Cyberpunk 2077 - Unkillable Children, Story NPCs

It must be the difference of culture but talking about killing children to add plots in such a casual way is just sick. It is not like we did not have a world of possible plots.

I love the 'kill a child in the game, in such a way that is done out of pure evil (not connected to the plot or for some other explanation like self-defense'.

You know self-defense is quite ok as an excuse to kill a 4yo, apparently.

or the 'Like a working justice and legal system. Want to go on a rampage, fine but if your caught and sentenced to life in prison then a cinematic plays and credits roll, have ways to avoid this such as bribing a judge or intimidating a juror to get acquitted or hack to erase your record, etc. make this thing difficult to achieve though.'

Some kind of American justice system simulation? Can you do an Epstein and be the hero of the day?

Well, I do not think CDPR will ever cater to this kind of thing.

Love how some people focus on wrong things.

1. No one said they love killing children/people. It's a motivator to save as many people as possible given the quest context but ok.
2. No one is killing anyone. At the end of the day, it all pixels. Get over it.
 
I am quoting people on this thread. Just that.

You're not quoting much, just taking isolated sentences out of context in your own phrasing and bias so that you can pretty much label anyone who wants true immersion as a child murderer psychopath from the most pathetic offended Christian perspective. What are you going to do next? Take the IP and SWAT the sadistic demons that in your own fabricated illusion get a kick out of killing children in cold blood? Thank god I live in Europe.

What I want is that if I screw up and an enemy aims a missile at me and kills a child in the blast, I can feel the pain and have to deal with the consequences of it, because it's a RPG that is telling me a story and since the beginning of times loss is utilised as a powerful narrative element, including (and probably especially) the loss of those who are most innocent. And I particularly -hate- plot armors, I think it's the most detrimental thing to any narrative. Like, GoT was great till the plot armors kicked in.

Purplebob is nailing every comment pretty much. Reading comprehension is an important skill to have in the real world.
 
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It's not about wanting to kill children, you'd have to be a psychopath to want that.

That is a point.

Watching streamers play Rimworld has been an enlightening experience to understand the army of light.

It helped to expose deep flaws in Rimworld design.

Rimworld somewhat took a political stance by leaning toward a humanistic tale. It was about bringing pawns to life, pawns like human beings with their flaws and virtues.

Pawns are no avatar players can associate closely, players cant be their avatars because of that, pawns act and react on their own.

Pawns are between a player's decisions and the effects of a decision, they mediate. It gives a layer of interpretation. Players decide to kill a prisoner, pawns react to it.
This layer of interpretation is supposedly a demand by socalled RPGers.

Players have big plans and they have methods to ensure their dreams of security are achieved.

Methods that are assessed by pawns. Players resent that. They get angry, they feel pawns pass judgement.

Psychopaths are part of humanity so pawns are psychopaths.

When playing, it appears that players would benefit a lot from hiring psychopaths as they are pawns who wont be upset by players' methods.

Yet players discriminate against psychopaths. They do not want psychopaths even though they are the pawns to suit their play style.

Double standards all the way.

Players want the name, they do not want the game: therefore RPGs are about everything but roleplaying.

Players the game, they do not want the name: therefore psychopaths are excluded from a colony run in psychopathic ways.
 
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I never understood which children had to be killable in the first place. I mean, who wants to really do that - and why ?

Players must be protected from themselves.

It is a huge advantage provided by author written stories over player written stories.

Author written stories are external to players. The author might be a lunatic, demented or whatever, players are not. They simply read and unfold a story written by a lunatic, a demented.
Bad situations, behaviours... do not come from players, it comes from an author who writes to entertain, try to second guess readers.

Player written stories, a different animal.

Rimworld for some time intended to introduce kids in the game. Rimworld would not have the luxury of making unkillable children, every pawn is killable, every pawn can be sold in slavery, can be crippled, maimed etc no distinction. Families are spread over several factions, a brother can kill his brother etc

As an example, a pirat falls on a planet, his settlement is attacked by a boss, the boss is defeated and captured. The pirat convinced her to join. They fall in love. There are difficult times. They break up. They come back together. They marry. During a mission to clear a bandit location, the wife kills the pirat's mother, matter of life and death. The pirat is upset. He starts an affair. The wife sticks to him. As the grief goes, the pirat ends his affair and goes back to his wife.

Rimworld was meant to write human stories. Most of them though are not compatible with players' big plans.

Rimworld players easily write stories of eugenics. The introduction of kids would have been troublesome because Rimworld has not the luxury to make children immune.
 
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Kos is taking my words out of context.

In my scenario, it was not a child killed in self-defense, but a teenager who was trying to kill the player. Jesus.

Guess what, there are many movies and books with the plot line of kids either being abused and/or killed as well. Do you think those books and movies should be banned?? What about people who enjoy those dark plots and suspense, are they sick people and should be locked up for enjoying the wrong entertainment?

Get a grip. Some people need to distinguish between fantasy and reality, in a very bad way!
 
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I don't really see the point of "Oh I would never kill any children … but I want the option to …".

If you are never going to kill them then why does it matter? Immersion is a poor excuse.

It withdraws from immersion or what players call immersion. A story driven capture works on different levels.

Quite often, socalled RPGs are stories of power, they empower players.
Players live, players rule, players conquer. Players prevail.

Players do not bow to emperors. Players are the judge, jury and executioner. Players are the law. The world is damned or saved on their whim. Players have the power of life and death over NPCs.

Withdrawing NPCs from their realm of power restricts their feeling of empowerment.

Players enter a room (because they are their avatar), this NPC lives, that NPC dies. And no, does not work because the NPC was made unkillable.

It is not about killing, killing is a mere sign of power. An NPC lives because a player has decided. It could be worse. The player decides otherwise, it dies.

It breaks immersion, players are imposed restrictions on their power.
It gets them out of their power trip.
 
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Yes, I agree about the severe consequences.

Choices and consequences. The story of it.

Players desire certain consequences and do not want others.

Players are full of historians who want historical value.

Mount and Blade is inspired by a period when people were bound by words.

The game started with a six month mercenary contract committment. Too long. Halved. Still too long. Reduced to one month. Still too long. So take the committment and end it when it pleases.

Taking an oath as a vassal, the very second players take it, the very second they plan to get out of it.

Players do not want a binding consequence, players can not be bound because they would mean they are not powerful enough to wrestle out of it.

That would break their immersion.

Placing consequences on killing a kid will only result in players lamenting, groaning, biting until the consequences are sized up so that an average player is able to offset them.

Players want to be the dominant force in the world. They are the boss. There can not be an entity stronger than themselves and yet that entity must be to enforce the consequences of killing a kid.
 
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Kos is taking my words out of context.

In my scenario, it was not a child killed in self-defense, but a teenager who was trying to kill the player. Jesus.

Guess what, there are many movies and books with the plot line of kids either being abused and/or killed as well. Do you think those books and movies should be banned?? What about people who enjoy those dark plots and suspense, are they sick people and should be locked up for enjoying the wrong entertainment?

Get a grip. Some people need to distinguish between fantasy and reality, in a very bad way!

You are among the people who jumped on that news as if it was something strange or totally unexpected. Like if we were surrounded by thousands of games where that was possible.
Cyberpunk as it is is already hugely controversial in its main themes and most of them will not be explored and that is hugely more shitty than kids.

Your quotes certainly not reflect who you are and the real kind of game you want probably to play? Great; I believe you. Still, try to say loudly exactly what you wrote to another person and check how it sounds.

I am fine with fantasy, but why only violent fantasy? What is so appealing? Sex, swearing were shocking even if digital for many on this same forum.
 
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You're not quoting much, just taking isolated sentences out of context in your own phrasing and bias so that you can pretty much label anyone who wants true immersion as a child murderer psychopath from the most pathetic offended Christian perspective. What are you going to do next? Take the IP and SWAT the sadistic demons that in your own fabricated illusion get a kick out of killing children in cold blood? Thank god I live in Europe.

What I want is that if I screw up and an enemy aims a missile at me and kills a child in the blast, I can feel the pain and have to deal with the consequences of it, because it's a RPG that is telling me a story and since the beginning of times loss is utilised as a powerful narrative element, including (and probably especially) the loss of those who are most innocent. And I particularly -hate- plot armors, I think it's the most detrimental thing to any narrative. Like, GoT was great till the plot armors kicked in.

Purplebob is nailing every comment pretty much. Reading comprehension is an important skill to have in the real world.

Purplebob has been trolling against that game and any CDPR game since years now. So your comment about reading comprehension is quite funny.
She has basically criticized everything they have ever done. She goes on this game on as she did with Witcher 3. No Children killing possible? How dare they???
The games she plays like Kingmaker don't allow this kind of stuff at all, but that is ok, very immersive anyway. She nails nothing she just goes on on her bias.

I am Swiss so keep your USA/Christian/bigot shit for yourself but nearly every people blaming immersion regarding kids and that probably includes you are from an Anglo Saxon country.

And that is also my point, focus is essentially on what is allowed to be mentioned in the US. You want cyberpunk in a gritty urban domain? What about sex, nudity, rape, torture etc.. Those elements are way more relevant on a setting with low lifes, gangs, psychotic, underground, night, money and power than kids. Why this point on kids?
 
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Purplebob has been trolling against that game and any CDPR game since years now. So your comment about reading comprehension is quite funny.
She has basically criticized everything they have ever done. She goes on this game on as she did with Witcher 3. No Children killing possible? How dare they???

Wtf are you smoking? I hardly ever comment on Cyberpunk threads and you accuse me of trolling? Lol, you are delusional. I have made a few comments in the past that the game is not my cup of tea but you think that's trolling? Look up the definition of trolling again - if anything, you are trolling me with this comment now.

The games she plays like Kingmaker don't allow this kind of stuff at all, but that is ok, very immersive anyway. She nails nothing she just goes on on her bias.

Yes, Kingmaker also has many characters that are immune to death which I am disappointed about but that isn't a deal breaker for me. I don't remember ever saying that this is a deal breaker for any games including Cyperpunk. Oh but you love taking things out of context :) or are you just butt hurt that people aren't worshipping CDPR games?
 
It is interesting how an important distinction seems to have gotten lost in this thread.

To me, at least, there is a HUGE difference in a game that has story and scripted events around children versus just the player being able to run around killing children.

Blob gave an example of Vikings and saving a child burning to death. That's a specific quest event and perfectly reasonable. Another example is Kingmaker with a certain quest with a kid and lizardmen where a child can die.

I assumed that unkillable children doesn't relate to all children being immortal but instead just the NPC's ones or those that are not part of a scripted, quest, or story event.

The example of setting off a fireball in a classroom ... not a convincing argument in any way whatsoever, certainly not to me at least. If someone is so lacking in the ability to RP a game they are playing that they only care about completing a quest and getting experience and loot then what does it matter if the kids live?

In other words if your character was not the kind to kill children you would still find a way to get the NPC out of the classroom that you needed to fight regardless. If you are like "kids are immortal so who cares" and blast anyway then that is hardly getting into the immersion of role playing - which then negates the argument of being able to kill children in the first place.

Most of the arguments I have seen so far are pretty weak and lacking in substance. The only good ones I have seen are those related to quests and stories - and in that case, as outlined above, it makes sense. But that is a different situation from just being able to run around killing children at random in a game.

I tend to agree with the other suggestion, however, of not putting kids in at all then or maybe some very limited fashion. On the other hand it never bothered me in the many other games that have this restriction as well.

There are so many other ways to handle choice and consequence then simply letting people run around killing children at random. Only select children would need to be mortal and that would be for a justifiable reason related to the story, quest, plot, etc. But making them all mortal just so people know they can kill them, if they wish, seems a lame argument.
 
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Can't see why can't people just admit that they want to kill kids for fun. I did in Fallout 2 on a quest I had to kill some guy (put some grenade on his kid and let it blow when it was near him) and it was hilarious. That said, I don't really care about immortal children or not, really. Maybe people just don't want to admit that they reaaaally want to kill digital kids or something.
 
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Can't see why can't people just admit that they want to kill kids for fun. I did in Fallout 2 on a quest I had to kill some guy (put some grenade on his kid and let it blow when it was near him) and it was hilarious. That said, I don't really care about immortal children or not, really. Maybe people just don't want to admit that they reaaaally want to kill digital kids or something.

You may want to consider that some people don't find fun killing pixel kids for fun and so there is nothing they have to admit. If you do find that fun, good for you, but I'm not likely to go out to get a drink with you. I just don't like artificial immunities and plot armors in storytelling or any setting I want to take seriously, I like my worlds to be gritty and have consequences as life itself.

I'll tell you a story: A couple weeks ago I was doing a DnD session with my usual group of people on Roll20, playing the adventure Dragon Heist for 5th edition. If anyone has played that adventure they'll be familiar with this, but there was a group of cultists trying to escape with an artifact called Stone of Golorr. They had a carriage and if they made it away with it, we'd pretty much lose it forever, and it was crucial to our interests to get that stone, so the sorceress in our group used a bead from a necklace of fireballs we had acquired earlier to blow up the carriage. It was a success, it killed the horses immediately and set the carriage on fire, while the cultists inside survived just barely, but the fireball also hit a building and the DM rolled to see if there were people living inside the building. Turned out it was a family, the mother wasn't in, but the father and a child died immediately. After recovering the stone we were taken to jail, to clear up what had happened (except our rogue who managed to slip away) and we had to convince through persuade checks and eloquent speeches that the fireball was originated from the cultists themselves, or be sentenced to either death or very high times of jail together with very high fines for property damage. We managed to pass the checks, but our reckless action cost lives which our characters have to live with. The one who cast the fireball took a negative trait that makes her have to pass a will check every time she wants to ever use a fireball again, or just stand there doing nothing wasting her round with flashbacks of what happened. This didn't come from a planned event, it just happened.

This is what I want from a RPG. If the DM had said "well the fireball killed the man, but the kid ran out safely miraculously" I'd just have scoffed and it would have removed so much storytelling from it. If every time there's an explosion I see a kid coming running out from the heart of the fireball it takes from my immersion and I lose respect for the setting. And again, it's not the biggest deal, but it was the topic of this thread and so I expressed my point of view. I can't speak for others.
 
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Love how some people focus on wrong things.

1. No one said they love killing children/people. It's a motivator to save as many people as possible given the quest context but ok.
2. No one is killing anyone. At the end of the day, it all pixels. Get over it.

One word: Conditioning

See, for example, Virtual Reality Therapy for Phobias, for an illustration of how these pixels can permanently alter mental processes.
 
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. This is why people ask for killable NPC etc. Its why people ask for friendly fire in multiplayer games.
And all these years thinking it might have to do with gameplay.

PoE that patch after patch turned FoF spells into FO spells did not receive the memo.
Think of it this way, I am given a quest to kill an NPC at the local school. If children are not killable, I will walk into the school and cast my fireball and burn the school down to ground since the children cannot die but will end up killing the NPC. Now if children are killabel, I would wait for the NPC to come out of the school after it finished and then will kill him! See how the game play has now changed? Can you see how it added another layer to the game?
Reads appealling. So even without the kid thing. Now time to find a game that provide that type of gameplay.
Because before making it a pretext for including kids, it could work well without it, only adults.

I like my worlds to be gritty and have consequences as life itself...

After recovering the stone we were taken to jail, to clear up what had happened (except our rogue who managed to slip away) and we had to convince through persuade checks and eloquent speeches that the fireball was originated from the cultists themselves, or be sentenced to either death or very high times of jail together with very high fines for property damage. We managed to pass the checks, but our reckless action cost lives which our characters have to live with. The one who cast the fireball took a negative trait that makes her have to pass a will check every time she wants to ever use a fireball again, or just stand there doing nothing wasting her round with flashbacks of what happened. This didn't come from a planned event, it just happened.

This is what I want from a RPG.

Impressively burdening consequences. All self encompassed.
Maybe time to consider using a potion to forget the spell and learn a new one.

In life, though, it might work differently. People who were afflicted by a tragedy might not be forgiving, against all evidences.

Sometimes, people do not ask to be convinced, wrongly or rightly, they make up their mind about what happened and who is responsible and who must be held accountable.

It is independent.

The very dire consequences were all magnifying for players, they were put under control, players passed all the checks, they prevailed. And the spell thing is self inflicted.

No external world, no pressure from it. As it was stated, the dire, burdening consequences must be thought so that players are able to offset them.

In a RPG, though, the world is too large for players to control. NPCs make their minds about players'actions rightly or wrongly.
 
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When did anyone say all we want is kill people? You seem to miss the point completely - I would like all NPCs to be killable because it adds immersion, and choices and consequences. As @lostforever; already mentioned, if you make some characters immune to death, you can simply chuck a fireball to the area and be done with it - which cheapens the game play in my opinion. There was one quest in Expeditions: Viking that was especially memorable to me which involves possible death of a child - you had to defeat the enemies quick enough to rescue the child who was tied to a burning stake. Even if you fail to save the child, you've achieved your objective and could move on, but I really wanted to rescue the child at the expense of my party being injured. I'd say that is a good choices and consequences. Plus, you could even turn on an option to not to land critical hit on enemies which prevents killing them but potentially take longer to reach the child. I loved that quest - depending on how you play, you could rescue the child without killing the enemies. So what makes you think it's about just killing people?

Also, who are you to tell me what to play (or not to play)? But if you want to go down that route, maybe you should play Rust, you seem one dimensional enough to enjoy it :)

What *I* said in my two posts is that the most common benchmark for many players to measure how "immersive" a game is is whether or not you can indiscriminately kill NPCs. There are many ways one could measure freedom of action, and yet because of limited imagination, bloodthirstiness or who knows what, it so often comes down to "I can't kill anyone I want! Un-immersive!"

The example you give with Expeditions: Conquistador doesn't contradict anything I'm saying because that's a PLANNED quest with PLANNED outcomes. I'm not arguing and have not argued that the death of children is vertoben; I have said and am saying that being able to kill anyone in the game at any time is not reasonable and realistic in a game whose purpose is to tell stories with those characters, not if you expect the game to continue to function and have stories.

I don't know what the hell you're talking about with this fireball example. You plan to throw fireballs around in Cyberpunk 2077? You plan to wipe out city blocks? Why? Do you suppose that to be a plot point? I'm not telling you how to play. CDPR is telling you how to play, and you're throwing a hissy fit because "I wanna murder all the people I wanna murder cause immersion." I'M telling you that the structure of a story can't support killing any and all of its characters. If you had the power as a reader to plant a bomb on the first page of a novel and kill every character in it, you would have a one page novel.

It's ironic that you accuse me of being simplistic. You keep saying "it's not that I want to murder children, I want the OPTION to murder children!" Then why aren't you arguing so passionately for the option to do literally anything else? Try this thought exercise: imagine some ways in which interactions other than random murder are limited or restricted in a game. I'll bet you could come up with hundreds.
 
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