GemmaReborn wrote:First off. I don't believe inXile will shy away from any of the moral choices and situations they crafted in Wasteland. It's a part of their mission statement. Part of the core design process. I included an example in my second reply about the first real encounter you have in Wastland. Bobby. Him being a child and all of the choices you had there.
I did not mean to imply that I didn't want Bobby in the game or any children to be in the game. What I'm trying to get a across, poorly, is that it was Bobby. It wasn't random child number five. It was Bobby. You find him crying. You try to rescue his dog and his friend. The dog is rabid and attacks you and you kill it. Bobby is gone when you exit the cave. When you get go to leave Camp Highpool. Bobby is there. Time to decide. Whew...that's some role-play. That is a moral decision!
I find having NPCs in game just for the killing is unnecessary. Sure, children frolicking give you a sense of community and life. I still find it unnecessary. I never ran through Baldur's Gate wondering where the murderable NPCs were. I thought in F03 that it was odd the lamplighter kids wouldn't attack you. Especially if you were a slaver. It didn't ruin my immersion that I couldn't murder them. There are SEVERAL NPCs I wish i could kill in Skyrim, oh well.
I don't think we will have to worry about any of that in Wasteland 2. They will make a serious product I'm sure we will all enjoy.
It just adds more believability to the game, so why not include it? I mean how long would it take to include the animations. If there ever turn out to be annoying children, or children that steal from you, you can kill them. If we want this to be a realistic game, then it should be realistic in all of its facets.
This is essentially turning into a "my subjective experience vs yours" debate. I think the better approach is that, for a lot of people it would break immersion and they take the game more seriously...such that having no children in society is disappointing and unrealistic, or making them immortal doesn't make sense. There is no good reason to not have killable children except silly moral arguments (it should be a *nice* apocalyptic wasteland!), but there are good reasons to keep it in...as in there is a good amount of people who like the game being more realistic.
The only argument you've raised is that it doesn't bother you that killable children don't exist and that its unnecessary...which isn't really an argument against, more like an argument as to why you personally don't care either way.
Personally I would love it if they included that. There *is* something gritty and evil about being able to kill children, even if they are essentially random NPCs. Beyond that, like you say - you like that there can be morally challenging quests that would involve children with backstories. It would be logically contradictory to have killable children that have good quests associated with them (i.e. maybe something about having to kill thieving children who steal because they are starving for food? I don't know I'm not a good writer

), but not have children be killable in general or mysteriously absent from large communities.