We are now two days after Skyrims release and i have a total of 26 hours played. But there is one thing that is REALLY pissing me off. The fact that about 50% of the NPCs in the game is fricking immortal. First time i encountered this was with the thieves guild in Riften, i tried killing them all (Bjorn hates thieves) but they just kept getting up. After a while i figured i'd try my hand at making a lolrandomevil wizard. So i start zapping people to death in Riverwood until i run into Delphine. I bring her down using doublecasted sparks like everything else, but she just kneels and gets back up. I shrug and run along, being chased by her. I make it to the brewery outside of Whiterun, where lo and behold both the shopkeep and his son is suffering from immortality. I then run into the companions killing the giant and start zapping THEM down, but they also just get the heck back up.

I thought we were free in this game. I know i would be dropping quest options if i killed these people, but that's kind of the point! I should be free to make mistakes as well!

You're just running into people from the main quest, it's large so that's why you see so many protected.

Bethesda doesn't like consequences, you no get free will if it means you're locking yourself out of content.

WHen they kneel down did you try giving them a finishing blow? You need to finish them off to kill them, no? I have seen NPCs kneel down when I am fighting them, and I just keep hitting them and they stay dead.
Maybe I just have not ran into the ones you are talking about yet

With the random dragon attacks I'm actually glad quest-important NPCs are immortal. The player is far from the only cause of death in the game and I would hate it that I couldn't finish a quest because some NPC got himself killed.

There's still tons of people to kill though, my assassin character has already racked up quite a bodycount.

You were allowed to kill story-vital NPCs before. If you did, it would just say 'You have no hope. You can reload a save or continue in the doomed world you've created' or something.


You're talking about when enemies surrender at low health. He's talking about vital-NPCs immortality phase.

Well they got no end of complaints from people when they used to allow essential characters to be killed. Bethesdas just catering to the majority of people who buy their games, can't really blame them for that. At least they support modding. I'm sure a mod will be made for this.

Also, killing some important characters in Fallout New Vegas just cancelled some quests, nothing wrong with that... Though the game ended after the last battle, this is probably why they put more essentials this time around (even though they're not Obsidian), so that people would still be able to interact with characters once the game is over.

Ofcourse they get up.. In nearly all games essential guys can't be killed. This is true for everything from uncharted to modern warfare to assassin's creed to sing-star. But I don't see nobody complaining about immortal NPCs in those linear games. Figures.

I prefer Ultima 7's way of handling it.
When you kill a named NPC (as opposed to randomly generated bandit in the wilderness or something) their corpse stays there indefinitely. That is until you either get powerful enough to learn and cast resurrection on them, or drag their corpse to a healers and pay them to resurrect the corpse for you. Then you can resume dialog/quests from them as needed... And kill them again when you are done.

In Ultima 7 I always just cast the Armageddon spell

Right and there's like what... Two survivors? Lord British who you can kill (you just to be more creative) and Batlin who you actually have to kill to complete the game, but can only do so at the end of the last dungeon. So you can in effect kill everyone and everything on the planet. The best part? The fact that by the time you can cast Armageddon you can also cast resurrect, so you still haven't made it impossible to complete the game or any of the sidequests, you can go back and do them one murdered NPC at a time.
Now that's freedom.

Three survivors, the ferryman still remains too.
And Battlin you can kill before the last dungeon, just cast a death bolt at him


...ah good old times

Edit: sadly though you couldn't resurrect anyone you killed from the armageddon spell. There wasn't that much freedom. Casting armageddon ended your game

You can't kill NPCs from the main questline. Rolof, I tried killing him at first but the main quest relies on him and it won't let you. Most NPCs you can kill though.

Forgot about ferryman... But I'm not convinced he's alive to begin with.
In fairness while true the deathbolt thing was a bug, you weren't supposed to be able to kill that particular mobile... Just get to the point where it was deleted and replaced with it's mortal clone.
And now that I think about it your right. I was running around recently in a version (exult) where you could cast resurrect after Armageddon but I do distinctly recall not being able to in the original release and another version where you could resurrect after, but only NPC's you manually murdered before casting it...
...
Why were all the best RPG's buggy as hell?

Someone made a mod for oblivion which added a resurrection spell and switched off the immortal tag on all the NPC's. I thought was awesome but it was less then perfect.
Issues with how the game handled tagging characters as dead and cleaning up after them meant you had to virtually cast resurrect on them before they finished dying or they'd get up with broken AI and as soon as you or they area transitioned they'd cease to exist. :-/
Fingers crossed mod makers wind up with a bit more in the construction set for Skyrim.

Didn't know the death bolt thing was a bug. I did find it odd though how you could kill him with a death bolt and he'd still show up in the final dungeon

Read about someone who carried his corpse to the end dungeon just so he could dump it in front of him when he got there. Apparently when he did the game freaked out about two Batlins being in the same place at once and splatted the living one. Easiest end boss encounter ever.