I'm over 40 hours into the game and love it. I think the visuals are the overall most impressive and immersive visuals I've ever seen in a game world.

However, one my largest complaints with Skyrim, when compared to Morrowind and Oblivion, is the enormous amount of unkillable NPCs in the game. Oblivion had a few, sure - and they were always important to the story, but in Skyrim you can't just go on killing sprees like you could in past games due to the huge surge of unkillable npcs. Take Riften for example - I'd say the vast majority of NPCs in that city are unkillable. It just gets silly when you start assaulting towns only to have guards which are the only killable characters you fight. After 10 mins of fighting you have 20 NPCs who you can't kill...

You can't tell me that all of these NPCs are 100% vital to the story. If I wanted to kill the Thieves Guild, I should be able to do so. If they are vital to the story then Bethseda didn't do a good job of having other NPCs replace the ones you kill (say if the involved a quest) like I read 100x over in all of the preview and dev interviews.

YES.
I just went around in god mode to find out how many there were. It's ridiculous.

*sigh*, I thought they'd take a page from Obsidian and implement their "No invincible NPC" policy. If you kill a random guy and fail a quest, tough luck.

you think thats bad? every legion camp and stormcloak camp has 1 unkillable NPC. they aren't even named. this means you cant rid skyrim of the camps. this partially ruins immersion for me.

Are you certain all these NPCs in Riften are set to essential? It's not like Oblivion, where immortal NPCs fall down, go unconscious and then recover.

There are some NPCs who can be killed easily and others who fall to their knees and start to recover their health, but they can die. Most of the people who join you as an adventuring companion (for example, Lydia and Cosnach), are difficult to kill but they can certainly die. I've seen Cosnach killed by a Frost Troll.

Then there are others who are essential and cannot be killed. I will do some testing but so far I'm only aware of a couple of these.

I thought it was maybe only in the one that I went to.

Yeah, i cannot believe how stupid Bethesda is, or is it just laziness, figure it out. How hard could it be to make fallout system that you can kill everyone you ever want but there is text "quest xxx failed". I mean, wtf Bethesda? Ruined a lot :/. Well luckily the quests has been very fun!

Hopefully there will be mod soon. And mod should tell if that NPC is related to quest

ive been too about 5 or 6 legion camps, killed everyone except the leader. even a dragon couldn't kill him lol. i waited for him to lower the dragons health, walk up to the dragon wacked him with my shield and absorbed his soul. its rediculous really. im a level 31 monster with 210 armour rating and 40 attack damage rating. i drop these guys to their knees with one hit yet they just sit there recovering no matter how much i hit them they just get back up and fall to their knees again. im forced to run and hide from these weaklings if i want any hope of peace after i attack a legion camp.

I thought they said that with "radiant ai" it didn't matter if you killed the npc because another one would take their place. Guess that was a lie..

Think that is for minor quests. Not the main story ones where the Devs wrote out major story archs.

My thoughts exactly. If you do something wrong and kill somebody and ruin the quest, then tough kitty paws. Life is full of mistakes and I disagree with the way Bethesda designs the game so that you're guided on the right path all the time, or at least a majority of the time. That's one thing I love about Morrowind; you can kill every person in the game, including the royalty.

Any chance they did this due to the random dragon attacks? maybe they got a bit worried that the dragons would kill everyone. still, i shall download the mod that lets me kill these american kids in my Nordic world.

I gotta admit, I haven't really seen any yet xD Though, I don't go into towns killing everyone.

Just out of curiosity, what's the appeal of running through towns killing everyone? Do you just not bother doing quests or selling and buying items? Is this what griefers do when they play single player games?

Back in Oblivion, I would use the enchantment glitch to boost my magicka uber high (this was on the PS3, so no god mode to speak of). Then, whenever I wanted to go on a killing spree, I used a ridiculously OP spell that damaged fatigue very fast, very severely. Any NPC within the spell's range would perform an ASD;LGKASDVAJNDFL and topple over within a few seconds or so. You could still talk to them and even loot them, but it took forever for their stamina to climb out of the negatives. For all intents and purposes, they were as good as dead

Yeah that sounds all fine and dandy till we start getting threads popping up like mad " Quests Broken" "bethesda learn how to program a game my quest is broken!!" all because Joe danger went around killing NPCs like mad and now hes doing quests that lack certain characters. Does he realize that.....noooo he just think its Beth that messed it all up.

Perhaps that was the concern; that dragons would kill all the NPCs. But I'm sure that's what would happen in real life medieval society, too, any ways. They could have made the NPCs more intelligent by having most of them stay indoors when a dragon came by. And if a town or NPCs were not in field-of-view, they could make it easier on the Creation engine by having a certain percentage of NPCs just teleport into their interiors until the dragons left. That way, it would keep most of the town from dying off so that if and when Player reached a new town, the whole town would not be wiped out. Just an idea.


Very true. A lot of players, especially the younger generation, are ignorant/naive like that.

I believe the OP was primarily attempting to determine the parameters of the game.

If most of the NPCs in every town are essential, that would have some consequences for role playing certain kinds of interaction with some of these NPCs.

I've been playing quite a bit and so far I have only encountered one essential NPC in the game and he was


From interviews I've watched and read prior to the game's release, my understanding was that only a very small number of advlt NPCs are essential.

Yes they did. They lied about skyrim alot.

hmm..how hard do you think it would be to program a script that made npc villagers run inside during an attack by a dragon?

at the same time, make a script that ensures the dragon only attacks hostile npcs, albiet in a wide arc so that it 'appears' to be rampaging the whole town.

thoughts?

I felt a lot of people would agree with me on this one...

But to answer some questions, no, I don't really run around and kill everyone - however, from time to time I do like to run as a killer in a major city or at least would like the option to kill the vast majority of who I should be able. Right now, I play an Orc Paladin-type (Two Handed, Resto Magic, Light Armor, Crafting, Enchant) so I sometimes like to do things I'd figure my wandering righteous character would do. And sometimes that means killing people I deem "Evil". Take Riften for example; I should be able to not only say "Hey Brywn (or whatever his name is). I don't want in your thieves guild. I'm already a Companion member, I have basically no thievery skills, low sneak - stop offering me. Instead let me rid this city and the kind Jarl of the city from the Thieves that plague it. *attacks Thieves guild leader and members - killing them ... but also terminating that quest line in the process*. However? Can I? No. Not only is he invincible, but so is about half the town in Riften (and other cities). Not only that ... but you can't even really hurt the guy and his attacks slaughter you ... and I'm sitting on over 330 health or so. Attack him once just to see what I mean.

Anyway. Point being is that I should be able to kill non-essential NPCs with the risk of having that quest line terminated. 1) This makes replay ability higher and 2) makes each play through a different experience because unbeknownst to you as a player, the person you might have killed in play through #1 was alive in play through #2 leading to a new experience.

But my overall point was that this game has a ton more non-killable NPCs than games of past - and that is not a good thing. Especially in this world of non-open world games.