I don’t recall seeing any children in the game, in my time trawling Bohemia. In the Witcher 3 there are quite a few children playing in various places, and occasionally having a role in quests even.
Even in Skyrim, there was a place for children…
Have I just overlooked them? Anyone else feel their absense?
Was there perhaps a reason to exclude children, or was this just not considered during development?
Just wondering…
Are they historically accurate? 
Henry is the son of a blacksmith and isn’t trained to notice children yet. You have to practice that first.
Umm, really it was probably a question of what they would add to the game vs what something else would add using that time instead. Opportunity cost. They seem to have run out of time for many features. Oh well. Maybe a mod will add them.
Ya know…I didn’t even think about that. I think this is why I feel towns, although populated, don’t feel as “lived in” as they could. The kids would go a long way, and be a really good way to visually show your reputation in an area.
loved = kids gather, asking about travel/asking for gifts
hated = mothers pull their children away, children hide and point while whispering or just gawk
middle ground = kids just be kids and act normal, maybe are curious and yell questions to you
it was considered and there was quite a discussion in early development stage on the forums
they decided to not implement children because they didnt want anyone to murder children, they could make them invincible but that would also destroy the realism and kids are not really needed for quests etc.
I understand it can be more immersive with them
Thanks for that insight!
True…could turn into quite the little psychopathic proving ground.
More importantly, it would mean being banned in some regions. Shekels are more important than realism.
Good point, now I come to think of it I can’t remember seeing any either, maybe just an oversight?
Agree it would make towns feel more alive with kids running around/playing.
Just seen the post re them not being included so people couldn’t kill them, don’t agree personally since they should just be locked up in game for life or hung and then it would be game over for them 
well there are babies in the game but no children.
They could have made it so the kids run away when you attack them, children can run faster than horses I hear, should race them in the arena for profit.
But what if they would just laugh and say ‘that tickles!’ when you’d attack them? And then they’d run off. And that they’d ignore arrows. I don’t know, but I agree, I reaally miss them…
now that i read is true i had never seen a children in the game thats wierd
It’s something I noticed right away.
I love the game and the attention to detail is great in the game. However, the lack of children is almost eerie, especially the lack of sound of kids voices and activity generally; and not just inn play but at work; in life and death (infant mortality, especially at a time in history when plague probably made new life even more precious and it was the youngest and eldest that tended to die).
Had a quick look are but could not find and academic reference for age distribution in the medieval European population but did find a reference used for games which probably gives a reasonably idea what a typical village or town may have had in terms of kids.
It shows something over a third of the population would have been under 18, which really makes their omission even more stark. Half of the population would have been under 25.
It may have been even higher. The population data is from the English Poll tax data c.1377 but as a general guide again helps give some idea of the age pyramid from the time, considering there may well have been variation over the times due to demographic shift, notably plague etc.;
Whereas Russell assumed that children under the age of 15 accounted for 33.3 percent
of the population, Postan suggested that the ratio may have been as high as 40 to 45 per cent.
For the period after 1541, when reliable data become available, the percentage of under-15s
in the population never rose above 40 percent, which surely represents the upper limit for
1377 (Wrigley and Schofield, 1989: Table A3.1). As Blanchard (1996) points out, such a
high ratio tended to occur in periods of rapid population growth driven by high fertility. Since
population was declining in the aftermath of the Black Death, a ratio as high as 40 to 45 per
cent in the 1370s is improbable and a lower ratio more likely.
source: ENGLISH MEDIEVAL POPULATION: RECONCILING TIME SERIES AND
CROSS SECTIONAL EVIDENCE (pdf)
It’s understandable that any developer would have to tangle with the thorny issue of including infants/ children in a game and hard to deal with such moral questions of their mortality etc.
However their absence removes what must have been a core experience in everyday life at this time. In normal day to day life but especially during times of tragedy and turmoil when the life lose of an older parent is tragic, the lose of children must have been potentially devastating.
That would be cool to see.
I understand why they left them out, but personally i find the complete absence of them more imersion breaking than them being invincible.
One possibility to counter child-killing.
Let them withstand one blow no matter if melee or ranged.
As soon as child is attacked, a guard will apear to jail you. No way to get out of that. Then you will be in jail for some years and lose all levels and equipment. Maybe even die in jail -> game over.
Isn’t every death tragic for someone? Invincible children would be silly. Keep their sticky fingers out of my games or let me kill em like every other entity
