The problems that come with killing children in the game outweigh any realism gained. It’s just a road I think the developers shouldn’t go down.
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This would ruin the realism aspect. Such forced mechanics are worse than having no children at all. I don’t like these kind of games with ‘safe zones’ where the only thing a player can do is walking and talking. It takes you out. “Oh, forgot, just a game.” Feels very gamey and contrived. I think that’s the least preferred option to do it.
They don’t, as stated earlier.
But we can speculate what plausible solutions they could come up with.
Will never understand that taboo of killing children. Killing adults is also a very bad thing, but that’s ok. Sure, it’s sadder when a child dies, it’s also sad when an innocent woman dies or a nice man who has had a hard and impoverished life and just as his life is about to turn around he’s beaten by thugs and drown in his own blood. All sad things that make you feel bad, from both reading in news papers or seeing in a movie. Children sometimes die in movies as well, and it’s sad. But in games, they are always immune. Like people would actually go on killing sprees of children. Would they?
I think it could be handled like in Fallout… although those two first games got a bunch of shit for child killing, and had to censor it and change all children into dogs, which kind of messed up a few other things like dogs started pickpocketing you instead of the orphans. Anyways, in the Fallout games, if you kill a child, you get a universal reputation of a child killer and people will dislike you everywhere. Something like that could be in Kingdom Come.
It’s weird if you gain a certain reputation even if no one saw you do anything bad. I am thinking that children would never be far away from adults, so if you kill a child for whatever reason, the adults would notice and the rumour would spread. Also, the adults would attack you in rage and sorrow, and the guards would come very quickly, and if you have a temporary follower, he would also be mad at you. Long story short - you’ll get your ass beaten, no matter your fighting expertise. They would show you no mercy. Also, hurting a child would also have a very heart-wrenching screaming and crying, both from the children and from the adults. It should really feel like you do a bad thing, hurting a child.
Another thing could be that children are faster than you. If you draw sword, they would be scared and run away faster than you can catch up to. In that case they could be immortal, but it shouldn’t appear like so. Of course, you could run them down with a horse or shoot them with a crossbow,… bah
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A while ago, watching medieval stuff and such, I stumbled upon this: Children of the Middle Ages
There it’s stated that they were even considered evil.
One point guys & girls. You’re talking about political correctness, but you forgot about one thing. Games are still considered by many people as some trash culture. Unfortunately those people have huge influence. Let’s imagine one situation. If children can be killed within the game, there will very likely be some idiot, who will do video, where he kills several children, moreover has some nasty stupid comment. This video will be dug up by news channels like FOX News and then hysteria will be spread. You can imagine that kind of video - everything will be turned up site down, several interviews with nearly crying very disturbed mothers commenting it and maybe comparing to high school massacres or whatever. And what is more, Warhorse will be described as the most evil company in the history of earth. This means incredible pressure to the studio staff, thousands of mails with really harsh words and I bet even some death threats. They will be forced to recreate it and their reputation will be damaged. Definitely not the type of advertisement you would like. Especially when you’re small independent studio. So be aware of that too. They are not doing it just because they want to be politically correct. This is thin ice, at least until games earn reputation same as films and books have.
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.
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@OmarTheBest - You’re spot on target. It doesn’t take a lot to get a crusade (no pun intended) going against a video game, a movie, or anything else in entertainment. If the dominos fell that way I can see it being blown out of proportion very quickly.
that’s what call of juarez did when you tried to do something like that(killing animals)
Oh, the irony.
Fox is watched by gun-toting, trigger-happy hillbilly rednecks with an IQ below room temperature.
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Is fox even a serious news channel? I can remember the Ass effect story they had and it was moronic.
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I think we should be able to kill children to keep as real as possible.
Saying that, to escape the problem of impossible sales in some countries; why not make it very easy to change the variable from non-killable to killable from outside of the game? That way, the game in its sold state would meet the guidelines set out by the pansy-ass over-sensitive plebs who would ban such things, and gamers could opt into killing them without anybody knowing.
Whaddaya think?
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Whoa whoa whoa man. Careful about your generalizations.
I know many Fox News viewers who do not fit your description whatsoever.
Your comment doesn’t add anything to the discussion.
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Ok, so tell me, how would you describe people who take these made up news of such partisan and hate spreading ‘news’ channels at face value?
As far as I know, they manipulate ‘news’ to fit their needs.
Most of the time the hosts don’t know shit of what they’re talking about.
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I wouldn’t describe them whatsoever, here.
This is a forum for the game. I am sure you know that.
Like I said, and the last I will say to you about this because there is no point arguing with you: your comments add nothing to the conversation.
Have a good day.
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So many post and so little content…
Of course you should be able to kill children if you are able to kill people after all. There is nothing which differentiates a 18 year old human being from a 16 year old human being or from a 10 year old human being. They all have the same value if you want to look at if from a morally point of view.
The biggest design problem is that in 99% of all games children are not displayed at all or incorrectly displayed which means that there are adults and significantly smaller human beings looking like small kids. But there are no realistically displayed children of all ages, with babies, little kids, school kids, teens and so on. It’s easy to say “you can kill adults but no children” if you only have “one set” of children of the same age. But how will you be able to visually differentiate a 18 year old girl from a 16 year old girl? Yeah, you can’t for sure. And that’s the reason why something like that makes absolutely no sense at all (besides the obvious double standard of being able to kill adults but no children)…
Video games are still so immature and most of you people even support that. You’re always ready to defend yourself against everything instead of being proud that someone has the balls to display something in a realistic manner…I don’t get it, sorry…
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I agree from a strict moral standpoint there is no difference.
However, in the real world we live in, there is a difference. Because people react to this sort of thing differently in the world we live in.
The reason I oppose it is because I believe it could (and most likely would) damage the game.
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Yeah, let’s take away everything that could “damage” this game:
Killing children, killing women, religious struggles, blood and gore, strong language, sex and nudity…
Let’s make it a politically correct game with a 12+ label which is even right for the American religious right wingers…
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Ahh now you’re talking about what terms we consider a child. I base it on the typical age of innocence. If which would be under 13 years a little after 13 is when most kids, in my experience, really start to understand right from wrong.
Well, I see your point even through your veiled sarcasm…
But I still disagree. I am sure you can admit that killing children receives far more outrage than any of the other things you list aside it, despite whether or not you agree with the moral distinctions made.
Killing children is set in a completely separate category by itself, in terms of globally accepted social norms. If one is honest, one cannot even seriously argue that I am wrong on this point.
@LaHire
I disagree again. Killing people is all the same basically - in a game and in real world.
What you possibly mean is the purpose of killing. Most people would agree that killing kids and women in a war is much more “evil” than killing men because kids and women are usually not seen as warriors but as civilians and killing civilians is always bad.
But: it’s already confirmed that you are allowed to kill civilians which means that you can kill anybody just for fun. In that case there is no difference - not even morally in our real world - whether you kill a kid, a woman or a man. It’s all the same. You kill an innocent human being. I agree that some people might think more about a kid’s death because we tend to think that a life is more valuable the younger you are but that is not really a strong notion.
Of course there would be people arguing. But some people always argue. It’s in most cases not about the topic but about being mouthy and standing in the middle of attention (e.g. for political campaigns). If it’s not for killable children they will find something else if they want to…
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