Bethesda is so weird like this. So many names characters can't be killed because they didn't account for keeping the story moving without them. But then they invest an insane amount of time into some niche events. Like how in Fallout 4 you can kill Trevor, the radio host. Shang Kowalski takes his place and since he is a child you can't kill him. You would think that would be a larger impact than killing a minor character who happens to have a quest dialogue 30 hours from now.
Man, I say this time and time again whenever this topic comes up, but Bethesda really watered down the RPG experience from the classic era and the plots really hold your hand.
In classic Fallout, you had complete player agency. There was no such thing as a protected NPC who was arbitrarily made immortal by the game; if you wanted to make an evil character who shot kids, you could do it. The game would heavily penalize you by villifying your reputation across the wasteland, making shop prices obscenely high and setting posses of bounty hunters after you, but ultimately it was *your choice, and your consequences.*
Fucking up so bad you make it impossible to complete the main quest should always be a valid option in an RPG.
While I would prefer not to have a 30-40 hours long playthrough shagged because of a random dragon attack, I liked Morrowind's approach. It told you that the world is doomed as the prophecy can't be fulfilled, but let you go with it if you wished so
Interestingly, even if you "doom" the world in Morrowind, if you get the magic weapons you need, you can still finish the game. The weapons deal a bunch of damage over time to you if you don't have the right protection (which can also be jury-rigged though that needs a ton of reputation built up and requires you to kill the strongest NPC in the game) but if you buff your HP and/or magic resistance enough via potions, spells, or enchanted gear (or if you're just fast enough) you can equip them long enough to beat the final encounter.
I also love New Vegas's approach, where you can kill pretty much any NPC and fail any quest except for Yes Man, the robot, who continuously respawns with an in-game reason to do so, so you can always get that ending if you want to.
I hate having Yes Man's quest stuck in my list, so I don't like that he can't be killed. I'm not sure it makes much sense until you take out House though. How many Securitrons did Benny have hacked to be invisible to the network? Doesn't seem like something that could just be passed on right as he is disabled without House noticing.
>How many Securitrons did Benny have hacked to be invisible to the network?
It's not the body that's invisible, but the 'Yes Man' program/personality.
Destroying his body just has him reupload himself into a new body (*either by forcibly overtaking another Securitron on the Strip or uploading himself into an empty body where ever House stores the replacements on the Strip*).
I know it's the program, I just feel like it wouldn't be as easy as transferring that program. Him not noticing a Securitron disappearing from the network more than once seems unlikely. Look how quickly he noticed the bug you place. Unless House doesn't keep track of how many Securitrons he has, but he seems like a very meticulous man.
Man I could never finish Skyrim because when you fast travel to Whiterun, you get jumped by those DLC dragonborn haters and now half of NPCs there are dead. I hate having empty towns with dead bodies casually laying on the streets, absolutely ignored by everyone. Ruins the immersion.
I know I can use the console to revive them, and fix merchants but damn. Skyrim was the only game I had to use console to keep the game running. "It just works"
I'm sorry to hear that, I only played a bit with the DLCs but had a similar experience with the vampires popping up and killing the blacksmith lady.
Btw immersion: that's why I don't like robbing stores and emptying homes. It looks weird to see the empty shelves and people acting everything is okay lol
Yeah Morrowind was straight up the best Bethesda game. Oblivion took out so much of the "weird" shit you could do in Morrowind. I had a character in Morrowind who constantly chugged high level levitation potions and just flew over all the areas without fighting. Had a different character who could literally jump over entire mountains
raven rock in solstheim was my favorite location think that was the first game i played that allowed you to build up a town seeing it grow and change kinda blow me away as a kid then nothing similar in future games
It wasn’t perfect but even the mansions the factions gave out had choices to them just so refreshing
Building your own house came around with dlc for skyrim but it’s not the same choices didnt feel impactful to the world i guess
It was so wacky lol. With that jumping character i had to be super careful around the jump button lol. If i accidentally touched it my guy wouldn't land for like five minutes so I'd have to get up & grab a drink or reload my save
There is a documentary on the development of Skyrim where Todd explicitly states how he wants to remove "uneccessary" mechanics and details from Oblivion and make Skyrim more streamlined to appeal to a larger audience.
Stripping and removing content until it is watered down for the masses is their manifesto since Skyrim.
>if you wanted to make an evil character who shot kids
Funny you would say that, because of that fact, they removed ALL kids from the german version of fallout 2.
The problem was, in one of the main quest you had to talk to a kid to progress, but he was not there
So you could not complete the main story-line in the german version of fallout 2 without installing a mod.
In the original Fallouts it was hard to start a fight that would doom your game without either trying or being extremely careless.
In a 3D no-borders real-time world its easy to have a random spawn gank an important NPC or have a stray bullet or AI pathing go where it shouldn't
>In a 3D no-borders real-time world its easy to have a random spawn gank an important NPC or have a stray bullet or AI pathing go where it shouldn't
If the concern is that a random event could kill a story critical NPC, then you could make them invulnerable to anything but the players actions; the immortal NPCs of modern Bethesda RPGs are a design choice to make the games more casual (which doesn't have to be a dirty word, but, for people who crave that hardline RPG experience, it sucks).
>If the concern is that a random event could kill a story critical NPC, then you could make them invulnerable to anything but the players
That's actually a thing in Bethesda games already. "Protected" NPCs will kneel down to regenerate health whenever their health gets low. Whilst they're kneeled down, they can only be killed by a direct hit from the player.
That's a good start, I just wish they'd apply it to every critical NPC in the game; if you want to assassinate the jarl (even if it makes completing the main story impossible), that should be a decision the player can make.
Found that out on one character when Miraak's priests attacked me in Ivarstead, used Lydia for once in my life as an actual follower, turned back around, she was dead in the river.
Guess I uhh, swung a little too wide with the warhammer, whoops.
Hey dying in battle with the dragonborn (forget the semantics of friendly fire) is a surefire way into Sovngarde right?
There wasn’t a possibility of dooming your character in the original fallouts by killing the wrong npc, is their point. In the first you get the water chip within the time limit and fight the master, and in the second you go to the oil tanker and fight Frank Horrigan. There was no fight you could start that would result in the game being unfinish-able
I think the issue is it would just be waaaay too much audio and actors to record and lip sync for all the possible variations in any modern game that goes full voice acting.
I am hopeful that voice synthesizers continue to improve in quality and emotional range though. Combine that with being able to process at runtime, and some sort of madlib or better dialogue system, and many more branching choices could open up without being ridiculously time consuming and expensive to record for.
>In classic Fallout, you had complete player agency. There was no such thing as a protected NPC who was arbitrarily made immortal by the game
Jacoren is literally essential.
Yet I feel they took it too the extreme when it comes to making your character. Classic fallout balance is so ridiculously bad that like 60% if not more build options are useless, don't work or are heavily outclassed. Making it very possible to make a character that's basically doomed from the start.
Because story characters are vital. Even then you can kill the railroad when first meeting them.
I don't mean to sound rude, but i fail to understand the confusion here. Generally everyone else is killable (unless connected to a long storyline or something) and main quest characters...which are vital...aren't.
It's basically like morrowind. Because you couldn't kill main characters and continue. The game broke the fourth wall and told you to reload. (Don't mention the backway to beat it, new players would not know about it.)
>But then they invest an insane amount of time into some niche events.
I vaguely remember Todd Howard spending an unreasonable amount of time talking about the commerce system in Skyrim where you could affect prices in different places by buying and selling and attacking/sabotaging. I might be overselling what he promised, but basically none of what he said was in the final code...
Did I imagine all that?
Only provinces/towns I ever seen get dragon attacked are Riften and Windhelm. Looks like he's suddenly going to go mad with murderous rage for absolutely no reason and get killed by guards. Seems to happen a lot...
I've had all the cities attacked before, instanced or not. I think the walled ones are just less likely.
Don't forget random vampire attacks. The blacksmith is especially vulnerable to being dusted.
Doesn’t help that every citizen’s first instinct on seeing said vampire is charge at them with an iron dagger, even when said vampire severely out levels them.
He's the only npc that realizes players sell more to shopkeepers than buy from them.
Your goddamn fortify health rings are putting them all out of their (constantly regenerating) business!
I have been playing Skyrim since release and this is the first time I have seen someone acknowledge the way he says it. Not saying it hasn’t been mentioned before, but I would have personally thought it more meme worthy than “arrow to the knee”…
It’s probably one of those things where the VA read the line in multiple ways and someone finalizing the dialogue chose that specific take. In games like these where the VA work is done later in production, the actors are basically reading through pages of lines with little to no context and have to do as many as they can in a 3 hour period or so. A few lines might be performed in a strange way because of this. And it could very honestly have been the best take they had for the line, which is unique to Belethor.
This is true with the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch mod, but in the base game, she takes over the Bannered Mare.
That mod makes so many changes that step outside of patching bugs.
It should have been Sigurd, since he seems to be the next in line.
Well, I knew it even before the game's release. Not bragging with it, just as a note that it was mentioned during marketing campaign. By the way, Bethesda, why economy of the region doesn't change as I destroy farms, huh?
I'm conflicted. I typically always play a good character, but getting rid of Belethor so Ysolda can have his shop is tempting. On one hand, he hasn't done anything truly evil. On the other hand, he's admitted he would sell a person which would be slave trading.
I thought about that, but I don't want everyone to get killed. I'm high enough level for...I can never remember their names. The dragons that use the draining attack. Doesn't take long for NPCs to get killed. I had to use resurrect a lot in Solitude till I finished the game. Every other time I left the Dragonborn museum. Now none show up thankfully.
Bethesda is so weird like this. So many names characters can't be killed because they didn't account for keeping the story moving without them. But then they invest an insane amount of time into some niche events. Like how in Fallout 4 you can kill Trevor, the radio host. Shang Kowalski takes his place and since he is a child you can't kill him. You would think that would be a larger impact than killing a minor character who happens to have a quest dialogue 30 hours from now.
Man, I say this time and time again whenever this topic comes up, but Bethesda really watered down the RPG experience from the classic era and the plots really hold your hand. In classic Fallout, you had complete player agency. There was no such thing as a protected NPC who was arbitrarily made immortal by the game; if you wanted to make an evil character who shot kids, you could do it. The game would heavily penalize you by villifying your reputation across the wasteland, making shop prices obscenely high and setting posses of bounty hunters after you, but ultimately it was *your choice, and your consequences.* Fucking up so bad you make it impossible to complete the main quest should always be a valid option in an RPG.
While I would prefer not to have a 30-40 hours long playthrough shagged because of a random dragon attack, I liked Morrowind's approach. It told you that the world is doomed as the prophecy can't be fulfilled, but let you go with it if you wished so
Divinity Original Sin 2 had so many redundant ways to get and complete quests that you practically can't fail a questline. But Bethesda won't do it.
Interestingly, even if you "doom" the world in Morrowind, if you get the magic weapons you need, you can still finish the game. The weapons deal a bunch of damage over time to you if you don't have the right protection (which can also be jury-rigged though that needs a ton of reputation built up and requires you to kill the strongest NPC in the game) but if you buff your HP and/or magic resistance enough via potions, spells, or enchanted gear (or if you're just fast enough) you can equip them long enough to beat the final encounter. I also love New Vegas's approach, where you can kill pretty much any NPC and fail any quest except for Yes Man, the robot, who continuously respawns with an in-game reason to do so, so you can always get that ending if you want to.
I hate having Yes Man's quest stuck in my list, so I don't like that he can't be killed. I'm not sure it makes much sense until you take out House though. How many Securitrons did Benny have hacked to be invisible to the network? Doesn't seem like something that could just be passed on right as he is disabled without House noticing.
>How many Securitrons did Benny have hacked to be invisible to the network? It's not the body that's invisible, but the 'Yes Man' program/personality. Destroying his body just has him reupload himself into a new body (*either by forcibly overtaking another Securitron on the Strip or uploading himself into an empty body where ever House stores the replacements on the Strip*).
I know it's the program, I just feel like it wouldn't be as easy as transferring that program. Him not noticing a Securitron disappearing from the network more than once seems unlikely. Look how quickly he noticed the bug you place. Unless House doesn't keep track of how many Securitrons he has, but he seems like a very meticulous man.
Man I could never finish Skyrim because when you fast travel to Whiterun, you get jumped by those DLC dragonborn haters and now half of NPCs there are dead. I hate having empty towns with dead bodies casually laying on the streets, absolutely ignored by everyone. Ruins the immersion. I know I can use the console to revive them, and fix merchants but damn. Skyrim was the only game I had to use console to keep the game running. "It just works"
I'm sorry to hear that, I only played a bit with the DLCs but had a similar experience with the vampires popping up and killing the blacksmith lady. Btw immersion: that's why I don't like robbing stores and emptying homes. It looks weird to see the empty shelves and people acting everything is okay lol
What I did is I always save the main story for last. If you never bring the plot object to white runs leader it will never spawn a dragon anywhere.
Wait what? You mean the FIRST time you need to go to Whiterun leader right after you escape the execution?
If you never give him the Dragon Stone, dragons never spawn
Wow. I want to play Skyrim just to test it now ahah. But I won't be able to use shout's so that sucks.
[удалено]
Yeah Morrowind was straight up the best Bethesda game. Oblivion took out so much of the "weird" shit you could do in Morrowind. I had a character in Morrowind who constantly chugged high level levitation potions and just flew over all the areas without fighting. Had a different character who could literally jump over entire mountains
Agreed. Morrowind was a good mix of modern - with the possiblity of complete wacky-ness
raven rock in solstheim was my favorite location think that was the first game i played that allowed you to build up a town seeing it grow and change kinda blow me away as a kid then nothing similar in future games It wasn’t perfect but even the mansions the factions gave out had choices to them just so refreshing Building your own house came around with dlc for skyrim but it’s not the same choices didnt feel impactful to the world i guess
It was so wacky lol. With that jumping character i had to be super careful around the jump button lol. If i accidentally touched it my guy wouldn't land for like five minutes so I'd have to get up & grab a drink or reload my save
I'd love to play it (especially if it gets a remaster)
There is a documentary on the development of Skyrim where Todd explicitly states how he wants to remove "uneccessary" mechanics and details from Oblivion and make Skyrim more streamlined to appeal to a larger audience. Stripping and removing content until it is watered down for the masses is their manifesto since Skyrim.
>if you wanted to make an evil character who shot kids Funny you would say that, because of that fact, they removed ALL kids from the german version of fallout 2. The problem was, in one of the main quest you had to talk to a kid to progress, but he was not there So you could not complete the main story-line in the german version of fallout 2 without installing a mod.
In the original Fallouts it was hard to start a fight that would doom your game without either trying or being extremely careless. In a 3D no-borders real-time world its easy to have a random spawn gank an important NPC or have a stray bullet or AI pathing go where it shouldn't
>In a 3D no-borders real-time world its easy to have a random spawn gank an important NPC or have a stray bullet or AI pathing go where it shouldn't If the concern is that a random event could kill a story critical NPC, then you could make them invulnerable to anything but the players actions; the immortal NPCs of modern Bethesda RPGs are a design choice to make the games more casual (which doesn't have to be a dirty word, but, for people who crave that hardline RPG experience, it sucks).
>If the concern is that a random event could kill a story critical NPC, then you could make them invulnerable to anything but the players That's actually a thing in Bethesda games already. "Protected" NPCs will kneel down to regenerate health whenever their health gets low. Whilst they're kneeled down, they can only be killed by a direct hit from the player.
That's a good start, I just wish they'd apply it to every critical NPC in the game; if you want to assassinate the jarl (even if it makes completing the main story impossible), that should be a decision the player can make.
Found that out on one character when Miraak's priests attacked me in Ivarstead, used Lydia for once in my life as an actual follower, turned back around, she was dead in the river. Guess I uhh, swung a little too wide with the warhammer, whoops. Hey dying in battle with the dragonborn (forget the semantics of friendly fire) is a surefire way into Sovngarde right?
There wasn’t a possibility of dooming your character in the original fallouts by killing the wrong npc, is their point. In the first you get the water chip within the time limit and fight the master, and in the second you go to the oil tanker and fight Frank Horrigan. There was no fight you could start that would result in the game being unfinish-able
I think the issue is it would just be waaaay too much audio and actors to record and lip sync for all the possible variations in any modern game that goes full voice acting. I am hopeful that voice synthesizers continue to improve in quality and emotional range though. Combine that with being able to process at runtime, and some sort of madlib or better dialogue system, and many more branching choices could open up without being ridiculously time consuming and expensive to record for.
It wouldn’t. DOS2 already kinda does this. You can kill everyone and still beat the game.
>In classic Fallout, you had complete player agency. There was no such thing as a protected NPC who was arbitrarily made immortal by the game Jacoren is literally essential.
Yet I feel they took it too the extreme when it comes to making your character. Classic fallout balance is so ridiculously bad that like 60% if not more build options are useless, don't work or are heavily outclassed. Making it very possible to make a character that's basically doomed from the start.
Travis. But he wouldn't correct you if you called him Trevor.
Thanks I really... Appreciate it.
Wowwwww spoiler alert
I’m kidding btw
Because story characters are vital. Even then you can kill the railroad when first meeting them. I don't mean to sound rude, but i fail to understand the confusion here. Generally everyone else is killable (unless connected to a long storyline or something) and main quest characters...which are vital...aren't. It's basically like morrowind. Because you couldn't kill main characters and continue. The game broke the fourth wall and told you to reload. (Don't mention the backway to beat it, new players would not know about it.)
>But then they invest an insane amount of time into some niche events. I vaguely remember Todd Howard spending an unreasonable amount of time talking about the commerce system in Skyrim where you could affect prices in different places by buying and selling and attacking/sabotaging. I might be overselling what he promised, but basically none of what he said was in the final code... Did I imagine all that?
Why would you kill Belethor??
He might have an unfortunate dragon accident.
Only provinces/towns I ever seen get dragon attacked are Riften and Windhelm. Looks like he's suddenly going to go mad with murderous rage for absolutely no reason and get killed by guards. Seems to happen a lot...
I've had Dawnstar, Riften, Markarth etc get attacked by dragons. He could also die in a freak demon summoning.
I've had all the cities attacked before, instanced or not. I think the walled ones are just less likely. Don't forget random vampire attacks. The blacksmith is especially vulnerable to being dusted.
Also random "accidents". Such as being shot by an arrow that came out of nowhere.
Doesn’t help that every citizen’s first instinct on seeing said vampire is charge at them with an iron dagger, even when said vampire severely out levels them.
I’ve had dragons attack inside whiterun. It’s a bit annoying cause it just kept this dragon skeleton in the middle of the road for my entire game.
‘Cause he’s a damn creep! *Do come baaack…*
To this day I have never understood why he says it like that…
Because he is being sarcastic and does not want you back?
Then he can stop buying my 200 gold rings I got from grinding Smithing.
He's the only npc that realizes players sell more to shopkeepers than buy from them. Your goddamn fortify health rings are putting them all out of their (constantly regenerating) business!
Lol, i'm glad i'm not the only one who consider it weird the way he saays it
I have been playing Skyrim since release and this is the first time I have seen someone acknowledge the way he says it. Not saying it hasn’t been mentioned before, but I would have personally thought it more meme worthy than “arrow to the knee”…
It’s probably one of those things where the VA read the line in multiple ways and someone finalizing the dialogue chose that specific take. In games like these where the VA work is done later in production, the actors are basically reading through pages of lines with little to no context and have to do as many as they can in a 3 hour period or so. A few lines might be performed in a strange way because of this. And it could very honestly have been the best take they had for the line, which is unique to Belethor.
That makes a lot of sense. And is slightly alarming. Other takes includes “Do come *screaming*”
i had no idea who bethalor was or looked like until you said that
Because he’s a dick.
Cause dudes mad annoying
I killed the inn keeper, Ysolda took over then I married Ysolda. Now I own an inn.
I just figured out who I'm killing.
This is true with the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch mod, but in the base game, she takes over the Bannered Mare. That mod makes so many changes that step outside of patching bugs. It should have been Sigurd, since he seems to be the next in line.
Neat. I knew she'd take over the inn but I didn't know about other stores.
Well, I knew it even before the game's release. Not bragging with it, just as a note that it was mentioned during marketing campaign. By the way, Bethesda, why economy of the region doesn't change as I destroy farms, huh?
Who do you want me kill?
I'm conflicted. I typically always play a good character, but getting rid of Belethor so Ysolda can have his shop is tempting. On one hand, he hasn't done anything truly evil. On the other hand, he's admitted he would sell a person which would be slave trading.
or you can summon a dragon attack with a mod and help him have an unfortunate accident.
I thought about that, but I don't want everyone to get killed. I'm high enough level for...I can never remember their names. The dragons that use the draining attack. Doesn't take long for NPCs to get killed. I had to use resurrect a lot in Solitude till I finished the game. Every other time I left the Dragonborn museum. Now none show up thankfully.
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Ysolda#Trivia
Looks like it's only with a mod from what I can tell?
and if you kill her
Does Elder Scrolls Online have this level of dynamism?
Omg 1,000+ hours and I never knew this. Soooo many visits to that shop and I HATE Belethor and always marry Ysolda. 🤦🏻♂️