How do you think games should deal with killing essential NPCs?

Game Over

Don't waste people's time with them thinking they can go on when they can't.

Morrowind handled it well

having characters that are immortal is dumb, punish players for killing essential NPCs don't hold their hands

>>385620603
>tfw you kill that random NPC in a random tomb and get the message

I was young enough that it spooked me from playing for the rest of the night.

>>385620293
Easy, don't make essential NPCs.

If you want the casual audience, something like BotW's Blood Moon mechanic that respawns every NPC (friendly/enemy/neutral/any combination) could work.
Otherwise, dead NPCs stay dead, and the game could dynamically evovle based on which NPCs is killed

>>385620684
I haven't played borrowind in a while, which NPC was that?

Just have a ghost NPC on the same spot.
>I couldn't move on to the afterlife until I told you this important message, traveller
>you cannot pass this bridge until your collected 7 bear asses
>I know the last time I told you this you got very angry, but now you can't do shit anymore
>*poof*

Ideally, there should be no such thing as an essential NPC. But if it absolutely comes down to it something like Morrowind works best, or depending on the tone of the game something really silly like the Baldur's Gate solution (Have a character pop up to tell you what important stuff that NPC had to say and then vanish) also works.

>>385620903
>>385620684
Crazy Batou right? Nord with some kind of magic artifact? Fun fact, apparently that is a bug, he isn't relevant to any quest at all.

>>385620293

this message scared the hell out of me when I was younger. i couldn't handle the burden of my consequences

>>385620293
Ideally make different paths depending on your actions. Since this can become extremely complex though it probably isn't worth the effort just to please some nerds that make up a tiny percentage of their potential playerbase.

Having malleable plots that can work around them

or resurrection/replacement quests that don't contradict the game's lore

>>385620293
Make the BotW approach: every story needs to be finishable with interacting with only a minimum of NPCs. All others you meet are helpers that point you to your way, at best.

So even if you were to kill every story important NPC you could still walk up to the final Boss' lair and kill him. It may be harder, as you lack the story tools meant to defeat him, but it's still possible.

And all exposition NPCs would give you that may point to important artifacts may be hidden in the world, too. Only much more cryptic.

Bonus points: as this would make the game less reliant on a proper order on quests and triggers, the scripts for Quests would stay smaller, which means less bugs, which means a higher quality game.

File: 8th Circle.jpg (17KB, 250x147px) Image search: [Google]

17KB, 250x147px

>>385620293
Yes I cast the Armageddon spell.

No I didn't have a problem finishing the game,.