A few
days ago, as of the time of writing, I had a conversation
with my friend Aldowyn discussing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
The particular topic for discussion was an often contested feature of
Skyrim's design, the use of the “essential” flag. As many of you
are no doubt aware, non-player characters in the game who are
involved with any of the game's vast number of quests often receive
the distinction of being marked “essential” by the system. This
distinction gives such NPCs and inability to be killed by anything in
the game, even the player. The reason such a mark would exist in
Skyrim, just as it did in it's predecessor Oblivion and the third
main entry in the Fallout franchise, is so that their exists no
possible way for the player to miss out of any of the quests offered.
Since these NPCs cannot die, their contributions to the plot points
and overall progression of any given quest can be assured. While I
understand the logic behind this, I do not believe that the
“essential” flag is necessary to making a good open-world RPG. In
fact, I would go so far as to say that their current implementation
is fundamentally flawed, which is the topic for this week's post.
The very
first reason the “essential” flag can be problematic is that it
can cause unnecessary frustration for the player. Among my friends,
we often talk about a very common principle in Bethesda games. I call
it the “Law of Inverse Likeability.” This law states that the
less likeable (and more irritating) a given NPC is, the higher the
odds become that said NPC is marked essential for one reason or
another. Because of this condition, whenever player's are angered by
NPCs, odds are they will have no recourse despite potentially being
one of the most powerful and/or influential people in the entire
world. The NPC that best exemplifies this phenomena is Maven
Black-Briar, who resides in the city of Riften in Skyrim. Ms.
Black-Briar owns and manages the Black-Briar meadery, which
distributes their brand of mead, both high and low class, throughout
Skyrim. In order to make sure that her business stays as profitable
as possible, Maven has contacts in both the Thieves' Guild and the
Dark Brotherhood that she uses to keep both legitimate businesses
living under constant fear and the criminal underworld firmly in her
grasp. Many other people in town also note that she is the unofficial
ruler of The Rift, the region of Skyrim where Riften is the capital.
Though well-meaning, the Jarl, ruler of the region, is easily
manipulated by Maven through her steward and other members of her
staff.
When
players talk to Maven Black-Briar, she speaks to them in a very
condescending voice, telling them that if they step out of line, she
will have her contacts in the Dark Brotherhood get rid of them. While
there are several other problems with that, including the fact that
the player could have possibly systematically slaughtered the
entirety of the Dark Brotherhood (which I will get to in a moment),
the real issue stems from what happens when the player attacks her
(and it is extremely hard to resist the temptation to do that). Once
the player knocks Maven's HP down to 0, she falls over, waits for a
few seconds, then gets back up and is instantly healed. This is
because despite being one of the most pointlessly smug and arrogant
characters in the game, she is marked “essential”. Most players I
know want to kill her, but are unable to without the aid of
console commands (which players on the PS3 and 360 do not even have
access to). Even when the questlines involving her are all completed,
the game never removes the essential flag from her, meaning there is
no legitimate way to permanently dispose of her. Like many other
characters in Bethesda games, most notably children (even if their
essential flags are significantly more justified), she is character
who is unbearably smug and suffers no consequences for it. This is a
character who knows she has Plot
Armor, knows players cannot harm her, and knows
that she will always be on top. In a game without the essential flag,
the writers would be more cautious about presenting such a character
because the possibility exists that the player could just hack them
to pieces in a drunken, psychotic rage. It would require skill either
in positioning her character or changing around her interactions with
the player to make her more palatable. Her annoyance is only made
possible because of the way the essential flag is implemented.
The
other problem I have with the essential flag is that it can often
hamper the possibility for role-playing in games like Skyrim. The
best way to explain this is to use an example of a time where the
absence of an essential flag really increased the role-playing
potential. Oddly enough, the scenario I am thinking of also comes
from Skyrim, in one the best questlines in the entire game: The Dark
Brotherhood. After completing a quest involving the death of a
vicious and cruel matron of a small orphanage in Riften at the
request of a young child who ran away from it, players can initiate
the questline of this infamous guild of assassins by sleeping in a
bed. When the player sleeps, they will awaken in the small shack with
4 others present, 3 of which are bound in front of the player with
bags on their heads, the other 1 in a black outfit, watching the
whole thing play out. The woman in black, named Astrid, explains that
the slaying of the orphanage matron was a Dark Brotherhood contract,
which the player stole. While this would normally anger her, she was
impressed by the player's guts and skill, so she decided to test
him/her. In order to escape and join the Dark Brotherhood, the player
needs to kill one of the other 3. The woman ends her explanation by
saying that no one leaves until “someone dies.” Contrary to what
one might assume, players do not have to take their blade to one of
the 3 bound “guests”. The alternative is for the player to ready
their weapon and strike out at Astrid, initiating combat. Should they
win, she dies permanently and the alternate version of the questline,
where it is possible to eliminate the Dark Brotherhood in their own
hideout, becomes available.
Imagine
what this would be like if Astrid was marked as essential to the Dark
Brotherhood questline and given the privilege of Plot Armor. Instead
of killing Astrid, players would merely knock her out and still have
to kill one of the 3 others to join the Dark Brotherhood. By choosing
not to abuse the nature of the essential flag, Bethesda gave players
an entirely new reality to explore and see what would happen as a
result. While Skyrim only made this possible in the Dark Brotherhood
questline, there are a number of other placed where similar alternate
paths are plausible. It should be possible to sell out the Thieves'
Guild to the authorities and go from there. When the Companions
reveal their plot twist, it would make sense for the player to
question whether or not they want to stay and consider betraying them
from the inside. Lastly, what if killing the head of the player's
chosen faction during the Civil War initiated a quest that let them
defect to the other side or destroy both factions. The fact that
players can kill anyone is part of why people praise Fallout: New
Vegas. Contrary to belief, it is not because players are
omnicidal maniacs who want everyone to die (I am sure that is just
me). It is because it creates a significantly greater opportunity to
role play and make interesting choices.
Despite
all of my ramblings, I do still see merit in having a system that
flags NPCs who are essential to quests. This is because while players
might want to have agency, very few people like it when a quirk in
the script of the AI, combined with the random spawning of enemies,
results in the death of a very important NPC or shopkeeper. I do not
hate the idea of an essential flag, what I take issue with is its
current implementation. What I propose is a system where NPCs flagged
as essential can still be killed, but only by the player. Other NPCs
and enemies attacking them should not be able to kill them. While no
one would shed a tear for the death of Maven Black-Briar, it would be
immensely frustrating to fail a quest because a dragon chose the
wrong moment and place to spawn in town, killing an entire town's
worth of people. If only the player can kill essential NPCs, then
they become the architects of the game. They can choose for
themselves whether or not failing a quest is worth killing an NPC who
is unnecessarily smug or downright detrimental to a society. In an
RPG like Skyrim, designers want to encourage players to do their own
thing and find their own path. This would be one of the easiest ways
to do that.
