Will there be ...children?

[Final_Boss]

My suggestion. Even though the hero is controlled by you, and you’ll make most of decision for him, he still has character. He is not created from scratch and so his behaviour is base on his history and character. You can bend it but you’ll not be able to defined it. So when you for example aim bow on children, hero doesn’t release the arrow and say for himself something like “I will not kill innocent child”. It would still feel realistic enough since those kids will not be immortal.

Exactly what I was thinking. If hero is trying to move up in medieval world, harming a child is lowliest and most ignoble thing to do, so it’s quite natural he would refuse. It’s also against christian values and all

As for kids in general, I hope whole era of childhood is somewhat covered, instead of “children” being those same 8 or 10 year old clones (like Witcher or Skyrim) and nothing inbetween. Mothers could have toddlers playing in the corner of the kitchen and teens wandering around forests, trying to secretly meet a lover and whatnot

[Wicker]

No. When you can brutally murder almost anyone else, innocent or not, and steal, and screw people over, and lie, any argument of “He wouldn’t do it” falls flat.

[Tsunamik]

Don´t even want to imagine how much work that would be… creating models, skeletons, animations and other assests for 4 different age groups of children… yeah, no, I don´t think so

[Waldkauz]

No. When you can brutally murder almost anyone else, innocent or not, and steal, and screw people over, and lie, any argument of “He wouldn’t do it” falls flat.

I agree. I think it would be better to show how the society reacts on murdering a child. For example the guards are talking about a murder. If they a talking about a man who had killed a other man in a open fight, they would simply call him a murder. If the murder had ambushed his victim, the guards would call him a treacherous murder. If its a weak victim, they would call him a coward murder and the guards should talk with the greatest contempt about a child slayer.
I think that would make it clear to everybody that murdering someone isn’t ok, also if it is only a game.

[ProkyBrambora]

Same as in GTA series, if you kill a child you will immediately get five stars and you will be chased by a knight, which as we all know is an equivalent of today’s tank.
You can then kill the knight and wear his armor… oh good ol’ memories of GTA2

[Wicker]

Assuming you’re even caught

I wish countries didn’t feel it should be in their power to censor or ban games.

[Final_Boss]

YES, but our society is bunch of idiots. Right now, modern society. Press and concerned parents and whatnot.

Question isn’t in technical side, but ethical. We as gamers might be ready and sensible, but the moment old media learns there’s a game you can kill kids in, there’ll be hell to pay and flight of Kingdom Come will be short and painful.
And next time some dumb kid stabs other with a pencil in classroom, KCD will be the scapegoat for uneducated masses.

[Tsunamik]

but the moment old media learns there’s a game you can kill kids in, there’ll be hell to pay and flight of Kingdom Come will be short and painful.And next time some dumb kid stabs other with a pencil in classroom, KCD will be the scapegoat for uneducated masses.

Well, that would be actually cool… imagine that, free advertising on state TVs in whole USA and Europe… you can´t imagine better worldwide coverage

[Wicker]

Sure, but the issue isn’t the media, just that it would be blocked by a lot of nations.

[Final_Boss]

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 did that, with airport scene.

Turned out, it wasn’t really worth it. CoD games sell without scandals better.
And CoD (not GTA, not Condemned: Criminal Origins or Mortal Kombat) are first thing stupid people point at when there’s school violence.

[Lamproly]

Just as I’m a little confused here … isn’t the problem not that you can kill kids, but that you can kill its parents? Therefore to create the AI for what happens with the kid is at the moment not worth the time to implement?

[snejdarek]

You can downscale skeletons and rig a child mesh to them, using the adult animations. This is how Fallout/Skyrim and actually a ton of games do it.

“Children burned on the stake”? I don’t know why you have to go these extremes.

The game’s main selling points are historical accuracy and realism.

1403 was a time of a civil war that was brought by savage foreign invasion.

I have not read enough sources on child handling during this period, but we know full well that after 1630s, during recatholization, the Catholic church (Jesuits) was often burning children, sometimes even infants, for heresy/witchcraft. Same in 1940s, German were killing children in the area of Belarus and Ukraine by hundreds of thousands (sometimes even having “fun” of throwing them up in the air and shooting them inflight, although burrying alive with parents shot dead was more common).

Wouldn’t say they never played. Even at this time there existed some toys.But they had earlier dutys to fullfill, depending on there age and as far as I know they normaly where viewed as adults at a age of 14 to 15.

Usually, until age of 6 they were considered as having high likeliness of dying due to various diseases that were common at the time. After age of 6 they were considered to have high likeliness of reaching adulthood and were also expected to work the fields.

[Pedrofive]

Think. I also thounght like you before but now I realised I was wrong. Killing children is one of the worst things you could think of. Just a minor feature you have to accept because it is the better way.

Why couldn’t Warhorse want to sell the most copies they can? At the end, this is a bussiness; I mean, they like making videogames, but everybody has to pay food, water, electricity… and this is the better way they have found to do that: making money doing what the love.

The problem you mention appears when the developers prefer making more money before making a good product, and this is not the case.

Although friend, there’d be mods

Hope it helped.

[Wicker]

Well to an extent, it is. To a certain extent they prefer making money over making the best product possible, but this is to an understandable extent. Adding killable children would restrict this game to an extreme degree, I’d prefer it be added, for the sake of realism, and saying no to people that try to push their personal value into media (while being total hypocrites of course), but currently, it simply isn’t worth it, due to how many countries would bar it from sale.

[Sir_Daclan]

In real life children are usually kept under the watchful eye of adults. You won’t find a child alone in the middle of the wilderness. Children are quick and nimble. With careful scripting and positioning with nearby hiding places, npc children could be placed in locations surrounded by npc adults. If /when a player arms them selves with a weapon the npc children could be programmed to instantly run away and hide, any adults in the area would then immediately turn upon and attack the player verbally and or with violence, thereby making it impossible for the player to attack any children. This would resolve the issue, and keep it real.

[Pedrofive]

That’s a nice idea; but that would be only possible if the NPC could ALWAYS beat you, even if you are full-armored knight and they are some poor villagers, what is not very realistic.
In my opinion, this could be fixed if the ones attacking when the character tries to kill children were guards.

[Sir_Daclan]

No, the npcs do not need to kill you, just distract you long enough for the children to run away. As soon as the kids are out iv your sight they can be removed from the game until you disarm yourself.

[Sir_Daclan]

Don’t forget that this would be under the control of the programmers, they could make it so that it takes a few seconds for your character to arm himself, when near children, giving them time to leg it. If the player arrives in the area pre-armed, then the children would already be hiding. This is supposed to be a violent time so children wouldbescared of armed strangers.

[Wicker]

That idea could easily screw you over if a child happens to be near you when you need to arm yourself. It also doesn’t cover bows. Unless you try to attack a child, how would it make sense for anyone to “distract” you? Just pulling out a weapon and everyone assuming you’re going to attack a kid sounds really annoying.

There isn’t any way you could reasonably stop players from attacking children, if only by bow and arrow. The rest of this needlessly complicates things while introducing potential issues and making the game feel more restrictive, just make them immortal and be done with it.