Treating NPC's as People

[eluc55]

Seeing Cery's most recent post in the Elder Scroll thread:

Latest fun pastime - sneaking past Lydia as she sits in my bedroom in Breezehome, getting eight hours of sleep, getting up and standing in front of her giggling 'you can't see me, you dumb bitch' and then sneaking out past her, unnoticed.

... got me thinking.

When have you treated digital character like living breathing human beings? Ever developed a crush on one? Played a trick on one? Done a good deed for one that wasn't scripted or required of you? And of course, what's the most elaborate death, misery or suffering you've inflicted on an NPC because they said something midly rude to you as part of their script?

I've been playing GTA4 recently, and I have to admit, every time someone says something rude about me as I drive off  in their car, I have to immediately put my car into reverse and run them their legs, back and forth, until they've learned their lesson.

Also, every taxi that doesn't stop for me... I immediately pull out my sniper rifle and make it my job to snipe either them of their passenger before they drive out of sight. I cannot abide disobedient, or insolent NPCs.

I wiped out an entire family because a character in skyrim had been sarcastic to me once. But I left him alive so that he would find them and live in abject misery for the rest of his life. His fictional life which only exists in my head.   

[The Βoston Crab]

I laughed.

[Thursday]

So much stuff that could be taken out of context there.

[castro diaz]

I was single and was playing the ambitious and flawed The Darkness on my 360.  There was a lot of nice character development and depth to the relationships, most notably your sexy Italian-American proto mobwife Jenny.  I, I mean my character, was helping her move out of her flat one day and later on she sat down on her sofa in the bare room and started watching To Kill a Mockingbird[nb]It had the entire film.  That's good.  I think.[/nb] on her tv.  She invites you sit down with her and she falls asleep instantly in that way that they do.  Anyway, I felt a bit alone at the time so sat down next to her, alternating between a black and white tale of morality with Gregory Peck, and watching her breathe in and out and occasionally stir.  I did it for too long, transfixed by a distant wonder.

After about a quarter of an hour an Achievement popped up lauding my romantic side.  It was Bill Gates telling me I cared too much about a non-existent girl in a fictional environment.  I had to go away and have a think about things.

[holyzombiejesus]

Latest fun pastime - sneaking past Lydia as she sits in my bedroom in Breezehome, getting eight hours of sleep, getting up and standing in front of her giggling 'you can't see me, you dumb bitch' and then sneaking out past her, unnoticed.

I never come in this weird technology place. I only came to this thread because for some reason, from the title I thought it would be about treating those weird volunteer police people - you know, they're like the police TA - with respect. Then I read Cerys' quote and I presumed that Lydia is her daughter and that Breezehome is what she calls her house because it's made of breezeblocks (I went to Chester City's ground once and that was made from breezeblocks and was (half) in Wales). I thought Cerys wasn't very nice for calling her daughter a dumb bitch while she slept but now it turns out that you're talking about a computer thing. Anyway, I'm off. It's strange in here. I'm going to Picture Box to read Biggy moaning about a perceived lack of Dr. Who episodes.

[madhair60]

Two main examples from me.

There's a bit in the original Deus Ex where you can trade a chocolate bar with a child for information.  I gave him the chocolate bar, got the info, then drew my knife and stabbed him.  He died immediately and I was instantly filled with a lurching horror.  You can kill children in this game!?  Nervously, I checked his corpse and found the chocolate bar, fresh as ever.  I added it to my inventory and walked away.  Crippled with guilt, I hit quick load and kept a wide berth from him.

And then, playing Animal Crossing Wild World on DS, I became way too attached to an adorable squirrel called Nibbles.  She was chipper, friendly and had lots of amusing anecdotes.  One day I made my trip to see her only to find her house full of boxes.  "I've had a great time in Stuville," she said, "but it's time for me to move on.  I'm sure we'll meet again!"  Cried for a bit.  Traded it in.  19 years old I was.

[Consignia]

Not people, but I became really fond of the horse you first tame in Red Dead Redemption. I called him "Hoss", and found I had to reload saves if he died, because I couldn't bare to lose him.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

On my first play through Fallout 3, still at a low level, I ducked into the Museum of History to avoid getting mauled by a gang of super mutants, only to find myself embroiled in a treasure hunt alongside Sydney, a tough mercenary type. After much sneaking, shooting and quickloading, we succeeded in finding the treasure and, after further sneaking, shooting and quickloading through the Metro tunnels, we made it to Rivet City to claim our reward. By now we were fire forged allies - siblings in arms - and Sydney told me that she was put on this path after her father abandoned her as a child. After that, she bade me farewell and went off to drink herself silly.

Later on, while scavenging in the ruins of a hotel, I found an audio recording from Sydney's father, stating that he'd been double crossed and shot while trying to negotiate a deal that would have guaranteed a brighter future for himself and his daughter. Armed with this knowledge I headed to the bar that Sydney was going to but, along the way I discovered her in the Metro tunnels, dead. Despite being a tough brute man, I felt a pang of sadness over this and, on my second play through made goshdarn sure that she reached the bar without coming to harm.

[Mister Six]

I managed to get through Halo without losing a single NPC soldier. Then I saw a friend deliberately running them over. Horrified, I was. Genuinely horrified.

[Nobody Soup]

I don't know if they count as NPC's but I have grown very attached to some of my FM regens. in particular a german left back, he was the first guy ever to have my club come up as his 'favoured club' and I made him my captain and well, he was awesome. this is all very normal so far, who wouldn't grow fond of a fictional star player in a football game, however, writing fake features that might have appeared in the papers at the time of his retirement was not quite so ok and probably even worse was downloading the sims 2 so I could recreate his, and some of the others, home lives...

[Small Man Big Horse]

I had Little Computer People on the Commodore 64, and was very fond of my little guy, Adam, he taught me poker aged but 10, and used to write lovely letters to me. After a few weeks I'm afraid my evil side came to the fore though and I decided to see what would happen if I stopped feeding him. I mean I wasn't going to kill him or anything, I just wanted to see how he'd react. It took about 36 hours, during which he left me increasingly upsetting letters, until he started to pack his things, and moved out and there was nothing I could do. I was genuinely quite upset, especially as when the new guy moved in, Steve, he was fucking rubbish.

[eluc55]

You're all too fucking nice.

I can't tell you how many times I've killed an innocent NPC for failing me, saying something insolent or - worst - not watching where they're going. In skyrim, I was always hiring mercenary's who were rude to me, just so that I could take them to far flung places and break their spirits, then their bodies.

In this guy's case, I lured him into my house at night, decapitated him and dragged him into my fire pit.




I had a special place for my most hated character, J'Zargo. You know the bit where you have to sacrifice someone to one of the Daedric Gods? I refused to do that mission for weeks, until J'Zargo had sold me all of the spells I needed... just so that I could take him to the shrine, tie him to a post, remove my helmet so he could look into my eyes.... 



..and gut him like a fish.



I then took everything he owned and left him propped up as a warning to the kingdoms.


This woman was rude to me every time I visited her shop.






This woman was bossy and ungrateful... so I threw her head in the river, and put her body on the industrial saw, then turned it on. 







This is the time I stripped Ulfric's corpse naked and sat him at the table as a daily reminder to the Thanes never again to disobey me.





Oh, and this is me pushing my horse off a waterfall because it kept running off.




As I say, you're all too fucking nice.

[Big Jack McBastard]

Loosing ickle Dishmab/Phoenix Wiltmines to starvation in Dwarf Fortress was tough.

After my cackhandedness led to what amounted to prohibition and a clothing shortage my dwarven population slowly went mental, one woman snapped and went on a murder spree killing Dishmabs brother and father and then beat Dishmab until her leg was broken and her body bruised, the guard intervened and put the mad woman down just in time but while in hospital infection set in on said leg until I focused my attention on getting soap made things were touch and go but thankfully she began making a solid recovery, up and about on a crutch with her new incident appropriate moniker.

Poor wee Phoenix (nee Dishmab), starving herself to death in a shitty pond, after, I can only assume, trotting out there during winter when it was frozen over and trapping herself when it thawed. I was busy six levels down supplying water to the lower levels (and playing a race against time to get my miners out of the tunnels before the waters melted and drowned them) all in an effort to get a more convenient hospital set up underground so cases like Phoenix's could be treated more quickly.

Fucks sake, the first platinum sarcophagus in the new burial chamber was promised to her with the hope that it would be many a season before it'd see use and cruel fate strikes her down at 11 years old, just half a minute after her future grave was moved into position. My gut sank when I saw the announcement.

Damn it. All for a tiny wee sprite.

I've not fired it up in a while but I'll be inconsolable when Oddum Nirallitast croaks, he's been the backbone of that place for nigh on a decade.

On the flipside In Deus Ex 2 I killed a whole classroom of little girls with poison darts and hung their bodies off the stage at the front of their classroom so that as their legs swayed in unison like a grim executives toy they drastically slowed my FPS down. That was a bit fucked up, but at least it was a game that admitted kids could be killed and didn't give them some bullshit immortality or vanish them from the world like most do.

I was always nice/appropriately combative with Sten in Dragon Age in all of my playthroughs, something inside stopped me from smashing his teeth in every time.

[mikeyg27]

Oh, and this is me pushing my horse off a waterfall because it kept running off.

Proper belly laughs at this one, I think because the picture is so evocative of Wile E. Coyote's long falls to planet Earth. Just needs the splash at the end.

[Utter Shit]

On Football Manager I make a point of slagging off any managers I dislike in real life. Within a season the likes of Wenger, Allardyce etc are in my least favourite personnel, I dog them regardless of what they say in the media about me. I am also very discriminating in terms of who I will sell players to - if a team I like makes an offer, I will accept it over a higher offer from a team I dislike (unless I know the player is shite). Over a period of a few years in my new game I like to think that not only did I lead Spurs to success, but I am indirectly responsible for the successes of Watford (loaning them players), Reading (made them a feeder club), Harrow Borough (give them a friendly at the start and end of each season which gives them a bit of cash) and any number of slightly smaller clubs across Europe who I sell players to rather than accept big bids from giants - Porto, Shakhtar, Napoli and Atletico Madrid have all been recipients of this goodwill.

I'm the same as you with GTA (or pretty much any other sandbox game) eluc55, I simply cannot let the most innocuous of comments from NPCs go. If I run past someone and he says the "watch it, asshole" line, I can't help but take great offence and end up battering/shooting him to death, even though I know the consequences are not worth the minor little ego boost I feel my character will get. It's like he has small man syndrome or something.

I may have said this before but my GTA low point was playing it when I was living with my mates, and a group of them came home just as I was in the middle of a game of GTA in the living room. So they saw the full scene unfold as I got enraged by some random bloke on the street giving me abuse for accidentally running into him...I punched him, then shit myself and ran away after he pulled out a gun and chased me down the street. He hit me a couple of times and I just managed to escape with a tiny amount of energy down a little alleyway, where I knocked over an old man. Kept running only to find it was a dead end, and the old man came and stabbed me, taking the last bit of energy I had life and thus killing me. My mates were in hysterics watching as this whole thing came from me just not being able to handle someone swearing at me in a game. Pride really did come before a fall.

The thing is, my mates all thought it was a one-off hilarious little scenario that had developed, but that sort of thing happens every single time I play GTA - it's the reason I never complete any game, because I get sidetracked so easily and end up in idiotic situations that I can't escape from. Like in Call of Duty when I got lost in the shrubbery and, despite being able to hear all my comrades, I had to blow myself up with a landmine in order to get back onto the main drag. I was stuck in the undergrowth looking for a way out for about five minutes.

[Utter Shit]

Not people, but I became really fond of the horse you first tame in Red Dead Redemption. I called him "Hoss", and found I had to reload saves if he died, because I couldn't bare to lose him.

Ahahaha I was the opposite, always shooting him in a rage or sending him flying over a cliff.

[castro diaz]

Funny thread.  I too tried to keep my Red Dead Redemption steed, Black Sambo, alive for as long as possible, with the intention of finishing the game with him.  Then I was involved in a randomly generated incident with some banditos about half way through and accidentally shot him in the back of the head at full speed.  He went down like a sack of shit.  I, of course, carved him up and sold his hide.

My flatmate got his Swindon Town team to the League Cup final (no cheats) and called me in to his room to watch it one Saturday morning.  He was wearing an especially bought charity shop suit, resplendent with flower, and had a bottle of champagne (Lambrini) on ice (no ice, and in a mop bucket) ready for the full time whistle.

[SetToStun]

Like in Call of Duty when I got lost in the shrubbery and, despite being able to hear all my comrades, I had to blow myself up with a landmine in order to get back onto the main drag. I was stuck in the undergrowth looking for a way out for about five minutes.

I had a simlar thing in the first Medal Of Honor[nb]Bloody Yank spellings.[/nb] game - I was approaching a sentry box containing a German armed with a machine-gun and, since it was surrounded by anti-tank concrete blocks, I thought I'd crouch down and sneak between them until I was close enough to lob a grenade through the window (I was sick to death of trying to off him with a rifle when I couldn't even see him properly). Imagine my surprise when I found that I was stuck between two blocks - unable to move in any direction. I mean, I'm not aware of any configuration of concrete blocks that you can get into but not back out of.

As for treating NPCs as real people, I'm all over that in the original Deus Ex - I slaughter every last motherfucking one of them, no matter what story arc I'm trying for. Of course, eventually you end up against an immortal and get royally fucked, but at least I try. And then go back and play it sensibly, when the rage has subsided for a while.

[mook]

i did way too much of this to herbert fucking moon in RDR.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyEEW_EfJIQ

[Utter Shit]

Funny thread.  I too tried to keep my Red Dead Redemption steed, Black Sambo, alive for as long as possible, with the intention of finishing the game with him.  Then I was involved in a randomly generated incident with some banditos about half way through and accidentally shot him in the back of the head at full speed.  He went down like a sack of shit.  I, of course, carved him up and sold his hide.

My flatmate got his Swindon Town team to the League Cup final (no cheats) and called me in to his room to watch it one Saturday morning.  He was wearing an especially bought charity shop suit, resplendent with flower, and had a bottle of champagne (Lambrini) on ice (no ice, and in a mop bucket) ready for the full time whistle.

I've never done anything as bad as that, but I have genuinely done the old "waving an imaginary card" routine at the screen after an already-booked opposition player has committed a foul.

Football Manager creates all sort of mad relationships in your head. I've set up teams with specific instructions to go in hard on players I feel have wronged me in the past, which can mean anything from scoring against me in a big game to rejecting my offer to sign them. On the other hand I have offered coaching roles to ageing players that have done well for me, even if they aren't any good at coaching.

[Cerys]

In Skyrim, in Whiterun alone I've murdered Arcadia because the lying bitch kept telling me I had a disease when I was clearly healthy, I've slit Farengar's throat because he wouldn't stop going on about Winterhold, bludgeoned Belethor to death for being a sarcastic cunt, and sent a fire arrow or two through Elrindir because he called me scum.  I've also sacrificed Lydia to Boethiah.  Oh, and that snob Nazeem?  Murdered him as he slept.  His wife then took out a contract on me, but I let her live ... for now.

And yet I won't kill stags, horkers, bunnies or foxes if I can avoid doing so.  In fact I've been known to reload games in which I've mistaken a distant fox for a wolf and shot it.

[The Βoston Crab]

This is the best thread in ages. I can still remember snapping the Cannon Fodder disc when my perennial, Jools, got squashed to fuck by an exploded roof, just as I'd completed a mission. It was a copy so I just got another disc but I was absolutely gutted, I'd protected him to the exclusion of all others for so so long.

[Big Jack McBastard]

I was single and was playing the ambitious and flawed The Darkness on my 360.  There was a lot of nice character development and depth to the relationships, most notably your sexy Italian-American proto mobwife Jenny.

She

Spoiler alert

turns up in the second one as a delusion

[close]

and there is a similar little slice of something fleetingly pleasant in Jackie's life amid all the decapitation and gut removal. I admit I lingered for a while there too.

[Blam!!]

Can only but echo all previous words typed about Football Manager (except the donning a suit bit), especially Utter Shit's line about waving cards. 2012 was particularly bad for this as we'd always end up with the most amount of bookings ourselves, despite seldom setting tackling to hard[nb]Well, certainly toning it down after about five red cards in four weeks. It felt like ten seasons on we were still being punished for past crimes.[/nb]. Had one player who, having played well enough to earn a four-year contract, turned to complete shit. Listed him, dropped him to the reserves, repeatedly offered him out to other clubs and even tried mutual compensation for two years, but he wouldn't budge, my own little Winston Bogarde. So when a club did finally come for him, I rejected the offers, preferring the sod to rot in my reserves for the last two years, before leaving as a husk of a 33-year old unemployable man.

Also, Fallout 3 - occasionally attacking Wandsworth when he got in my way. Sometimes it was only slightly, sometimes it was attempting to trap me in my room. Oh, and attacking the citizens of Rivet City. Not all, just the ones who refused to talk to you after you fucked up in the first conversation. I mean, if you're going to be called Sister...

[castro diaz]

I sure somebody else on here had a similar experience to my mate wearing a suit.  Or maybe it was that he bought some Uruguayan wunderkind and made girlfriend cook South American food or something.

I was once wasting time with him in that way only students can do, drinking cheap cider at 4 am and looking through my all-time career stats (not advised) and he noted that my team had scored something like 1000 goals since I took hold of the reins.  He said 'That means that you've shaken your fist up and down in muted celebration in a dark room a thousand times.  Imagine that.'

[Unoriginal]

Signing Ryan Giggs as a coach for my Port Talbot Town side was one of my proudest moments.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Also also in Fallout 3, when I was playing through it as an irredeemably evil git (such was the choice available to me) I got sick of Three Dog badmouthing me on the radio, so I deliberately cut a mission short just so I could hunt him down and give him a good Power Fisting.

You read that right.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I find it hard to be murderous in Skyrim. The more NPCs resemble real people the less I am inclined to fuck with them. Plus towns are tiny anyway so killing people would ruin the atmosphere.

On Football Manager i like starting with fictional players as I can then draw a picture of them in my head. I have an Argentine striker Marcelo Torres who nearly always picks up a second yellow once he's been booked. I have given him many imaginary tellings off. It's great.

[chand]

I was single and was playing the ambitious and flawed The Darkness on my 360.  There was a lot of nice character development and depth to the relationships, most notably your sexy Italian-American proto mobwife Jenny.  I, I mean my character, was helping her move out of her flat one day and later on she sat down on her sofa in the bare room and started watching To Kill a Mockingbird[nb]It had the entire film.  That's good.  I think.[/nb] on her tv.  She invites you sit down with her and she falls asleep instantly in that way that they do.  Anyway, I felt a bit alone at the time so sat down next to her, alternating between a black and white tale of morality with Gregory Peck, and watching her breathe in and out and occasionally stir.  I did it for too long, transfixed by a distant wonder.

After about a quarter of an hour an Achievement popped up lauding my romantic side.  It was Bill Gates telling me I cared too much about a non-existent girl in a fictional environment.  I had to go away and have a think about things.

Yeah, that was meant to be the point of that bit though, hence the Achievement. I think the entire film is on there.

[Kolba]

I think I've come a long way in my evolution as a game player with a moral compass. There was a time when an NPC was no more than a potential blood splatter to be wiped off my windscreen in Die Hard Trilogy. Now I think more about my actions and act within a moral framework.

Take Planescape: Torment. Often times I came across an NPC merchant who had some useful trinket I wanted for a member of my party, but couldn't afford. I wouldn't just steal with impunity, even though I could have. No, I'd wait for a window of justification.

Like the tailor with his magically imbued suits. Expensive suits. It's very impolite to do your embroidering while the customer is waiting, but I may have seen past that. But when you just had to be standoffish, rude even, to one of my party members? You had to be taught a lesson. It is circumstantial that in the teaching of the lesson I myself benefitted materially.

The market trader. Do you think I have time to stand around listening to you waffle about menial errands? I am a planar-hopping immortal, leading a band of wearied warriors on a quest of the utmost profundity, and you waste my time, asking me to deliver some NOTE for you?! Impudent bastard! I deserve compensation for this slight, compensation for your time wasting distractions! A magical bracelet with bonuses to stealth.