@JFarrell71;
Again with the "freely murder"? you haven't understood a thing and you clearly don't want to understand either. Carmageddon is a good example, i don't see why a situation in a RPG, no less, could get out of hand and turn into absolute carnage.
Also why always assume that the person you are playing is the one doing the killing or the carnage. Obviously other NPC's (gangs, law enforcement etc) and also fires, heights, bombs, mines, traps or whatever can also kill. And again, it does not by any means make the game unplayable if its not in, i'm sure it can be modded in just like in Skyrim or whatever, with very little effort. A dead kid (or animal) is always a bit of added tragedy, it adds situational drama and randomness to the game.
I don't think it's a good idea to censorship it, it makes it a norm, it can spread to other things being unkillable (animals would be my guess could be up next) and to other mediums too.
A few games off the top of my head with children (and other NPCs) you cannot kill:
All of the Borderlands games
All of the Rockstar games
I think I can stop there, actually. Borderlands takes an anarchic, gleeful approach to murder and more. As a player, what you 99.9% do is shoot and blow up people. But can you kill Tiny Tina? No. Can you kill Brick or Lilith or any of the other major NPCs? No. And why can't you kill them? Because the game is full of killing, but killing is not THE point. There's narrative structure to the game, and that structure is communicated through those NPCs. Skyrim, of course, is the same way. If you feel like modding in the ability to kill those NPCs, go for it. But in doing so, you will render 90% of the game pointless. It will just be a sandbox to run around in, and nothing else. Expecting the designers themselves to do that is stupid.
Which is why I brought up a game like Rust earlier. There is no plot in Rust. There are no objectives, no characters, no story. That game is solely about building things and killing and being killed. So if that's what you want in a game, that's where you'll find it. You won't find it in Cyberpunk 2077, just like you won't, and haven't, found it in
any story driven games.
And NONE of that is the same as saying that killing NPCs can't be a choice, or used for dramatic purposes. There is a huge and extremely obvious difference between killing or allowing the death of NPCs, potentially including children, as part of a scripted quest, and being able to kill anyone at any time, which is what everyone here has been talking about. There is no actual choice involved in the latter, no more than ramming your avatar into a wall over and over is a "choice". It's not a choice the game presents as a useful one. You might just as well get mad at the developers for not allowing you to make the "choice" to give yourself a severe head injury.
It's not fucking censorship, and the fact that you call it that tells me a lot about your critical thinking ability. At this point, if you keep screeching "but my immersion!" without even attempting to acknowledge or understand why there are fundamental issues to allowing you to randomly kill people that has nothing to do with robbing you of your free will, or accusing you of being a closet murderer, you never will.