Summary
Not everySkyrimlocation is designed to be seen by players, as one fan stumbles on a room full of NPC corpses. While these dead bodies sound like the setup to acreepySkyrimsecret, the truth is actually a rather interesting insight into how the fifthElder Scrollsinstallment handles its NPCs. Ever sinceMorrowind, Bethesda established its modern take on essential NPCs – story characters whose death severs the thread of prophecy. However, unlikeMorrowind, subsequentElder Scrollstitles took away the possibility for players to kill these NPCs, and thus persist in a doomed future of their own making.
While this made sense for pivotal characters such as Martin Septim, Serana, or even M’aiq the Liar, some felt that Bethesda had started to apply the essential tag far too liberally. Ultimately, it was a tool to keep the game organized, and to make sure that all the quest flags were fired off properly. However, many NPCs inSkyrimalso belong to the protected category, which means that they can solely be killed by the player. This is where the game’s genius sandbox design comes through, but also where some of its quirks show up.
Whenever a named NPC, such asSkyrim’s popular punching bag Nazeem, gets killed by the Dragonborn, their corpse doesn’t actually disappear from the game. Rather, it gets moved to a junk cell normally inaccessible to players – as deleting a dead NPC that isn’t a generic enemy results in a crash. However, if aSkyrimplayer decides to use console commands to teleport to one of those dead NPCs, they will inevitably find themselves in this macabre storage, as was the case with Catcannnnn, who shared a video of their experience on the mainSkyrimsubreddit.
An explanation was provided by get-tps, who explained the nature of how NPC deaths are handled by the game’s code. Though Bethesda has cultivated a reputation for its bugs, this type of creative solution is quite common in game development, and the freedom offered by the Creation Kit has allowedSkyrimto foster a modding community on an unprecedented scale over the years. SomeSkyrimNPC modshave even dabbled with making fewer NPCs essential, thus giving the freedom of “bricking” a playthrough back into the hands of players.
This tradition of essential NPCs has continued intoStarfield, but whereasSkyrimaccounted for killed merchants or inn owners by having replacements take their place,Starfieldis less rigid by comparison. Ultimately, players hope that Bethesda will reexamine the way it treats essential NPCs for thenextElder Scrollsgame, and that the developer will lean more toward the system it perfected withSkyrim.
