Originally Posted by JoB
Originally Posted by Gray Ghost
Originally Posted by RagnarokCzD
Originally Posted by Machinus
Why is everyone killable?
This seem like odd question ...
Why should they not be killable? O_o
You are meeting mortals, and one of major feature of such creatures is being "able to die". O_o

For myself it was realy releaving that we are technicaly "able" to kill anyone and screw our story completely. :-/
I HATED it in Skyrim or new Fallout, that "cruicial" characters are just knocked down, seemed exhausted for few seconds, and them just stand up with full HP attacking once again. O_o

Its nice to see that developers are actualy creating consequences for our decisions, and they have to count with that in story creation that litteraly every character can die, not just bcs we kill it, it simply can ... its dangerous world out there. :-/

Can you imagine DM telling you "nah, you cant attack that guy, i need him for story i prepared" or even worse "you would kill him, but i need him for the story, so he survived three shots in the chest, decapitation, poisoning, and burning his body to dust" ... and still concidering that being a well handled plot? O_o

I have to be honest and say that I genuinely have never understood this attitude. Why is it at all an issue that plot-important NPCs are invulnerable? And how is it a meaningful improvement when every NPC is killable? Like, I'm indifferent to that as a design choice but I have seen so many people in favour of making every NPC killable and I just want to understand why. What is meaningfully gained in terms of experiencing gameplay or story if you can kill a plot-important NPC and potentially block off the quest? Especially if it's the main quest and not an optional side quest that can just be checked off as failed.

And regarding the example you gave, a computer game isn't a live game at the table, where a DM can potentially pivot and make their story work in spite of a dead NPC. A computer game is far more limited and I can't fault a dev for making their lives easier by letting themselves not have to accound for every bit of random death and destruction that the player can cause. Sure it's nice to imagine the possible creative results killing important NPCs could give, but realistically it would just leave you screwed out of completing the main game and at that point, what even IS the point?
It's about verisimilitude: the appearance of realism. In general, people want to feel like they're able to make choices.

A person who can't die because they're a plot point breaks the sense of verisimilitude.

You could argue that it's better to not allow that person to die because of the plot, but I would argue that it's better to design a plot that takes into account the potential death of that person, thus allowing the story to continue.

I suppose that verisimilitude point makes sense, and I can't argue that it's got validity to it. But I would also argue that there is only so far writers can go with designing a plot that can account for the death of any given person. Stories require characters and if you want it to be a good story, those characters can't just be interchangeable. They have to MATTER to the story as more than just plot motion generators. On a storytelling level, it is extremely difficult to account for the death of any given character in a way that allows for the plot to continue moving forward. It would require numerous redundancies with regard to characters, which is really not a concern that exists in any medium outside of videogames, so I can't really fault writers for not being great at it. There are inevitably going to just be points where, if you kill certain characters then that HAS to result in a game over because no other character or event can take their place in a narratively satisfying manner. Because the alternative calls for moving the plot along in a way that would inevitably end up showing the hand of the creators in a blatant way, which I should think would also break that verisimilitude. Alternatively they could position and manipulate things so that no plot-relevant characters are ever in a position which would allow you to kill them at an inconvenient time to begin with, which is good but also severely limits storytelling capacity and I would imagine would also break verisimilitude after a whlie when you eventually notice that all these plot-relevant npcs are conveniently beyond your reach. And I am honestly curious; is getting a game over actually better than dealing with an invulnerable npc?

Then of course there's the resource aspect of all this; is it REALLY in the best interest of the game to devote the required resources in terms of money and time to allow for all the redundancies and workarounds and tricks necessary to keep the plot moving when all or most of the plot-important npcs can be killed? That would require going through the game over and over to address all sort of possibilities. And I honestly don't think that's the best place for the devs to spend time or money on. If they want to, obviously I hope they're able, and this speak with the dead spell is a great trick that Larian has available to them, but it's not a trick every game or setting will have available.

So while I suppose I get why wanting every npc to be killable is a thing, it seems to me to be an ultimately impractical request for numerous reasons. I am eager to hear more responses to this and to learn more of people's thoughts and opinions on this matter, it's one that I've always genuinely been unable to really get my head around.