I am really tired of trying to kill someone only to find out they cant be killed because they are part of a quest. Is skyrim so dumbed down that you have to put a child lock on killing certain npcs? So what if serena is part of the dawngaurd storyline, that doesnt mean a giant cant give her the ol' smack into the sky, oh wait, yes it does because bethesda figured an invincible partner is a great asset to every player.

Why have a game like morrowind or oblivion where npcs could die and quests could be ruined because of a players mistake, and then turn around and "baby proof" skyrim. I really feel you guys got lazy and said "Hey what the hell, instead of multiple options for completing a quest, lets just make the imortant npcs invincible and be done with it"; that isnt fun..... I don't know how many times I've disliked some npcs *cough* theives guild *cough* only to be thwarted by their inability to die. Why cant you be the stalwart hero ridding the world of evil, or the mastermind taking out key crime stopping npcs.

I can see how accidentally shouting serena off a cliff while she has the elder scroll would be a pain, but why not have an alternate quest path if she does happen to die, or just load your save. If you are unable to make mistakes then whats the point of playing a rpg? On another note, why is EVERY SINGLE JARL invincible? Who didnt try to be the super dark brotherhood assassin and try to kill a jarl, only to be stopped not by his strength or his vast array of bodyguards, but by bethesda popping up and giving you the middle finger " HA YOU svck HE CANT DIE GO HOME".

Skyrim is growing less fun by the minute and it isnt because the graphics are bad or the game is buggy, its because bethesda got lazy and didnt put much thought into the playability of the game. This is only one post by one player about one topic, but there are many just like this one all over. How many will it take before the company starts to listen or lose its player base?

tl;dr Skyrims playability is not good once you get past "this game is new and awesome looking"

Oblivion did have essential NPCs, but once the quest they were related to was completed, they became unessential. But in Skyrim, even if you completed a quest a certain NPC was tied to, the NPC stays essential .

Why wont you... die!

I could ask a similar question of you -- why must you kill every single NPC, hmm?

As a modder, I live in constant terror of people like you, who murder on a whim and reduce my hard work to nothing. I did not spend hours making a quest so that you could kill the questgiver because he looked at you funny.

Try some empathy on for size, will ya?

Essential NPCs were not necessary in Morrowind because Morowind did not have Radiant AI. Essential status was necessary to keep the game itself from killing off important NPCs and making the game unplayble. Take a look at the furor over Vampire attacks in Dawguard for an example of what happens when the game kills off NPCs.

Contray to popular perception, Skyrim has fewer essential NPCs than Oblivion.