Should you be able to kill the quest giver? - RPG design
I have been prototyping a new game, an RPG of sorts. And while working on the behaviour of NPCs I realised I was going to have to make a decision regarding they question above.. Should players be able kill important quest givers or plot characters in their playthrough? and if so how should I deal with the consequences. I was interested in finding out what sort of sentiments and solutions already existed for this problem, so I made a quick bsky post to see what people thought.
https://bsky.app/profile/tomnullpointer.bsky.social/post/3m5o52cdej22j
I was happy to see that other folk were also interested in the problem and I ended up with almost 100 responses with loads of interesting viewpoints and lots of solutions and examples. Rather than let those results vanish along with the thread I thought I might collate some of them here.
So the basic problem is as follows: Should a player be allowed to kill important quest-givers in an RPG, and if so how does the game deal with the consequences.
Many games don't attempt to be super-realistic when it comes to the simulation of NPCs. A lot of RPG designs (almost all the final fantasy titles for instance) have a strict division between combat and exploration states, and you cant attack anything outside of those specific delineations. In most RPGs killing an NPC just isn't possible.
However games that lean more towards a simulationist approach might present scenarios where the player could harm or kill some (or all) of the NPCs they encounter. This might range from deliberately attacking a shopkeeper, to accidentally setting the king on fire with the edge of a misplaced AOE attack. Removing the ability to harm NPCs is valid solution but could reduce the players sense of agency and make the gameworld seem more artificial.
At this point I am going to assume that we want to at least entertain the idea that you can attack NPCs (rather than outright removing the possibility). So what are the different ways we could tackle the resulting situations.
I can't include all the replies I had to the original post (you can see them in the link above) But Ill try to summarise some of the main ones.
No, that didn't happen
This is the default route for most games, but it can be handled in different ways. The most basic approach is simply to make key NPCs invulnerable, or ban any combat actions in the zones where those NPCs exist, in sanctuary zones etc. This solution doesn't even pretend that the action in question is possible, which is fine, but definitely frames the game as a less sim/immersive experience. An alternative is to allow the drama but ignore the consequences.
In Oblivion, key NPCs wont die when they are reduced to 0 HP, instead they fall unconscious for a short time and then get back up a few moments later. This does add some sense of drama, since your companions can fall in battle and be unable to support you etc. But there is no permanent consequence, and dead folk standing back up in the middle of a battle can look a little silly.
Let it happen but Lazarus your way out of the issue
This is a common solution, by having a mechanism to resurrect dead key NPCs the game allows any quest lines to be continued. The death of the original NPC becomes a bump in chain rather than a real change of path. In many of the Souls games the NPCs can be killed and then 'resurrected' as ghost-like entities, so you can still shop or talk to them. There are a number of variations of this approach that folk outlined in the thread.
I love this idea! Its got a weird almost valhalla type vibe to it where you could imagine reincarnation is both a mechanic and part of in-world lore.
I've only played the first few hours of New Vegas (I should go back) so I wasn't aware of the Yes Man. Its a compromise that limits the extent of quest-chain damage. Everyone is killable but one character - the Yes Man - will respawn. This immortal NPC can then facilitate missions and stop soft locks form happening. It avoids the world being full of ghosts but still allows a certain amount of murderous agency.
Let it happen and don't say anything
Some games, particularly older titles would allow the player to brick their game and not even admit this had happened. I don't think this is an acceptable approach in contemporary design. Having broken the quest line in hour one but not knowing until four hours later is quite disrespectful. It also leads to the same sort of issue you can find in 4x games, where you have lost the game but spend three hours as a dead man walking. I doubt many player would be happy with this outcome now (or even then!)
Let it happen but inform the player
As many posters pointed out, this is what happens in Morrowind.
I think that this is a decent solution (and I love the wording of the warning here). But it's obviously a meta response that occurs outside of the game world and as a result is totally non-diegetic. its a similar approach to the familiar pop-up dialogues you get before entering end sequences "Once you open this door you will be unable to go back to the previous zones, are you sure?" It works, and arguably its still true to a simulationist world because there are consequences - you won't be able to finish the main quest. But it usually means that there aren't any alternative paths to resolve the problem should you choose to continue with your murder.
To be fair to morrowind, it does provide at least one alternative.
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Yagrum_Bagarn_and_Wraithguard
Let it happen and respond in world
This approach remains true to the expectations of a real simulation, but is also the one that involves the most work. The resolution here is that any quest chains that can be disrupted must have alternative path that can be explored. In a simple example, killing a key holder might result in you looting the key from their corpse instead of being given it as a reward.
For this to work, all paths usually need some sort of un-block-able route to fall back on. As Cara points out, designers should be aware of how such fall back routes might lead to "less interesting" gameplay and they should either inform the player that they are going to be heading to a less rich solution, or they should make sure the alternatives are equally interesting.
For example, if you can kill all key NPCs, then perhaps the game can fill your remaining time with interesting events that reflect the trauma you have caused to the gameworld.
I've not played Atomfall, but I know that the both this game and Weird West present alternative routes in this way. It was important to the designers of both these games to allow players such murderous agency but also provide alternative routes that were interesting to pursue. But why would you spend all that extra time and energy working out those alternatives when you could force the player along a guaranteed critical path instead.
What does it feel like?
One of the reasons Game of Thrones was so memorable is that the the key characters are not immortal. Indeed a significant number of them get killed in a single episode (you know the one).Its shocking and dramatic and Is one of the main elements that people reference when praising the series. But why is it so effective?
Most games present the world as a sideshow for the players rollercoaster ride, YOU are the focus, and everything around you is designed to serve the story that carries you through the game. Its a power fantasy, and nothing disrupts a power fantasy more than part of the set falling over when its supposed to support and entertain you.
This happened to me playing Dark Souls. I was already enticed by the uncaring nature of the world... I was the chosen undead, but no one seemed to care. But after a few hours I accidentally started a fight with the blacksmith and ended up killing him.
I was both shocked and impressed that this was even possible, and when I realised the ramifications meant progress was going to be so much harder, I restarted the game. But it didn't upset me, it was another part of my story - a story of failure sure - but a story I rarely found in any other games. It led to the world feeling even more autonomous and self governing, it made it more alienating but also more intriguing. This sort of world design isn't appropriate for many games but for a while It made me feel almost patronised by other RPGs theme park approach.
This response in the thread points towards the sort of simulationist promise that my blacksmith murder revealed. Some players won't care that everything is smoke and mirrors designed to ferry them along, but others want the world to live up to the affordances it pretends to have. In doing so the game offers the player more agency - agency to potentially write a bad story, but agency nevertheless. And in the responses to my question I was delighted to see a number of folk who embraced this approach "Yeah, let people mess up their games if they want to."
Of course we should signpost to players that killing key characters might cause a problem. But the freedom to get into those problems is valuable to some players in certain types of game-world. The negative consequences of actions might also be the start of an exciting emergent drama.
As one responder pointed out, it all really depends on the kind of game/world you want to build. But certainly for me - as an indie developer - this is an ongoing dialogue between what you are building and what emerges. Asking these questions in public is similar to trying out mechanics in prototypes, its a way to explore and think about design in an evolving context. I often don't know the form a game will take until its already way under development. I still don't know if it will feel right to allow the NPCs in my game to be killed. It is something I will have to work out as part of the development process, taking into account the solutions and responses listed above.
Ultimately I suspect that, as with most game dev, the constraints of time and budget put a stop to designers capabilities to support the consequences of killing the king. If its a choice between a solid guaranteed main path experience or more variable alternatives, we will often chose the former. But in a time where games seem to be taking less risks and following more formulas I can't help but cheer on the ones that dare to let players get off the rollercoaster and make mistakes.
