Please Bethesda, get rid of essential NPCs.

[Top Sämmel Bun]

Essential NPCs have always annoyed me about Bethesda games, but the amount of unkillable NPCs in Starfield is unbelievable. Pretty much every named NPC is essential and it's genuinely ruining this game for me.

I usually like to play a character that responds irrationally violent when insulted or threatened, given that nearly everyone is a complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, all of the Settled System would be dead if it weren't for the game basically telling me that I'm not allowed to play the way I want.

I know essential NPCs are used so players aren't locked out of quests, but I don't really understand this argument? Shouldn't my action have consequences? Wouldn't this make the new game+ mechanic way more appealing? And if environmental damage is the concern, there's the "Protected" stage to make NPCs invincible for everything that isn't directly the player.
Even in the worst case, just give those NPCs notes that advances the respective quest if they were this important. New Vegas has done this and it's, to this day, praised for its quest design and player freedom.

Sometimes it even feels like it's just there to be frustrating. There are two cases in which NPCs being essential legit made me close the game in disappointment.
- One's a quest for the Freestar Rangers that has you track down a Netrunner. Once you actually meet her she has no meaningful dialog, all you need is an item in her inventory, yet she is essential and is only killable once you initiate combat through dialog. Why? Just let me kill her on sight!
- The other was an early quest for the Crimson Fleet, in which an initiate asks you to betray the faction and you're just supposed to be okay with that. He does nothing, is completely useless for the quest and you'll probably never see him again afterwards, but yet again, he's marked as essential.

Despite the game priding itself with "unparalleled freedom", I feel like there's a very specific yes-sayer-punching-bag character that Bethesda had in mind for players. That's simply not who I want to play tho. Every time the game reminds me of this it makes Starfield more and more unenjoyable and makes me miss New Vegas' quest design.

[Fraktal]

Many of those NPCs are strong women.

No you can’t kill them.

[Dizzy Ladybug]

i always did appreciate New Vegas and Divinity Original Sin 2 allowing you to kill so many NPCs

[Morfium]

It was an annoyance in Skyrim and Fallout but here it's downright stupid. The main quest could be cut short 6 missions if you could just kill people when it is the smart thing to do...
If this is the reason the solution wouldn't be to make them essential but to write a better quest that can accomodate for this.

[Vexillarius]

+1 i didn't actually bother reading it but i 100% agree with the title. Way to many essential NPCs that are not even remotely essential in any way.

[kdodds]

Damned if you do, damned if you don't... wait for SFEdit and then do what you want.

Personally, my preference is that people don't die prematurely. So, at the very least, named NPCs should be "Protected".

I'm not a fan of lock outs, and also not a fan of cheap outs like FONV, which would mean that, eventually, some NPCs are going to have to remain alive for you to proceed within the story(ies) being told.

And if your intent seriously is to just run around killing everyone and everything, honestly, RPGs aren't really for you. Even the most egregious serial killers still pick and choose from comparatively very few individual victims. Try the Souls games if you just want to kill because someone looks at you funny.

[Morfium]

That's why I say I'd like a more robust storytelling. Like what Larian rpgs do. You can just solve things in multiple ways.
Informat npcs can be killed and that may force you to search for the intel. Or you persuade them, or investigate their peers, etc.
Sure that is more work to implement, but makes a better story, gives more options and gives you actual decisions that feel meaningful.
Right now it's: "You see, this dude is important sometimes, maybe, so please don't kill him. Trust me bro."
Not exactly satisfying unless you happen to play exactly like the quest is written.

The additional bonus is, it makes more play styles viable. You could make a pacifist run and just sneakily get everything done rather than run into obvious traps, just to progess the quest. Or make a diplomatical run, or the murder hobo route, charmer, deceiver, ...
It would just be overall better without any downsides.

[GrimTom]

agreed the insane number of essential npc's seem to just be there to railroad you in to playing how the devs want you to

[Kai]

They are there to extend your playtime so you can't speedrun the game by killing all the important figures and then just skip ahead to the ending.

In absolutely no Bethesda RPG where they intend you to beat the game in 30 minutes.

[Krudtugle]

Originally posted by GrimTom:

agreed the insane number of essential npc's seem to just be there to railroad you in to playing how the devs want you to

It's been like that for their last couple games.

Back in Oblivion, you could kill "essential" npcs and get locked out of questlines. Why are they so scared of doing that now? It actually creates replay value.

But they have to shoehorn you into their propaganda. That's why.

[Death a Barbar]

Originally posted by kdodds:

That's not what OP was talking about. There are protected npcs that you only see once, during a quest and only has a few lines of dialogue with no consequences. The janitor girl in na is also protected, so are the separeted parents that are never relevant. If they have a single non generic line they get a name, and then they are essential.

[Athmet]

Originally posted by The Orange and Blue Ninja:

Many of those NPCs are strong women.

No you can’t kill them.

Cringe master in the thread ! Please, give us more !

[Barl]

Originally posted by kdodds:

I'm not a fan of lock outs,

no human needs this level of hand holding its a game where you are meant to NG+ it's fine to fail some quests by killing a few NPC's

[Dr. Electrocutioner]

Create a file called StarfieldCustom.ini in you My Games/Starfield folder and put this in it:

[Archive]
bInvalidateOlderFiles=1
sResourceDataDirsFinal=


[GamePlay]
bEssentialTakeNoDamage=0

You can load the game with that, kill whoever you want dead, then rename or move it to go back to normal.

I play this way all the time but it can be brutal trying to keep quest-essential NPCs alive during battles. I have to run madly forward and aggro all the fire onto myself.

[Zhorge]

Yeah, except the forums always end full of people who killed a certain NPC only to find out they screwed themselves over. I guess after decades of listening to gamers whine about suffering the consequences of their unthinking actions, they got tired of it and put the clamps down.

[Zhorge]

Originally posted by Morfium:

That's why I say I'd like a more robust storytelling. Like what Larian rpgs do. You can just solve things in multiple ways.

And yet Act 3 is still broken for many players because of that. We had the same problem in SOD and SOD2. They just dropped quests, set up events that resolved in such a way it broke the game. Larian is no master of this concept.

And, of course, so much dialog in the dialog trees always gets you to the same place. BioWare also does that. Like BioWare, their games have have rails.