Dragon Age

[Paelos]

The Connor thing is so stupid. I mean you have to confirm that you want to gut the kid like 3 times before the game actually does it.

Are you sure?
Are you REALLY sure?
You are going to kill a child, you heartless monster???

And yet, I can stab a dude in a cage for no reason with no provokation because he's there. 

[Lantyssa]

Same reasoning as Little Lamplight inhabitants being invulnerable.

[Ingmar]

I wonder how that works re: Connor in the countries that the Little Lamplight thing was put in for?

[eldaec]

You mean countries like the United States of America?

Killing kids pretty much nukes your age certificate in any jurisdiction.

[caladein]

My first instinct was to take him out out of both practicality and a personal annoyance with the kid (and his Mom).  So, I did on my first playthrough.  Felt good.

I would have done that every playthrough afterwards (same as killing off the Dalish Elves) if it weren't for the existence of a "Yay!  (Almost) everyone wins!" solution to both areas.

[Ingmar]

You mean countries like the United States of America?

Killing kids pretty much nukes your age certificate in any jurisdiction.

Fallout 3 would be rated M either way, I don't think it was on the verge of an AO rating (maybe I'm wrong though, I do seem to recall some hubbub about drug use now that I think about it). Put it this way: there are countries where you literally cannot release the game at all if kids get blown up. Easier just to have one version where they're unkillable rather than jump through hoops so people can murder kids in the US, though.

In any case, obviously Connor can get killed in the US version of Dragon Age. I am wondering how that all works in the EU countries that have specific rules about that sort of thing.

[ghost]

Do people feel a strong need to run around killing children in their games?  It certainly doesn't kill the immersion factor for me. 

[Ingmar]

Do people feel a strong need to run around killing children in their games?  It certainly doesn't kill the immersion factor for me. 

I've never understood it either, but I seem to recall a few people here bitching they couldn't kill Billy in Little Lamplight.

[tmp]

Depends on the kid. Some tend to exercise and flaunt their immunity by acting really snotty.

[Koyasha]

My first instinct was to take him out out of both practicality and a personal annoyance with the kid (and his Mom).  So, I did on my first playthrough.  Felt good.

I would have done that every playthrough afterwards (same as killing off the Dalish Elves) if it weren't for the existence of a "Yay!  (Almost) everyone wins!" solution to both areas.

I prefer to (when I'm a mage) do the ritual to save him, then make a deal with the demon (preferably for sex so I don't even get any practical benefit out of it) just to spite the annoying kid and his annoying mom.  Worst possible result for everyone except me.

Yes, I like playing bastard mages.   

[Lakov_Sanite]

The sex was totally worth it imo

[Paelos]

I didn't cut up Conner the first time. I did the namby pamby save everyone thing because that's what they want you to do. The evil time, I slapped his mom to the floor and cut him up.

Neither made me feel good about the resolution.

[Fabricated]

I always said, "hey, you hang out here a bit so I can go be bored as fuck in the mage tower, have fun with your demon kid."

[Sjofn]

I didn't cut up Conner the first time. I did the namby pamby save everyone thing because that's what they want you to do. The evil time, I slapped his mom to the floor and cut him up.

Neither made me feel good about the resolution.

Killing the MOM, that I had done before and was totally fine with it. She's annoying anyway. But when I killed Connor, I was just super disturbed by the whole thing (I didn't pick whatever options lead you to punching her, I was trying to see if I could get out of killing him). The best part is I totally did it by accident (I didn't realise going into Arl Eamon's room would trigger it), felt terrible, but didn't reload because that was actually sort of an interesting development story-wise. So I'm feeling guilty and horrible to start with, I go back to camp, and Alistair totally loses his shit on me.  

As far as I can tell the "almost everyone wins" solution exists to give picking the templars a consequence.

[Merusk]

Finally got the damn game to run again (turns out the DLC wasn't patching correctly so I had to delete the old files and redownload. A tip for any thinking to pick it up again.)

However, as with my first install I can't find the village where you pick-up Shale.  Is there a trigger you're supposed to hit, or can you not go there until after a certain part of the story?  I'm at Lothering now, just leaving and the village still isn't an option on the map. Nether is Warden's Keep.

[Paelos]

If your DLC is enabled, both should be open right after you camp for the first time. Levi should be in your camp ready to tell you about the Keep.

Annoying bug keeps cropping up for Soldier's Peak in my games. It stalls at the summoning stones and no demons ever come out, making it impossible to complete. This sucks because I don't get the freaking storage chest or the cool weapons. FUCK!

[Koyasha]

You can't go directly to the village to pick up Shale, you have to run into some merchant in some pass out to the west first, so you can get the control rod from him.

[Shrike]

Do people feel a strong need to run around killing children in their games?  It certainly doesn't kill the immersion factor for me. 

No, but I very clearly remember when I did it in Fallout. Actually shocked me quite a bit. It was one town where the little bastards were known (and you were told they would) for pickpocketing you blind. After losing about a dozen stimpacks, I'd had enough and the next time one of the little...kids...stood near me too long, sure enough, lost a stimpack. Lost my temper, too, and in a fit of pique I cut his larcenous little ass in half with a laser rifle.

Whoa. That I did not expect. Nor the title "child killer". And this was a female vault dweller, too. Then, when I thought about it, I realized that the devs had actually coded the animation of a laser cutting a kid in half at the waist. Whoa. I reloaded that game from an earlier save and just stayed the hell away from the little brats afterward.

Dunno if you'd call it extra immersive or whatever, but the memory REALLY stuck with me ever since.

[Fabricated]

They're just pixels, for chrissakes.

Edit: Also, one of the funniest memories I had was shooting the kid on the docks in Deus Ex after giving him a candy bar for the door code. I remembered how kid-killing was so verboten in most games even then so I figured I'd just see if the game would even let me shoot. I laughed for a good 3 minutes.

[Lantyssa]

Do people feel a strong need to run around killing children in their games?  It certainly doesn't kill the immersion factor for me. 

Generally no.  In DA I tried to save Conner simply because it wasn't his fault.  His mom I saved the first time, but she was lucky because my elf didn't like her at all.

In Fallout 3, the writers used the fact that the kids were invulnerable to give them shitty little attitudes.  Were they not invulnerable, they wouldn't have lasted a day in the wasteland.  If I could have even threatened them to stop acting like brats I would have been happy.  So in that situation where the characters are meta-gaming, it really does bother me.

[Tebonas]

My theory still is that they are invulnerable due to the mushrooms they eat, and thus the invulnerability fades onces they leave the cavern and change their diet.

They know they are invulnerable and thats the reason they are acting like brats.

[Mosesandstick]

Howe was a good character, but Anora's one of the few characters in any media I've hated. I was sad we couldn't stab her.

[Ingmar]

I just thought they were acting like little kids, myself. Weird little kids with a government I guess, but still kids. I've never really understood why people find them so enraging.

[Sjofn]

Probably because they were acting like little kids. 

[Lantyssa]

The little kids you know have terrible parents that raise monsters then.

[Lakov_Sanite]

To me it was just jarring in fallout. Playing as a decently good character the first time it's no problem, help the kids a bit whatever.  Playing as an evil character on my second run through it makes no sense.  HOW CAN I NOT GET THROUGH YOUR SHITTY GATE WHEN I HAVE A GODDAMNED ROCKET LAUNCHER?!

[Zetor]

I remember playing Fallout 2 back in the day and wondering wtf made items in my inventory disappear while walking around in the Den. Then I learned about the censorship in the UK version.

Apparently they removed the graphics for children, but they were still standing at the shop entrances (invisible) and they were still stealing items, only you couldn't do anything about it.

[sickrubik]

There are kid in Fallout that are just fine an nice. And some that are little pricks. Just like people. Sometimes I think people here just want to HATE games.

[ghost]

The little kids you know have terrible parents that raise monsters then.

This made me laugh my ass off.  Good one.  This is oh, so true.

[Lantyssa]

There are kid in Fallout that are just fine an nice. And some that are little pricks. Just like people. Sometimes I think people here just want to HATE games.

And I shoot the pricks and act kindly to the nice people...

[Koyasha]

Do people feel a strong need to run around killing children in their games?  It certainly doesn't kill the immersion factor for me. 

No, but I very clearly remember when I did it in Fallout. Actually shocked me quite a bit. It was one town where the little bastards were known (and you were told they would) for pickpocketing you blind. After losing about a dozen stimpacks, I'd had enough and the next time one of the little...kids...stood near me too long, sure enough, lost a stimpack. Lost my temper, too, and in a fit of pique I cut his larcenous little ass in half with a laser rifle.

Whoa. That I did not expect. Nor the title "child killer". And this was a female vault dweller, too. Then, when I thought about it, I realized that the devs had actually coded the animation of a laser cutting a kid in half at the waist. Whoa. I reloaded that game from an earlier save and just stayed the hell away from the little brats afterward.

Dunno if you'd call it extra immersive or whatever, but the memory REALLY stuck with me ever since.

I tended to plant live explosives on the kids if they stole anything from me.  Y'wanna steal?  Here, have some dynamite.  Free of charge!  As I recall, one of the unofficial patch/fixes restored the quest where you were supposed to create an orphanage for them, so they would go away and stop stealing, but the original game never shipped with that quest, so all you could do about it was kill them or let them keep your stuff (or steal it back from them).

As for the kids in Fallout 3, a game named Fallout, out of all games, was one that really shouldn't have had kids in it if they weren't going to allow you to kill them, since the originals specifically did allow you to kill them and had specifically written consequences for it.  In any open-world type game where you can kill pretty much anything you run into, they should specifically not include some ludicrous child-invulnerability.  If they feel the need to do so, don't include kids in the damn game.  There are plenty of games that don't have kids in them at all, and putting them into games where you specifically can kill anyone else in the game is kind of a major annoyance.  Especially when, as noted above, you then use the child-invulnerability to make the kids really goddamn annoying and flaunt the fact that you cannot harm them.  Now, in a game where you do not have the option to kill anyone at any time, then sure, it's not like the kids are special snowflakes that have child-invulnerability (although the point of not making invulnerable characters really annoying and flaunt their invulnerability is still a good one).

Interestingly, in Fallout 1, the best way I knew of to get a good weapon early was to kill the first kid you see, then get some bounty hunters after you, kill them (was hard, usually requiring a lot of reloads, but doable without straight-out cheating) and take their guns.  One of them was carrying a sniper rifle, a weapon which you wouldn't get until more than halfway through the game, as I recall, if you didn't encounter those bounty hunters.  And he was wearing Combat Armor, which again, you normally wouldn't get until halfway through the game.  I don't think that was quite as beneficial a thing to do in Fallout 2, though - they didn't have quite as good weapons, but there were a lot of them which made the encounter quite hard while not being all that rewarding, if I remember correctly.

As to the topic of Dragon Age, I am really, really happy that they included the option to 'just kill the damn kid.'  It would have really annoyed me if that option hadn't been there at all.  I would not have liked my character being forced to have some compunctions against killing the kid if I didn't really feel that fit her.  Similarly, I would not have been particularly pleased with some NPC railroading me into some forced save-the-kid scenario when killing him is logical, effective, and exactly what the law of the land prescribes in such a situation.  Even when I'm not intentionally being a bastard, I never use the mage tower solution, either, because it seems so ridiculous on the face of it.  The demon just stays put in the room without any further trouble during the entire time you journey to the mage tower, possibly clear out its demon infestation, then come back?  Ludicrous.  I just behave as though that option doesn't exist, because by all reason and logic, it doesn't.

So as to the question of whether I feel the strong need to go around killing children: depends on the situation.  Do I feel a need to kill random children?  No.  But those little snots that annoy the crap out of me?  Hell yes.

[Tebonas]

And don't forget the Red Ryder Ranger Rifle in Wasteland, the best weapon in the game you only got when killing every child in a youth camp and the person trying to avenge them.

The setting has a history for allowing you to kill children for fun and profit.

[rk47]

ummm. Actually. You can buy the stuff the kids stole from you at the Den Merchant. Forgot his name, but yeah it's there.

More proof that F2 > F3.
Little Lamplight child invulnerability off mod = A must.
Other games that had child killing was Jagged Alliance 2. Nothing like mortaring a group of enemy mercs only to catch little Timmy. Splat.

[koro]

As to the subject of tactical view, I can confirm that we will not be doing a tactical view on consoles, though we are looking into some expanded party control that I think will make console players quite happy.

On the PC, however, we are still working with the camera to keep the key elements of the tactical experience there. I was actually playtesting some new camera code when Victor found me, in fact, so I can give you the latest news on that front.

While we likely won't pull as far up as we did in DA:O, I have always felt that the key to tactical play was actually freeing your camera from the character you're controlling to issue precise orders, which is what we're tuning now. So, this means you can still maneuver the camera around the battlefield and issue orders from a remote location, just as you could in Origins.

As you can probably tell from my phrasing, all of this is a bit in-flux right now, so things may change between now and ship, but I wanted to update you guys on the current direction of things.

tl;dr: No zoomed-out overhead Baldur's Gate/Dragon Age 1-style camera in Dragon Age 2 for PCs.

 

[Merusk]

Meh, I never zoomed out to Top-down view anyway unless I couldn't figure out where that last bastard was.  I enjoyed watching the characters fight or microing one or two much more.