so people were complaining "oh, there are too many essential NPCs...boo hoo" At least that is what I thought.

BUT THEN

(a little backstory. I almost never, ever kill non hostile creatures. I will rob your a.. but I won't kill you. so it took me awhile to get bothered)

I started running into essential NPCs.
My first essential NPC was Ulfric. Because after reading that he tortured women (fellow nords even!!) and murdered every official (really>? the guy in charge of the horse tax? you murdered every minor official?)

I decided to get my Murder on. I went and TRIED to kill. I wish he was not essential. I wish that his guards stripped you of weapons when you met him and that he was always at least level 30 but NOT ESSENTIAL. Cause I woulda gacked him.

but HEY....I tell myself, he is a MAJOR NPC. MAJOR. so I was not really bothered.

I decided to help the empire, and just got like 4th quest. I decided on the way I would murder me some of those racist stormcloaks who slaughtered the descendents of brteon people at Markath.

But some piss ant no name named Sun killer is "essential" WHAT? I never even heard of him, and am like 90% sure that upon his death they could easily have assigned his part to another. that is how life works. your plumber dies, you get new plumber.


what TAKES THE CAKE...is that if I walk into their stormcloak camp...I get to kill all the stormcloaks BUT AM LEFT FIGHTING AN ESSENTIAL NPC.

I am perturbed.

preaching to the choir.

too many essential NPCs.

and you are right, allow any NPC to go hostile without you doing anything other than tresspassing AND then making them essential is pretty bad.

If you don't want them to be essential, then do the Main Quest and the Civil War and then they should not be.

Besides, kicking apart Ulfric's Rebellion is much better than just killing him.

Now, as to why they are essential, they are to the Main Quest and the Civil War, not sure if the Civil War is part of this or not. And, their deaths could dramatically effect the story of the Main Quest. Bethesda is not so worried about the player killing these people off, but the game killing these people off.

There should be an option to turn off essential npc's or something.

That would most likely turn into an option to break the game.

The reason that you can't kill them is that it can screw up all kinds of scripted activities when you do. Unless you're a mass-murderer, you're not going to run into this problem a lot. I've tried to kill a grand total of one NPCs who turned out to be unkillable.

Or a Morrowind style message with 'Blabla you killed essential NPC, reload or persist in the doomed world you have created'.

i dont see why skyrim is not like this, after all it can save every 15 minutes useing 3 different autosaves (not to mention the manual saves and quick saves for pc), there is no reason to have even one essential character

TES games' distinguishing feature and major draw card was that one didn't have to follow the main quest. One could make their own adventure. At least, that's how it used to be. The essential NPC thing is just another example of Beth forgetting what their flagship product is all about. Fortunately, essential npc's will be modded away pretty quickly methinks, but i hate using the "mod" thing to excuse Beth for something they really should have done themselves.

I like that the essential NPC are unkillable. being that they are essential.

Imo the imperial/stormclock camp npc that is classed as essential should have his essential status removed as soon as you side with the faction he doesnt belong too.

I've had no reason to speak to any one at a camp outside of the civil war chain so dont know why they cant be killed if you've picked a side (or even completed the entire civil war questline).

Its their franchise, they can do as they please.

Id much rather developers did what they wanted, rather than be ruined by the forces of economic theory.

But that is no longer how things work, deal with it.

I get that MQ NPC's are essential, but I dont get why they STAY essential, why cant I kill them when Im done with the MQ? Why do they need to say essential? Play as you want is such a lie, essentical NPC's are around every corner, [censored] hillbilly farmer bob is [censored] essential..

Which pissed a lot of people off because in the heat of battle they might not get that message or another notification might cause them to miss it. Hell a few people couldn't see those messages because of how there monitor's resolution was set up. If Ulfric and his Imperial counterpart weren't essential then they simply wouldn't appear in person until the end of the civil war questline. Kinda like General Oliver and Legate Lanius in Fallout New Vegas.

I would rather have someone be essential rather than have them killed by a random dragon attack. Worst case scenario I use the resurrect command. Only did that to a couple that owned a shop and both got killed by a random dragon. I don't like merchants dying by random events. Of course if they were essential then evil players couldn't murder shopkeepers and steal their stuff and thus would whine even more.

I also would prefer to not have the game get broken by a random dragon attack. As much as people whine about essential NPC's, they would whine more when a random dragon swoops down and ruins multiple quest chains.

They should have done with essentials what they do with followers. Hostiles can down them, and they won't die, but the players themselves can still finish them off. Just give an 'essential' character a big 'downed-HP' pool so that it takes some determined attacking to fully kill them. (And put that on followers too lol)

Yeah I know what you mean. On two occasions I was quite annoyed by invincible npc's. One was inside a stormcloak camp between Dragon Bridge and Solitude, ran into their invincible commander. Why is he essential? I'm imperial legion all the way, it's not even possible to join the stormcloaks at this point.
Then there was this priest in Solitude's Halls of the Dead. All I wanted to do was kill him and check to see if I could get his robes, but no, he's essential. And this was after I did a quest with him. Shouldn't they get unmarked once they're no longer needed?

Lol, Thalmor invade Skyrim, ban the worship of the indigenous people's god, lest it offend the invaders, who of course are free to worship whoever they please, drag off and murder or torture anyone they please and the Stormcloaks "Beez rayciis".

The effects of liberal brainwashing are amusing.

Oh how i LOL'd, and oh how empty.

It's kinda annoying. Sometimes you just want to create mayhem just before quiting. Got the ebony blade (very OP btw) and for fun I just wanted to kill all of whiterun. Unfortunately didn't count on the companions to be unkillable (i did join them). A mesage you shouldn't have killed person x or y is also quite annoying, but at least it leaves open the possebility of just goofing off. Also the 'your not allowed to kill childern' policy is pretty akward, esp since the're not childern, the're pixels.
But then again, it's not really gamebreaking but I'm just a kind of 'im bored and have saved'-'now kill everybody and everything'-kind of guy.

The thing is even if they were bloody essential, they should be not aggro at you after "reviving". Also, its best if they don't act as witnesses, otherwise you have this godlike character who's a witness and keeps reviving to annoy the hell out of you. Same with children.

Make them killaaableee.. when mod comes to fix this ill enjoy Skyrim MUCH MUCH more

So... That guy that runs his mouth in the grey quarter. The one who really deserves to die. Yea. He's immortal. Why exactly when he demands to be killed?

There should be no essential NPC's except for the main quest.

Except they aren't. There are quite a few examples of NPCs that are not tied to the main quest that are 'essential', and NPCs who stay essential even after you do all the quests associated with them.


The game actually has a category specifically for this. Some NPCs cannot be killed except by the player.