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Royal_Sir

How do you treat disposable NPCs?

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In games like Halo, Call of Duty, Brutal Doom, and more, you have friendly soldier NPCs that fight alongside you. Most often they are inferior to your skills and tend to die in many situations.

My question: How do you treat NPCs? Like cannon fodder? Like actual teammates? Like human shields? Like your personal punching bag?


For me, I try to keep them all alive at any cost. I feel as if it's my responsibility to keep them from dying, and whether that means putting them in relatively safe combat positions or taking a few bullets for them, I do whatever I can to minimize the risks for them.

In Halo, I'll actually reload the save if a fellow marine dies.

What do you do?

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Depends on the game, really. If I'm in GTA, I adopt a "no first strike" approach. I rarely go on mindless rampages and even then they tend to be against the cops/military. The peds I tend to leave alone, but if one of them cuts me up in traffic ...

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I kill them if i don't need 'em and take their ammunition, I usually let them open doors and activate stuff for me first, Though the case is different in games like COD, Sadly i can't kill team mates ;_; .

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Halo 3 the fight against the marines. Honestly me and my friend just die of laughter while we sadistically mow down all our fellow marines in Halo 3

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Depends on the game i'm playing, if they are useful to me, i'll keep them alive, if not, i'll kill them for health, ammo, weapons or armor, because if they are not helping, then then may as well be dead for good.

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Part of my personal power fantasy involves being the biggest hero ever, so I go to great lengths to keep my comrades alive... Which usually means keeping them out of combat :/

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I like to try keep them alive as well. When immersed into a game I like to pretend that their survival will assist in our war efforts out of my combat zone. In Brutal Doom, the Marines sometimes vanish (God I'm sick of them) and imagine them returning to command HQ to help secure the areas I cleared and do minor missions as our Human resources are scarce.

If I can save civilians in games, I always act that as a priority objective (even in Blood 1). Quake 2 I didn't regularly kill the poor prisoners, I just let them free but I don't think there is much hope for them.

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Sometimes I play through a Deus Ex game with the goal that absolutely nobody must be left alive. It can get challenging.

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As long as it's not hostile, I let it go free.

It then usually gets killed by a monster or cliff because it's about as smart as a deep-sea sponge, but it's the thought that counts.

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I think it comes down to what type of character I'm playing as. For example, I will leave the scientists alone in Half Life, but I frequently kill peds in GTA games, and I always kill the civilians in Blood. I have this stupid habit of getting too much into character, and thinking about how I'd act if I were them. I will, some times, make exceptions, like it's the case with that one guy in Doom 3 stuck in a sort of chamber thing, and you can either release him, or activate the chamber and turn him into a bloody skeleton. I love doing that.

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Chezza said:

I like to try keep them alive as well. When immersed into a game I like to pretend that their survival will assist in our war efforts out of my combat zone. In Brutal Doom, the Marines sometimes vanish (God I'm sick of them) and imagine them returning to command HQ to help secure the areas I cleared and do minor missions as our Human resources are scarce.

If I can save civilians in games, I always act that as a priority objective (even in Blood 1). Quake 2 I didn't regularly kill the poor prisoners, I just let them free but I don't think there is much hope for them.


My god, I kill the prisoners in Quake 2 for the sheer fact that they sound retarded! One of the sound bits sounds like it came straight out of a goats mouth! Tell me I'm wrong

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Generally I leave them alone if they are neutral or try to keep them alive if they are friendly.

The first time I freed the prisoners in Quake 2, I figured they'd follow me and fight off enemies. So it was real disheartening to see them do nothing but wail in constant torture. It wasn't until later that I learned they still carried items, but I still feel bad mercy killing them.

The escort mission at the end of the first Bioshock is less punishing than most, but I still try to complete it in one go without getting the target killed. If not, then I reload the save and keep at it until I do.

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It depends on the relationship the game establishes between the PC, the enemies, and NPCs. If NPCs are a dime a dozen with standard AI, then it doesn't much matter, does it. But if they have personality, intricate dialogue or something, it is a signal this character fits into the game organically and will have a piece of information to reveal at the proper time. NPCs are nice to keep around because they basically mean you go in aggressively while they keep 1/3 of the enemies distracted, meaning the game is more predictable and surgical if you only have to deal with a few bad guys at a time. That could be a positive or negative thing. If the underlying mechanics of the game are enjoyable, then I don't mind doing the dirty work myself. But if it's just a slog to punch enough bullets into enemy meatshields, I don't mind a chance to stretch my hands or admire the scenery or think about the next strategy down the line

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Depends on what character I'm playing as. If I'm someone like Caleb I consider the innocents expendabale and don't care if the get shot in a firefight. But if I'm someone like Gordon Freeman I try to cooperate with the survivors. (Guards and Doctors)

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The people on rollercoaster tycoon willingly went on a coaster I named "If you ride this, you will die for real". I take no responsibility.

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WildWeasel said:

Sometimes I play through a Deus Ex game with the goal that absolutely nobody must be left alive. It can get challenging.


That sounds hilarious.

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Well, I killed Trashcan Carla out of cold blood in Fallout 4 due to her being annoying as shit.

"Ah. The robber. Hey, I paid up so, get lost."

"I WAS JUST WALKING BY."

She was kind of disposable anyway. Can't kill Marcy Long sadly, she's a flatout bitch despite me saving her and the others from Raiders in the beginning of the game. And after all that? She's still a fuck.

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WildWeasel said:

Sometimes I play through a Deus Ex game with the goal that absolutely nobody must be left alive. It can get challenging.

Do you kill even Paul? That's fucked up, man.

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It is usually my objective to minimize alied casualties and maximize hostile casualties, playing the role of AI defender is quite fun sometimes.

That and I prefer to keep the Brotherhood part of the Brotherhood of Steel meaningful, Ad Victoriam.

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I see the Brotherhood of Steel as The UAC when it comes to my character, I'm mostly a sarcastic fuck to Elder Maxson due to him being the Facist Dictator of the Brotherhood of Steel. They're good people, but their morals are completely fucked up. Especially their racism to Ghouls and allied Synths. So I quicksave and usually go on a rampage in the Prydwen, and when I die I go back to my normal stuff.

Anyways, I kill NPCs that I find annoying and dickish in the game. I think I killed a Settler in cold blood too (luckily I didn't have a companion at the time).

But fuck it, my character is a good person. It's me that's sadistic in the game sometimes.

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Depends on the game. In Half Life I've tended to keep Security Guards and Scientists alive and following as long as I can, usually letting the guards fight until they die and keeping the scientists out of harms way. Though once in a while I lead a guy into one of those ceiling monsters just for fun. In GTA I'll kill pretty much anyone as none of them are much use. Plus they all carry money, which is useful, and hookers often drop knives in San Andreas, which is a useful starting weapon.

I used to kill the civvies in Dark Forces II constantly, namely because they always seemed rude and they often dropped critical items like shields and health or batteries. It wasn't until later when I realized that these actions actually affected the game's outcome. For example, killing WeeGee in the homestead will dramatically shift you closer to the dark side ending, while light side powers and saving the civvies in Barons Hed from the goon massacre will shift you towards the light. But getting my ass kicked a lot when I first played the game, I felt like I had to kill the peds just to see if I could get some health or armor.

Mysteries of the Sith sort of changed it by just sapping your force meter all the way when you killed an ally soldier or civvie. Seeing that the expansion relies heavily on using the Force, regularly killing the allies and civvies would force you to wait around for your meter to refill. So I learned to stop harming my comrades in that game, even if the Rebel troopers were all terrible and useless in most fights.


I never really killed the Doom 3 peds unless I was in cheat mode, since I felt that killing them sort of went against the game's story and overall experience.

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For me, the best npcs can be set up like sentry guns to form crossfires or to draw enemy shots as bait whilst I get my bead on. Half life had some of the best bots in this respect, as they were poorly armed, but not useless or helpless, were easily controlled, (a single key) and definitely added to the games atmosphere. By contrast, hl2's bots were a complete disaster. They were forever getting in the way, triggering fights before I was ready, and at one point, pushing me off a second floor ledge and into a fire.

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I tent to quicksave a lot if there are killable NPCs involved, keeping them alive at all costs.

Unless it's really fun to kill them... Like throwing people off the helipad in Saints Row III.

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Im currently playing The Original Strife and heres my MO:
If a Guard does not attack me, then I leave it alone. I only kill immediate threats.

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