Seriously, why the hell is Zaria, the woman who runs the alchemy shop in Falkreath, essential? I can understand major characters that play into the main quest, but when random NPC's become essential it really screws with the immersion.

She is part of a side quest then. You just haven't played it yet.

But that's still needless. It's a sidequest. I'd say no NPC should be essential that isn't part of the main quest line or the guild quest lines. Everyone else should be fair game. Murdered a woman? Oh, well, guess you won't get her sidequest.

And if nothing else those NPCs should really stop being essential AFTER you've done the sidequest. Because now if they die, who cares? It doesn't break anything.

This game had 204 essential people not including kids. It's really outrageous with their giving spouses quest lines and stuff and other things.

True but I think with Radiant story all possibly related characters must be alive until completion, though I suppose afterwords they could be marked unessential. Though I don't know if I would find suddenly being able to kill them less immersive...

agree, I made the exact same thread a hour ago. Im playing a villan and I would really love to be able to kill whoever I want, as long as it doesn't break the main quest line.

Hell, I would love to side with dragon and break the main quest by assassiate the greybeard.

Yeah, sidequests should never make a character essential. And whatever happened to "kill this character and a friend/relative will take over their role in the sidequest"? Clearly that's just not true so I'm not sure why they said it.

I wish we could go back to the Morrowind style where you could kill anyone and just a pop up would appear saying they were important.

If you're playing on PC, there is a bEssentialTakeNoDamage=1 setting under [GamePlay] in Skyrim.ini

"quest lines and stuff and other things."

Nice.

Me too. Even though I kept them alive for the quests, it was really neat to have the option of killing anyone.

I was pissed off today. I finished the imperial quest line and was told to kill camps of stormcloaks I come across in my travels. So I found a huge camp but the captain was essential! wtf?

Wait I thought after you finish the quests you can kill anyone related with that quest? I really hope that is fixed because my evil character is gonna be really bored when everybody keeps standing back up.