What is it with people and the immortal dog?

They only hated it because it came out of nowhere at the very end, in the case of taking Houses place it would fit pretty well into pre-stablished elements ofthe game.
 
I think there should've been an option where you yourself take over House's operation without Yes Man, the main character is the only really "essential" character to the story, you would give up your physical form and take over, would've been cool. Go all transhumanist on the ending.

People hated this stuff with passion as a Mass Effect 3 ending, so I doubt it would've been fine in FNV. :P

Yeah that was directly in opposition to the fact that they claimed the ending wouldn't be what it ended up being. Not to mention that it made no sense and they had to explain a ton of crap after the fact because by their own logic the relays blowing up should have killed EVERYONE.
 
tbh they should have done the morrowind thing and punished you with a dead, non-completable game. idk, gaming is so far behind every other art form and it's all because of dumbing everything down in the name of making cash, and a slightly later blooming as a medium. Even heavily post-modernist games like The Stanley Parable are decades behind the rest of them.

I think there's a real design justification for not letting an NPC you can kill fairly early on in the game result in an unwinnable state 20+ hours on, just because people are going to be really mad when they find out 20 hours later that they messed up their game. Probably the best way to do this is to do the "bad ending" thing like Dead Money had with getting sealed in the Vault or allying with Elijah. I suppose a Mass Effect style "critical mission failure, reload?" would also work, but be less interesting.

Or you could simply make a game where the progress of your character makes sense, at least if you're playing it for the first time. See killing Vivec in Morrowind was not an easy task. It was possible, but he was afterall a kind of god or devine beeing and getting to him was rather difficult. Definitely not something a new and fresh character can do. Not without knowing the game pretty well. And if you are at that point than you really KNOW what you're doing anyway since you most probably played it at least once - and that is where qute often the real fun begins for long time fans playing the game again trying to see where it's limits are. But if the characters are immortal you are virtualy robed from that option before you can even explore it. And that is what takes depth away from a game. Skyrim for example has a way of making you badass already pretty early in the game, you just have to constantly level up your fighting skills. So you can virtually beat almost every character already after a few levels, be it Ulfric or any other NPC. Particularly because the game is extremly simple in it's game mechanic.

You can realtively easily prevent the player from killing someone, or at least making it somehow clear to the player that he really should think twice about trying it. Giving the leader of a faction several powerful guards for example. Making a powerfull character ... actually powerfull and thus hard to beat. If players still decide to kill their questgiver ... well so be it! Than it is their choice. But it should be a realistically speaking very difficult task.

Making something simply immortal or "critical mission failure! Reload!" is probably the easiest way to deal with the issue - but I believe it is not the best way to do it in an RPG, CoD style shooters, maybe, but RPGs are about consequences and choices. And game design in particular has so many tools that can be used here, trough gameplay for example or trough story telling. You just have to make use of it! And to apply it correctly. With the last 3 games Bethesda has not even tried to explored any of those options. And it shows.
 
Remember how you could kille Caesar, Vulpes, the NCR officials and even President Kimball when you first met them if you chose to? And the game actually addressed that and it had consequences? Well that will be the last time Fallout will allow that. Because evolution, obviously.....
 
You can realtively easily prevent the player from killing someone, or at least making it somehow clear to the player that he really should think twice about trying it. Giving the leader of a faction several powerful guards for example. Making a powerfull character ... actually powerfull and thus hard to beat. If players still decide to kill their questgiver ... well so be it! Than it is their choice. But it should be a realistically speaking very difficult task.
Not all important quest givers can be made strong or be given guards. Like Caius Cosades in Morrowind for example. He is practically naked and as a spy he can't have any guards. It would be odd to make his very strong, but he is still a very important character to the plot. You could probably find plenty of such characters that are "essential" but can't be strengthened because it wouldn't make much sense in the game world.
 
Than you're simply to dumb for role playing games - with "you" I am not talking directly about you but I mean the kind of player in general which have to kill every quest-giver on sight without a second thought, beeing trigger happy isn't always the best approach. There are Saints Row, GTA and CoD and many other games to satisfy that kind of need.

I will say it again, there are MANY(!) different game design tools that can be used to avoid immortal NPCs. RPGs in particular have a high number of such choices. I will not get to much in detail as I don't want to write a novel right now.

Just to say this, I feel that it ist he job of a good game designer to think about ways how to avoid immortal NPCs, if half of their game has to be filled twith those unkillable bricks than they did something very wrong. They can't figure it out? Buhuuuu! Wrong job dude. What do you mean it was to difficult? Bullshit. There are many examples where it worked. Morrowind which was even a Bethesda game and Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 1/2, Arcanum, Planscape Torment, Baldurs Gate, Icewin Dale and many more. If the issue is the routine of NPCs and the fear that they end as snack for Dragons, well than find a way to get around this issue! That's. Your. Focking. Job! You could always flag important NPCs as characters that don't get attacked by bandids, creatures, dragons etc. if the player isn't around. Big deal!

The big issue for me is that Bethesda isn't even trying it anymore to explore alternatives. They just make them all immortal. Yaaay! And little Timmy doesn't have to worry about his trigger happy feelings anymore. The important people will just sleep for a few seconds. And everyone will forget his rampage after a few days! And when you swimm in septims you can also simply pay your way out. Beeing a serial killer was never so easy! - Funny there is even a quest where you hunt one! I guess he didn't had enough of those septims to pay HIS way out! What an amateur!

See that's the point. Bethesda is making games where you simply can't fail, unless you're blessed with the mind of a 3 year old.

*Edit by the way since you're already talking about Caius in Morrowind. Well he is a master-spy. The leader of the spy guild on Morrowind. I think that should count for SOMETHING. So he could explain to you that he is because of his position an excelent hand-to-hand combatant and/or warrior, thus making him difficult to beat for a fresh character. He could have a dagger with poison and beat the crap out of you with his fists when you're still level 5 or what ever - which he does. Once you are far enough in the game where you could beat him you should have figured out already that Caius is someone you should not kill because he is an IMPORTANT QUEST GIVER. Like I said ... it's all about how you use the gameplay and/or story telling. You just need a bit of imagination here.

Defending immortal NPCs in a role playing game is like defending bad shooter mechanics in an FPS.
 
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You are kind of contradicting yourself here. First you scold people for being stupid and wanting to kill quest-giving NPCs and then you are angry about a feature that only affects well... people who want to kill quest-giving NPCs.

Also, this is really not a big issue at all. If it is a choice between spending development time to make sure that some trigger happy person doesn't get his "immersion" ruined after he went on a killing spree OR getting something else done, well, I'm not surprised that time and time again they went with the option number 2.

I'm not defending immortal NPCs as a concept itself, because it is indeed a bad one, but I'm not at all surprised that they went with it. It is simply a so much easier way to resolve the issue of important NPCs dying.
 
I'm not defending immortal NPCs as a concept itself, because it is indeed a bad one, but I'm not at all surprised that they went with it. It is simply a so much easier way to resolve the issue of important NPCs dying.
...at the expense of actual role playing, depth in gameplay and any ability to immerse one's self.
 
You are kind of contradicting yourself here. First you scold people for being stupid and wanting to kill quest-giving NPCs and then you are angry about a feature that only affects well... people who want to kill quest-giving NPCs.

If I want to roleplay a NCR trooper, I should be able to kill Caesar. He shouldn't be essential to where you can massacre his entire army but he sticks around like in Skyrim. Simply failing the main quest worked in Morrowind just fine. New Vegas as well.
 
The great part is, if I remember correctly, that the game even gave you an option to kill Caesar and still finish your work for the Legion. That is how you make good games. Giving people options. And how awsome is that? The game even offers different outcomes depending on your skills in medicine, spech or luck!

You are kind of contradicting yourself here. First you scold people for being stupid and wanting to kill quest-giving NPCs and then you are angry about a feature that only affects well... people who want to kill quest-giving NPCs.

Also, this is really not a big issue at all. If it is a choice between spending development time to make sure that some trigger happy person doesn't get his "immersion" ruined after he went on a killing spree OR getting something else done, well, I'm not surprised that time and time again they went with the option number 2.

I'm not defending immortal NPCs as a concept itself, because it is indeed a bad one, but I'm not at all surprised that they went with it. It is simply a so much easier way to resolve the issue of important NPCs dying.

You don't understand ... eh ... how to explain it (again ...)

If you need someone to hold your hand constantly with immortal NPCs, in a way where it becomes a part of the game design because you KILL EVERYONE YOU ENCOUNTER ON SIGHT BECAUSE YOU CAN'T CONTROLL YOUR SELF, than you are dumb, to dumb to play an RPG, and CoD is (maybe) the game you're craving for.

But if a game like Morrowind gives you the option to kill a character as strong like Vivec than it is something that you might try on your second play trough to see how far you can get, where the limits of the game mechanics are, it's about the challange and role playing. Imagine how difficult it can be for a fresh character to try it. Yet you can even beat the game even if you killed Vivec. Some players had even their fun in killing Vivec and traping his soul in a Soul Gem. And considering the fact that you're the reincarnation of Nerevar you might hold a grudge against Vivec because of his questionable role in your history and thus killing him allows you to role play such a character. This is impossible when he would be simply immortal. Not to mention it makes the world feel like carved in plastic. Morrowind gave you a message that you should reload when you killed important NPCs, and it worked well for the game. If you played the game at least once you would know which characters and which quests are important and which not. One thing that I did for example was searching for a ring that gave me invisibility, than going for a very specific farm where the mercenaries and owner had daedric and glass weapons/armors in their possesion. And killing them all for it. The game gave me the message that the owner of the farm has been an important NPC - depending on which family/group you support in the main quest. But I knew that I didn't need him. So it was awesome that I had a chance to kill them all for loot! - Particularly because I hated them as slave owners. And with his key I also freed all of his slaves.

I will say this again. Defending immortal characters in RPGs is like defending shitty shooter mechanics in FPS. Just don't.

I'm not defending immortal NPCs as a concept itself, because it is indeed a bad one, but I'm not at all surprised that they went with it. It is simply a so much easier way to resolve the issue of important NPCs dying.

But exactly that is the problem!

See. This is not THAT far away from my job as Graphic Designer. Your job is it to find solutions. Good solutions. And you have many tools at your hand to do your job, but it requires REAL effort from your side to find the best solution, and the shortest way is NOT always the best way to solve the issue. But of course, if your only tool is a hammer than every problem will start to look like a nail. And that is the main problem with Beths immortal-npc-approach. They don't even TRY to explore different routes. You admit it by your self that it is a bad way to do it.

And in turn means there are better and more elegant ways to do it. And that is like how New Vegas and Morrowind did it, for example.
 
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Killing Kimball with the Range Finder actually gets special dialogue from people who theorize he was killed by the Illuminati.
 
I think it's reasonable to differ on whether there should ever be any essential NPCs in a given story (I'm inclined to think doing this very sparingly is okay), but what we're losing sight of is that the dog should absolutely not be one of them.

I mean, I sincerely doubt that the dog is going to give any important quests, and I certainly hope Bethesda isn't going to pull a Fable 2 and make "sacrificing the dog" the way that you save everyone in the end. That was even silly by Molyneux standards.
 
I mean, I sincerely doubt that the dog is going to give any important quests, and I certainly hope Bethesda isn't going to pull a Fable 2 and make "sacrificing the dog" the way that you save everyone in the end. That was even silly by Molyneux standards.
yeah it'd suck if they gave you a great companion character with a fantastic, dynamic and affectionate personality and then told you that in order to stop, say, a nuclear launch, the dog had to dieseriously what /were/ they thinking agh
 
I think there shouldn't be ANY immortal NPCs in Fallout, period.

I'm inclined to agree, but at the same time there's Yes Man. Narratively, "Yes Man" is immortal can be justified because he can just transfer his program to another Securitron platform if you blow up the one he's in. This makes complete sense, and "the game doesn't let you destroy all of the Securitrons" makes sense along the lines of "the game doesn't let you kill all the Legionary Assassins". There are going to be countless people (and robots) that the PC just doesn't cross paths with in your game, just due to the necessary abstraction for a game like this.

This is absolutely a special case, but exceptions to rules are useful for understanding what's important about the rule.
 
If you need someone to hold your hand constantly with immortal NPCs, in a way where it becomes a part of the game design because you KILL EVERYONE YOU ENCOUNTER ON SIGHT BECAUSE YOU CAN'T CONTROLL YOUR SELF, than you are dumb, to dumb to play an RPG, and CoD is (maybe) the game you're craving for.

Actually, CoD makes you lose if you shoot a civillian or something usually, so even in that game you can't shoot everyone indiscriminately.

Tbh though, recently, the immortal NPC mechanic is less for pandering to trigger happy idiots and more as a bad fix for the problem of radiant or semi radiant AI. NPCs sometimes can and will kill themselves traveling from one place to the next in a game like Skyrim for example, causing a player to fail quests for no reason.
 
Tbh though, recently, the immortal NPC mechanic is less for pandering to trigger happy idiots and more as a bad fix for the problem of radiant or semi radiant AI. NPCs sometimes can and will kill themselves traveling from one place to the next in a game like Skyrim for example, causing a player to fail quests for no reason.

It really seems that "immune to environmental hazards and computer controlled enemies" is a better solution to this problem than "immune to the player."
 
If you need someone to hold your hand constantly with immortal NPCs, in a way where it becomes a part of the game design because you KILL EVERYONE YOU ENCOUNTER ON SIGHT BECAUSE YOU CAN'T CONTROLL YOUR SELF, than you are dumb, to dumb to play an RPG, and CoD is (maybe) the game you're craving for.

Actually, CoD makes you lose if you shoot a civillian or something usually, so even in that game you can't shoot everyone indiscriminately.

Tbh though, recently, the immortal NPC mechanic is less for pandering to trigger happy idiots and more as a bad fix for the problem of radiant or semi radiant AI. NPCs sometimes can and will kill themselves traveling from one place to the next in a game like Skyrim for example, causing a player to fail quests for no reason.

And there is an solution to even that, but I feel this idea to make NCPs immortal, particularly to the players action comes from the idea to protect a target audience with a very pecuilar mindset ... from themself ...

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...rather than to make sure that NPCs are not constantly killed from environemtal hazards ... which could be avoided trough other means.

That way you can make sure that EVERYONE can win in a Beth game ...


*Edit
BONUS CONTENT UNLOCKED!

 
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Idecided to make a petition about it, even if it doesnt work at least i will try: https://www.change.org/p/bethesda-remove-dogmeat-immortality-in-fallout4

I'm not sure that this is the best way to go about this. I think that people who don't want to worry about being sad because the dog died or don't want to worry about babysitting companions should be allowed to enjoy the game they way they want. Likewise, I think people who want the tension that comes from having to keep your traveling companions happy and healthy should be able to enjoy the game they want. So it really seems like the best, and most obvious, way to do this is to include hardcore mode and handle companions in hardcore just like they do in New Vegas.
 
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