I dont see the relation between ingame PTSD and the existence of children in KCD…
There will probably an immersion mod with children at a certain point. even if its just resizing existing models to make them smaller and some ai tweaks.
Hopefully. I mean it would be much nicer to see young knights sparring with wooden blades when you come into town. As well as that they could have children’s equipment such as “child’s bow” ,(maybe this is what the “light bow” found in Sir Hans’ trunk in the clothes quest was originally supposed to be) with a much lower draw weight 20-30lbs than the usual bows of the era 40-100lbs, yeah they had 100lb longbows back then, personally I find a 30 difficult to hold at full draw for longer than 10 seconds (more finger pain than anything), found a 50lb bow especially taxing, especially when holding the bow at full draw (again sore fingers from the string more than shoulder cramping) and even with a release aid found a 70lb composite bow exceedingly difficult to get to full draw and I would probably be exhausted after 5 shots. But I digress, children’s wooden armour (obviously useless to Henry) and seeing children practicing archery (here in the UK it is still a legal requirement to teach every boy over the age of eleven archery, though obviously it’s one of those old laws nobody adheres to) as well as children doing jobs in areas where a full sized adult go (for example sending a boy up a chimney as a chimney sweep; I’m sure they could add it to a contravene) and if course as in I’ve already mentioned child bandits (and possibly the odd child 12-16 watchman), simply have a system where if you get in a fight with bandits and immediately kill the child they frenzy and gain large bonuses to agility strength and vitality possibly with one bandit shouting “You killed my son you bastard!” or something similar then if you defeat him and he’s on his knees he’ll say something along the lines of “just hurry up and kill me, I’ve nothing to live for anyway now”, killing a child; even if they are an enemy combatant will cause your reputation to fall greatly (as a side note I wish there were a visual symbol of your honour, being a cloth coat of arms; the more innocent people you kill will add bloodstains and other “dishonourable acts” such as theft will cause it to get black soot stains whereas doing “honourable” things (giving alms, refusing pay, etc) will clean it. Killing a child outside of combat would heavily soak it in blood, killing one in combat would soak it less heavily. Therefore killing a child would impact people’s reactions towards you everywhere since rumours travel fast
They could even add battles with two men at the front with polearms and a child at the back who is armed you could scare them by beating one into submission (or kill one then scare the two left) you could then walk up to up and talk to the one of the men or the child, get told that they had a bad harvest are almost starving (if the men attacked with modified scythe or some other form of farming equipment it would add to the depth and complexity) and had only meant to frighten you to get you to pay them. You would then be given the option to pay them a small amount and let them leave unarmed, you could let them leave unarmed or you could walk them to the bailiff in starting a side activity where you can choose to let the child’s father go, only the child go or let nobody go. Taking three bandits to the bailiff to be punished may increase how a how town soldiers feel about you but add a further “stain to your honour” for most likely sending a child to the gallows; you could with a high enough speech/charisma skill ask for clemency on the part of the child.
Situations like this really make the game a “living environment” as the developers promised (as; honestly who cares when Johnny Peasant takes a dump, or who feels any guilt for choking out the roadside knights, killing them then using “steal all”, unless you’re a strict rper I doubt people care much about killing if that guy is wearing that armour you like.
Skyrim has children.
Unkillable children.
Not with mods
Anyway why do developers shy away from the idea is kids dying?
As I’ve already posted MGSV not only had child soldiers as a central theme but child medical experimentation. The prequel even had a teenager tortured and raped.
So long as it is done well it will receive good press. You could even have it that killing children (combat age, 12-14) would play a toll on your psyche, even if they attacked you as bandits.
As for having children running around the towns as they did in Skyrim, it would be more like children helping out at mills, bakers, butcher’s, stables and other professions. That would be historically correct and in the snapped attack scene would only add to the immersiveness of the game.
I mean, face it; most players will have no moral ?issue edgedifficulty in killing during “encounter” such as the Knights that spawn around the place. Adding kids into.the game might make it more serious. The only other thing the devs could do is use a system similar to the good/evil system from fable the karma system from FO3, both are “less natural”.
Same with FO4.
i agree with you, the realism of the time its that children were not childrens, they serve has workers, they had no dreams, they only live to be what his father was and its sad but its the reality, and the lack of this content only does that te supposed realism of the game it isnt at all. The other thing that i think this game does it bad for an history “accuracy” its that women were beaten a LOT, mistreated, burn, abused and violeted by her own husbands and others, there where not the happy marriage that all couples seem to be in this game, actually this made the game a little bit non-historical and they even are denying part of the violent history against womens
Witcher 3 had all NPC’s unkillable but there is a cottage in Velen where you can find a family slaughtered with the father hanging from a tree outside and the mother and child laying in bed killed.
Always stuck with me that one.
But lets say KCD had killable children where you could just mace em down one by one it would just be over the top.
Small portions makes the best impression.
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There are children, Henry himself would be at most 17. The reason they don’t use young children is because it’d be more obvious that they’re children which would make the game either less immersive if they’re invincible or illegal in half the world if they can be killed.
Leaving children out is the only good option here in my opinion.
i honestly think that invincible children are more inmersive that no children at all, or children doesnt exist in the real world? also they make adults invincible like the important ones so why not childrens?
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Agree and kid NPCs could be spawned in way that they’re close to an intervention.
You can count invincible people in the game on one hand.
5 kids in each village would be a start.
Maybe someone could make a mod…
I’ve asked and asked and asked and nobody can cite that killing children = game banned in certain countries.
I’ve already stated that MGSV had child soldiers that WERE able to be killed by the player character, not sure if it counted as a mission failure but I even posted the “devil’s house” scene from MGSV which shows child medical experimentation.
Yet it was critically acclaimed
And not banned anywhere that I know of
If you made a game where you could kill kids and most of it involved killing kids there would be public outcry.
Having them there for realism only makes a game better, games have done it before (fallout original games) and there was no complaint.
I think the devs might have even wanted kids in the game but just couldn’t be bothered with the issue of voice actors for them, adults can voice act children though it takes talent to sound authentic.
Nightengale can’t be targeted with melee. And arrows seem not to make contact. Haven’t heard anyone complain about a loss of immersion because of it. The same mechanic could be applied to kid NPCs
Killing children means that ratings bodies refuse classification. Unclassified games are not allowed to be sold in most countries.
I’ve already cited MGSV as a recent game where you could kill kids, it got nothing but praise for it’s “realism” despite probably being the worst of the MGS games to be released.
Here’s a quote from ESRB regarding the matter of banning games due to their content.
in egregious cases, the game may be removed from the store.
Depending on what the group of trained raters define as egregious (child murder likely to be among them), a game containing such content may (often will) be removed from the shelves of the ESRB retail council (ERC) members (Being Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, Target and walmart). That’s the most that ESRB can do on it’s own. However, nations also have their own standards when legalizing games and when these standards are not met, nationwide ban can also be enforced regardless of the ERC’s decision.
So, including killable children is a mess of "May"s and "Coulds"s and "would"s, that’s why developers tend to not include them at all to avoid all the hassle. Another simple solution though would be to make them immortal, so i guess WH just decided to go with the nonexistant option and stick with their (almost) everyone is killable strategy.
You obviously don’t understand how vague and inconsistent ratings bodies can be. Rather than taking the risk, games companies do everything they can to avoid not being refused classification.
Sometimes they will pass a game, sometimes not, given that, how much time, money and effort would you put in to something, if you have limited resources, on something that would just be knocked back and you’d then have to scrap?
Anyway, THAT is why killable children are not included in games.
It’s the same for movies. You can find all sorts of inconsistencies in the ratings process.
If a company cares enough about their artistic vision to include killable children, and then it becomes the norm, we will probably see more of it. Given the choice between artistic vision, and shekels, they choose shekels every single time.