MrSmileyFaceDude said:
I posted this over at the Elder Scrolls forums, but I felt I should post it here, too, since I posted the incorrect info here to begin with. Mea culpa.
OK, so I was wrong. If you kill an essential NPC, you have to load a previous game save.
The number of NPCs you cannot kill is a tiny fraction of the NPCs in the world. The fact of the matter is that killing NPCs that quests rely on breaks the game. Many NPCs are so essential to the game world working, with our AI and so forth, that their deaths can cause any number of things to appear as bugs, or not as we intended. The designers do handle certain NPCs being killed in quests, the ones that make sense to kill, but not, for example, the Count of a city, or the heir to the throne. And it was either force you to re-load, or have the designers remove what made the quests entertaining and compelling in the first place. And I think we can all agree that it's better to have quests that are more fun to play through than quests that are artificially simplified because the designers had to worry about every obscure contingency.
But don't worry about accidentally finding yourself in this situation. We'll have a visual indicator of who's an essential NPC and who isn't, so the chances of you accidentally killing an essential NPC will be slim. And if you find yourself in combat with one, you can always attempt to yield.
Anyway, sorry for the confusion!
ps -- the visual indicator is a small icon that appears when you are close enough to talk to the NPC you're looking at. It'll be one color if they're an essential NPC, another if they're not.
Thanks for letting us all know MSFD, I am very glad you continue to come over here to read & post.
Regarding the auto-reload if you kill a vital NPC, before where you said that the player could continue the game (like in MW) there was a point to allowing the death. Surely though if the char's death requires a reload (breaking immersion, not allowing game to progress etc) then what is the point in allowing that to happen at all? Obviously you don't want to stop the player from initiating combat (since they can always yield) - that is commendable, but allowing the death and a forced reload?? Which neccessitates the icon to indicate this since the last save could be hours ago.. (assuming OB is more stable than MW of course, and you don't need to save every 5 mins in case of a CTD)
Why not have these vital NPC's deaths not allowed in the game mechanics? I don't just mean immortal neccessarily, although I think that would be better than forced reloads & icons, what if...
If there are so few vital NPCs, why not have some gameworld supported reason that the NPC can't be killed? Maybe when NPC is weak, he grabs some scroll like you have never seen and teleports to safety, or maybe summons some very nasty demons - enough that you're either dead or have retreated no matter your level. Want some more ideas? How about some kind of intervention from a deity that shields or 'stone skin' the NPC? Or a partner that comes galoping in from nowhere (hey you missed him ya blind coot) on a horse and knocks you unconcious? Or even, as someone else suggested, make them replaceable with new char for same role (new skin, same NPC to all intents & purposes)...
I dunno much ES lore (I like the games because they are single char, FPP RPG's not for the setting, fave games being Deus Ex & Ultima Underword 2), so my suggestions may be idiotic, but if you at Beth can be creative and integrate this issue into the game world/mechanics, rather than do a hack, even this close to release then I think it would be great. I definitely think things like this would be a much better solution to making the vital quest NPC's unkillable. It might only be a small issue, but it has been stated that OB is going to be very polished and there has obviously been a lot of attention to detail in other areas (trees, animation, AI etc) so it would be a shame to do something half-hearted and hack-ish. I don't count the features dropped (horseback combat, xbows etc) since they are just design desisions. Iin this case I can understand the design desision and wouldn't want less complex quests - it's just the supporting implementation which I'm questioning.
Hazelnut.
P.S. In case someone has suggested the exact same thing, I haven't read the entire thread yet.
EDIT - Well one or two ppl did then! LOL. Still - this thread was one of the more interesting discussions I've seen here.
you people want details bad. It's like all the insults and lack of confidence in Bethesda (although you seem to effortlessly have extremely high expectations for what Oblivion should be) are nothing more than a ploy to coerce new information.
