This leads to the game being unable to be completed. You can kill Yes Man and if you use an energy weapon and get a critical, he will die.and not respawn. The last issue with non-essential npcs is that you can end up soft locked, having to restart entirely. Compare this to Father or Maxson, who while 'locked' away, they show up throughout the game rather than being hidden away until the last five minutes.

Oliver and Lanius doesn't appear at all through a normal playthrough until you attack them, meaning that these characters, these 'antagonists' or these 'protagonists' are barely in the game. You can meet Caesar and House, but only later, they're locked away. The second issue, is that important npcs are locked away. This is one of the issues with no essential characters. In fact, I can literally kill everyone at the dam, kill everyone at the NCR outposts, nuke them.and get a pardon. It doesn't account for my actions, the NCR don't desert it, the Legion doesn't overtake it, no one repopulates it, etc. In New Vegas, I can go to the dam, kill everyone there, and the story will just continue. Having no essential characters is a pretty bad gameplay design, it comes off as boring and lame to me and ultimately serves no purpose. I will be comparing New Vegas and Fallout 4 in this post. I disagree and would like to make a case as to why essential NPCs are not as bad as many make it out to be. Edit: the title is suppose to be A Case Against *Non-*essential NPCs.įans have seemingly had an issue with Bethesda having NPCs that cannot be killed.

New vegas essential npcs