The Essential NPC System

[Dirty Spaceman]

If you were in charge of creating the mechanics for essential NPCs in the next Elder Scrolls game, how would you do it?

Would you take the Skyrim route, and make quest-important characters simply unable to be killed, revert to Morrowind's way of telling you to reload a recent save file or risk severely screwing up the main quest, or something else entirely? Would you just make all NPCs able to be killed at the player's own risk?

Share what you think, and vote in the poll!

[p-sto]

I like it as is. Then again I couldn't imagine playing Skyrim without the command console. It would be nice if they opened up that option for players who use Xbox and PS3 because honestly I'm not sure how they get by without it.

[Zuzu]

I would vastly prefer that there are no essential NPCs, like in New Vegas, which uses a system somewhere between Morrowind and no Essentials. If you kill somebody who's vitally involved in a quest, the game just tells you that you failed the quest.

I'd rather have the option to choose whether I want to do a quest, instead of the developers saying "No way! This quest is, like, really cool and stuff! Trust us!" and making the questgiver immortal.

[Mod-Loving Wood Elf]

I prefer the "unconsciousness" Essential-deaths from Oblivion. Or the morbid notifications from Morrowind. Or no essentials.

Basically, I like everything but Skyrim's moronic feeble-crawly-bleed-out mode for the Essential NPCs.

[Kerr]

You know the way Fallout: New Vegas did it?

Yeah, do it like that.

[Arch-Mage Matt]

Well New Vegas rarely had open combat with story important characters, Skyrim did.

[Zuzu]

In the next game, something like that would be fairly easy to fix. Like we had Yes Man in New Vegas, and "A Friend" in Skyrim, the next TES game could have somebody that's a combination of the two, so big battles are still available with story-important characters, but, if they die, there's always A Friend to help you along with the story.

[Br3admax]

I will never understand why people just want to murder others. Control your rage, good sirs, and madams. It's a lot easier than just mindlessly killing.

[philfredobob]

I'd like only Main quest important people to be ''Knocked Unconcious'' like in Oblivion .

However all other folks can be killed, even if it Fails certain side quests

[Right-Hand-Of-Sithis]

I'd personally have a system where either you can set the system. Either have Killable essential NPCs, or Non Killable ones, depending on player preferences.

For example, you could set it so that essential NPCs may be killed if the character you are playing has no intention of completing the main quest.

[Kerr]

You could have some other way to finish the main quest. Like Yagrum Bagarn in Morrowind. You could have that character in the form of a daedra. They can't die. Of course that should have some big drawbacks to it.

Essential NPCs should be avoided as much as possible.

[Stormborn]

I think for every annoying essential character in the game Bethedsa should have to shoot 1 staff member except for who ever design Maven Black Briar & Delphine that person should be burned at the stake after being partially dipped in boiling acid.

[Believe]

I liked Morrowinds system, however I don't think that would have worked well in Skyrim, what with dragons killing people every other hour.

[DikaSmausha]

Oblivion's was probably the best.

[tornadokirby]

If they're really important to the main quest I don't want the NPCs to die. I'm not so sure about characters for the side quests and some of the factions though.

[tygerarmy]

Essential NPC's can only be killed by the player or a commanded follower, otherwise they get knocked out.

[Hissien]

I choose the "knocked out" option because i can still fight them and see them rag doll

[Alarra]

I'm sure my opinion's mainly because I played Skyrim first, but today I had my first experience with Oblivion's system, and it was kind of annoying. Initially I was reloading my saves thinking that they'd died (I missed the "so-and-so is unconscious" because I kept having the "you don't have enough magicka" during the battle and stopped looking at the words). Then when I realized what was going on, I thought "all right, they're essential, it's okay if they're on the ground". Then I got farther in the quest, noticed that he was on the ground during a later fight, thought it was okay. Turns out that he was no longer essential, and was dead while I just thought he was unconscious. That time I DID reload the save, because I didn't want him to die, and it was a bit of a waste of my efforts finishing that fight.
At least with Skyrim, you know - Crouching? They're alive. On the ground? Dead. It's not like Oblivion where you don't know if they're dead or not because you might have missed the message.

And as far as Morrowind's, I don't know if I like the idea of essentials being killed. The entire save file could become useless if you accidentally save over it or something.

[Kerr]

As I said have a way to finish the game no matter who you kill. Have a daedra version of Yes Man.

[Musicman247]

I like Kerr's idea. Or maybe have the character come back as a ghost to give information

[Kerr]

Yeah a ghost would well for it too. They would probably be angry at you for killing them.

[Master Z]

I would prefer a cross between Skyrim's and Morrowind's systems. Essential NPCs being able to be killed, but only by the player, and showing a message if you mess up on the main quest.

[Dirty Spaceman]

I would prefer a cross between Skyrim's and Morrowind's systems. Essential NPCs being able to be killed, but only by the player, and showing a message if you mess up on the main quest.

That's actually a pretty good idea, and I personally was thinking of something along the same lines. They'd have to do something to prevent the player from finishing off an ally by accidentally hitting them, though.

[Herr Deichmann]

Not just the way future games deal with important NPCs, but I'd like to see any Elder Scrolls RPG play out the same way as in New Vegas. Honestly, New Vegas 'forced' me to do multiple playthroughs, because usually there are like 3-4 ways to complete the same quest, not mentioning the different characters you can create and the different factions you can join or support. I wish Skyrim was more like that, with a reputation based systems and with good and evil decisions. My dark-side necromantic vampire joined the CoW simply because of their spells. She wasn't able to become arch-mage the 'evil' way and attract necromancers, vampiric mages and other magic evil-doers across Skyrim, or destroy the village of Winterhold for that matter...

Like in New Vegas, very important characters do not appear until the end of the game, like Lanius and Oliver, plus Yes Man was pretty much unkillable. I liked the way they did it. In its quest design, New Vegas is a better game than all related RPG games, including Fallout 3, Skyrim and Oblivion. Probably the reason why I still play NV while I only did one playthrough in Oblivion.