Cyberpunk 2077 - Unkillable Children, Story NPCs

GameRant reports that Cyberpunk 2077 will have unkillable children and story NPCs.

On Reddit, one user shared a screenshot of their direct messages with the official Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter account. When asked if players would be able to "kill regular people" and how players could engage with Night City in "violent ways," the account confirmed that players will not be able to "attack children or NPCs connected with the plot." However, players will be able to act aggressively towards "most" of the people that they meet. These aggressive actions will likely be done through the game's dialogue system, which was seen briefly in the 48-minute long gameplay video shown at Gamescom 2018.

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More information.

Never was able to understand people who want to turn a gameworld into Jens Sigsgaard's "Palle Alone in the World".

Even less can understand journalists who ask questions about game designs sucking up to people with cleaning maniac disorder. My room is never 100% tidy and never will be - something has to be out of place as I'm not showing it off, I'm living in it.

Then again, I shouldn't be surprised with anything anymore, gaming journalism is at it's lowest point for past few years. I mean, just look at gamerant's other titles today, for example: "Destiny 2 Infinite Super Glitch Discovered". Who tf cares.

I don't like metagame-locked anything in a RPG, be it children, NPC, or anything that removes choice and verosimilitude from the setting, it just subtracts from the immersion. I would just not portray children in my game if my double standards which are fine with rape, torture and all other forms of gory violence hit a sudden hypocritic red line towards pixel-built people of lesser sizes and ages.

It's like putting language filters in some RPGs… you're just murdering people left and right mostly because they carry loot and coins you wanna collect, that¡s fine. But then some character will say "FUCK!", that's terrible, we can't have that. Let's "FRAK IT!" or "FARK IT" or worse, "F**k it!" lest we hurt anyone's sensitivity.

I take it a lot of these games are made in USA where it's fine to drive a car or own a gun at 16 while you can't drink til you're 21, but I'll still never understand the arbitrarily selective lines they set where a videogame gets offensive. Funny enough, those lines are different when it comes to movies, probably because there is still the notion that videogames are meant for children. Some sectors really need to upgrade themselves to the 21st century.

I'm ok with not killing children. What I'm not so ok with is making invulnerable NPCs. Ok, they want to tell a story and don't want me to screw with it, but c'mon, lemme break my game.

I never understood which children had to be killable in the first place. I mean, who wants to really do that - and why ?

Alrik Fassbauer said:

I never understood which children had to be killable in the first place. I mean, who wants to really do that - and why ?

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Yeah, I mean, it's a lose-lose situation. Some deranged fucker makes some videos killing children in the game and then it's just bad press, man. No real reason to allow such a thing for like 1% of your player base to be happy

Indeed. Without mentioning the video where a guy kills THE critical NPC for a quest and goes on a rant because he has spent 80 hours on this game and cannot finish it and it's no better press.

obviously some NPCs need to be unkillable in order to advance the games for the story's sake. There's no human DM who can compensate in a situation like that. It is true a video game player is more likely to do that. There's no accountability in a situation like that.

AS for unkillable children, it's the law in certain countries for video games isn't it?

I've never understood the inclination to be able to kill the normal citizens of a gaming world, often for no apparent reason. Perhaps it has a value of exploration that's just never occurred to me, or something.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

I never understood which children had to be killable in the first place. I mean, who wants to really do that - and why ?

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What makes you think, people asking for killable children actually want to kill them in the game?

I would never kill child in game but knowing that you can actually kill one adds dimension to the game which might even change my play style. This is why people ask for killable NPC etc. Its why people ask for friendly fire in multiplayer games.

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?

Immersion is in your head and more "realist" the world is more immersive it gets. When I say "realist" I don't necessarily mean, to match our real world but to be more along the lines of being self consistent to its own rule. Its like saying, you can kill this NPC but not that NPC, that's break from the game's own rule and less immersive. Same reason applies for children as well.

So not everyone asking for killable children are some mentally deranges people. I mean some are but we live in shitty world

lostforever said:

I would never kill child in game but knowing that you can actually kill one adds dimension to the game which might even change my play style. This is why people ask for killable NPC etc. Its why people ask for friendly fire in multiplayer games.

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Exactly that. Mortality is an essential part of humanity, and NPCs of any age feel a lot diminished if they are invulnerable.

It's not about wanting to kill children, you'd have to be a psychopath to want that. It's about destroying any immersion in the narrative you're trying to build because you decided to include certain NPCs that are immune to damage. To me personally it's not the biggest deal but since it's in the topic, that's my opinion. Anything that subtracts from the immersion of a RPG is bad, and I'd be much happier with simply not adding children models to the game at all so I don't have to witness these immersion-breaking moments.

The funny thing is that children are usually added to increase the realism and immersion of the setting, but then it accomplishes the contrary.

And on plot NPCs, same thing. If you're dumb enough to randomly kill NPCs fo the hell of it and at some point you notice you killed the only guy in town who can sell you a car, too bad. This is one of the things I love in games that allow it (such as Baldur's Gate or Dark Souls sagas). If you kill a critical NPC you really wanted alive, but you killed them for whatever reasons (reasons often being "they probably carry loot and I can kill them, so why not"), you'll suffer the consequences.

It's not a significant constraint in my mind; I can live with that safeguard in place. This game is going to receive a mature rating, so in theory it shouldn't be played by younger gamers anyway. But I'm sure a few will manage to obtain a copy.

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. Games are so full of non-immersion items it is pointless to assume you can get rid of all of them and the fact children can't be killed is a meaningless issue unless you are actually running around trying to kill them. If you aren't trying to kill them then it won't matter. Any more than having 1000 pounds of items in your magic backpack, weapons and gear that "stick" to your character, a GUI interface, hit points, floaty damage numbers, and on and on.

It reminds me of arguments you see from people who really want to do something but don't want to admit it so come up with a lame reason to hide behind. Like a bigot not wanting to serve X minority but hides behind an excuse that lets them pretend it has nothing to with bigotry.

Of course wanting the option to kill children doesn't mean you actually do (in the game or in life) but considering the context it shouldn't be an issue either way if you can't. It just opens up a great way for the press or others to come down on a game. Why have that headache from a dev perspective?

Same with critical story NPC's. Fine for a user to say they don't mind breaking their own game but you know there will be all those users who cry about a broken game when they kill a critical NPC.

The fact that you don't understand something that is being clearly explained and exemplified doesn't make it invalid, it just outlines a limitation in your capacity to understand concepts. Nobody is under the obligation of making sense to you once they made a correct use of the tools meant for communication.

Where to draw the line though, personally i feel worse about killing animals than humans (yes even children), i'm ok with animals being killable though because i can see how it would be somewhat less immersive if they were in "god mode" when e.g accidents happens (car or stray bullet etc.)

..and how do you know you would never kill a child? if you are using your weapon in an area where there are children you could absolutely end up killing one by accident, so you'd have to take that into account. It could add to both story and gameplay elements (tactics), sure not in a super substantial way perhaps, but still.

In the end it's bad with this type of censorship or restrictions because there's only one route to how it will develop over time.

Nereida said:

The fact that you don't understand something that is being clearly explained and exemplified doesn't make it invalid, it just outlines a limitation in your capacity to understand concepts. Nobody is under the obligation of making sense to you once they made a correct use of the tools meant for communication.

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Oh please STFU.

He doesn't agree with your opinion, so now you're launching insults. I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with any limitations of understanding. He simply has a different view.

To me, it's a fairly insignificant detail, and it's not going to lower immersion in the slightest. I don't expect there's going to be a ton of children in the games to begin with.

Almost every open-world RPG has unkillable NPCs, and that includes most of the best ones. i.e. The Gothics, TES, Fallout, etc.

JDR13 said:

Oh please STFU.

He doesn't agree with your opinion, so now you're launching insults. I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with any limitations of understanding. He simply has a different view.

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Let's review some things said in the post I responded to.

Immersion is a poor excuse

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It reminds me of arguments you see from people who really want to do something but don't want to admit it so come up with a lame reason to hide behind

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Like a bigot not wanting to serve X minority but hides behind an excuse that lets them pretend it has nothing to with bigotry.

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So I was the one insulting? That's an interesting point of view. I know you're out to get my bones (do you like me or something? That's not how you get my attention, I stopped liking guys pretending to be tough when I turned 18 ). The fact that some random person decides to make comments based on ignorance and false uninformed assumptions and pretend they know what's going through my mind even though I'm clearly explaining very different things is more insulting than pointing out such ignorance. Sadly this is an internet standard, so no offense was taken from me. I simply pointed out the evident.

Nereida said:

So I was the one insulting? That's an interesting point of view. I know you're out to get my bones (do you like me or something? That's not how you get my attention, I stopped liking tough guys when I turned 18 ). The fact that some random person decides to make comments based on ignorance and false uninformed assumptions and pretend they know what's going through my mind even though I'm clearly explaining very different things is more insulting than pointing out such ignorance. Sadly this is an internet standard, so no offense was taken. I simply pointed out the evident.

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I see you're still taking every opposing opinion personally.

I can assure you wolfgrimdark wasn't trying to insult you because that's not his style. He wasn't even talking to or about you, he was simply giving his opinion on that view. But you, as you seem prone to do, somehow took it as some kind of personal attack.

So let's not pretend that everyone who has a different viewpoint lacks intelligence. You're only making yourself look like a complete douche by doing that.