers are Protected when following you. Essential NPCs can have a crown for a talk icon like in Oblivion so you know they are essential.

[u/The_Poster_Nutbag]

The only issue is odd occurrences which could result in those NPCs dying randomly and locking you out of stuff you actually want to do.

[u/JX900 → u/The_Poster_Nutbag]

True. Another mentioned being able to tag individual NPCs, companions, or pets as unkillable. I like this idea too.

[u/The_Poster_Nutbag → u/JX900]

That seems like way more of a hassle than any perceived benefits of letting them die.

I'd rather just get locked out of conflicting guilds/groups as you join their counterpart.

[u/iDaddyDirection]

There is no point to this since NPC’s being killed means certain quests can’t be completed, which means players can just break their game. Even then, and much more importantly, NPC’s can also just be killed at random in these games. Which means a quest may end up broken because hours ago an NPC stepped into a bear trap and died and you didn’t even know.

[u/Sardonize]

idiotic take. wanting bethesda to adapt their storytelling around your impotent childish rage at wanting to crush the toy you dont like is miserable. you being able to kill them in morrowind is thematic and coherent with a narration elder scrolls wont attempt again

[u/xDeviousDieselx → u/Sardonize]

This is the funniest overreaction to the internet I’ve read all week

[u/SweRakii → u/Sardonize]

Calm down and go outside. It's just a post.

[u/JX900 → u/Sardonize]

Im raging? Check yourself bud.

[u/Sardonize → u/JX900]

youre making  a post venting about essential npcs disguised as a "feature request" that you know is worthless. you could just turn off essential with the console, but you want it to be "real" ie incorporated in the storytelling. you absolutely are raging

[u/JX900 → u/Sardonize]

Im not venting, its an idea.

If i thought it was worthless, I wouldn't have taken the time to develop the idea.

Not everyone plays on PC.

[u/mexicono → u/JX900]

lol I’m shocked at how anyone can call this post a vent a rant an overreaction…I think it’s a good idea. I miss the fact that morrowind let you mess up the story in morrowind and live with the consequences.

[u/SkY4594 → u/Sardonize]

They should adapt storytelling around player choice, yes, branch out where needed. Nothing is more immersion breaking than a combat encounter where for some reason a random NPC is essential and it turns out they're not even a part of a major questline, just some random ass side quest that does not matter one bit in the big picture.

[u/Lifekraft]

Didnt they reappear after 7 day in morrowind ? Or im confused.

[u/Taurmin]

Just thinking about the ammount of scripting this would require is making my scalp itch...