Will the game have children on the streets?

[cycoholic]

Sure it should have kids. And if they're in there, they need to be 'mortal' just like the rest of the sprites. And don't forget this is Cyberpunk 2020 we're talking about, and Night City in particular. The nuclear family is long gone, all that's left is their shadow burned onto the walls of their houses in the beavervills. Children go missing in real life, more so in R.Tals CP2020. Those that don't go missing usually end up having to look after themselves, or at least have to be come tougher to get between school and home, if they go to school.

In the current 'real' world, there are child soldiers less than 10 with assault rifles. They're real and they're out there. Go looking at newsfeeds from wars and fighting from 3rd world countries and you'll see them. Now think about the harsh world that our Edgerunners live in. Now think about being a kid in that very same world. Are all children in CP2020 going to be child soldiers? No. But they're going to grow up differently than how we grew up. As an example off the top off my head, Carl from The Walking Dead. 1st series, he's a young kid, hiding behind his mothers skirt. Season 2 he's out of it for the most part, but we see him becoming tougher and asking more hard questions. Season three, that first scene in episode 1 where Rick, Daryl and Carl clean combat sweep a house. He became a child soldier. Again, not all are going to become child soldiers, but they're not all going to be 'chumps' either. Go read some of the source material for CyberGen, and read up on how the kids are in 2027 Incorporated America. Sure, ignore the Carbon Plague and tone down down the militarized aspect of it, but pay attention to the fluff text. Generation Gap in this particular case is handy on how to portray children in the world of CP20XX.

I can't have been the only one to have used kids in my games, especially as a Ref? Surely? You've never pointed a gun at the group, with the finger on the trigger being connected to a prepubescent teen with a oversized chip on his shoulder? Or had the toughened solo think twice when the little girl's lower lip started to tremble and about to start crying because he was being a big bully by threatening her older brother?

Including kids in the game could be controversial, especially if you can kill them. But they could add more layers into the game. What's the point in having a school if there are no kids?

I hope children are in the game, and are fully implemented.

 

[Tarathelion]

Well, i don't think its a matter of choice, really (killing children). I don't believe you would be able to publish a game like that these days. Not because of controversy but because the game could be banned.
Anyway, i strongly believe that killing random npc's in rpg games is unnecessary. I would prefer the game to block options like that. I do understand that for a lot of people a freedom to kill npc's increase immersion with a game. Having said that, i also believe the people don't really want to do that (go on killing spree in a city center), they just want an option to do that,, even if the will never do that. By people i mean mostly rpg's fans. I do consider killing random people in a game just because i can to be quite stupid. The question is, should a game allow you to do stupid things? Should a game allow you to rape women or men just to increase immersion? I believe, you need to draw a line somewhere. In my opinion, as I stated above, it is unnecessary.
Besides, I want Cyberpunk to be a serious game and not another GTA clone in different setting. In other words, game should strongly react to your actions. In GTA case, when you so something bad, police starts to chase you and so on. The problem is after you visit paint shop or lose notoriety in other ways, policeman that have chased you few seconds ago magically forget who you are. This happens 100 times within a game. That does not make much sense. For me its much bigger immersion dropper than not being able to kill npc's in a first place. You as a player, should face a consequences of your actions. I guess you could design a system that allows you to change identity or something like that bit if you do that multiple times it just getting repetitive and the game stops being serious as much as gta.

People say that in pen and paper you could do it and it was great. However, video game and p&p is something different. People have a completely different mindset. In p&p you have infinite possibilities, you could do absolutely everything. Because you could everything, you were focused on things you actually care about , usually following a story etc. When i've played p&p it never occurred to me to go on on a killing spree. I have just been doing things that my character would in that situation. On the other side, when you play a video game you do quite a lot of stupid things just out of curiosity, to check if you can, you go on exploring every single location in a game to see if there is anything interesting. This is something that you never do in p&p. Because of that i don't thin you can compare p&p and video games. Video games will always have certain limitations.

There were games that allowed you to kill random npc's. In my opinion none of them have dealt with is properly. The consequences of your action were way too lenient on character. Hypothetically, if you would start killing random people in Night City, I would imagine actions like that should result in players death as you would have all police forces on your back. I don't see a way of mitigating such actions and continuing playing the game without a complete loss of immersion.

One more thing: What would you chose out of 2 options:
- having kids in game and not having option to kill random npc's
- not having kids and having option to kill npc's

 

[cycoholic]

I'm hoping for a system in this game that can promise a certain amount of equal & opposite reactions. So in this example, you're out on the streets and decide to ice a kid just for kicks. You're observed by numerous people on the street (most of who will probably run), and at least some of them will call the police. You're more than likely observed by the cities CCTV network, maybe drones. Police respond. They'll either try and detain you or take you down. If you manage to get away, you could then get in contact with someone, (a fixer), pay him some money, and he makes a few calls. Or maybe you go to a Netrunner, and 'cleans' the local precinct's computer of your crime. You'd still have to be careful for a few days, maybe go to the other side of town for a while.

Probably asking way too much of the game though. Still, I can wish.

One more thing: What would you chose out of 2 options:
- having kids in game and not having option to kill random npc's
- not having kids and having option to kill npc's

Not having kids and having the option to kill npcs. It's always been one of those bugbears of computer games that I hate. I can't shoot/kill any/everyone, just the 'bad guys', and not being able to jump. I mean, I can shoot, A,B,C & D, but you're telling me E, F, & G have some mystic ability to stop me pulling the trigger? Always ruins the immersion for me. Same with jumping.

 

[braindancer12]

personally i dont miss them in GTA so i wouldnt miss them in Cyberpunk....

 

[maelcom]

In the old fallout , there were actual childrens that you can blow away in gory pieces.

Even in Fallout 3(with a mod thought).

If it's a mature game, being able to shoot at children should be possible. depending how it's done. (with karma/reputation, stuff like that)
Yes it's ugly, but in the Cyberpunk world, it isn't the innocent childrens we know nowadays, excepted for the corporate kids, most of them would look like the kid-drug-dealer in Robocop 2:

who've growing up alone in the streets without parents, who's able to run a drug production at 10yo or something.
There's already children soldier in the third world, so why some gangs wouldn't use them in 2077?
(even more if there's plenty of them, ready to kill for something to eat)

In fact it would be on-topic with the overall distopian future, where even the child's innocence would've gone away.
Most of them would probably have a body-count higher than your.

Killing NPC is fine for me, you go on a rampage, the Max Tac comes and blow you away.
It's most effective to be "scared" to go all-rampage, than just treat players like kids "no my sweetheart, you can't kill innocent people, everyone is corrupted, but not you".

Like in GTA, yes you can shoot at everyone, but if you're playing the story, there's no point going from point A to point B with 6 stars, shooting at random.

A good example of "you can't piss anyone you see" are the Shenmue games, those games are great, some of the best i have played, the gameplay is deep, the story too, you can spent hours walking in the streets to notice the details... but it's shenmue, and doing the same with cyberpunk would be ridiculous, not to say, boring.

There's no thugs wanting to kill you to sell your corpse at the body bank in Shenmue.

So there's a easy way to do this.

Do not put kids in it : problem solved
or,
You kill a kid : you got something like -50 karma,
It'll just be up to you, being an ***hole or being someone good.

I'm ok with kids in the games, if there aren't any, i'll be fine aswell, but please, no "special treatment" like "you can blow away walls with your hand, firing a full auto and killing 35 ppl, but kids are immortal." it would be even more ridiculous if they fight back and kill you because of that.

 

[chriswebb2020.736]

The only kids I can actually think we could see in 2077 would be street urchins. All the kids that actually go to school will be from corporate families, which will isolate and insulate them from the outside world, shuttling them to and from school in armoured AV's or privitised secure transports. I really doubt we would see any upper or middle class kids in 2077 unless we actually go inside the corporate resedential compounds and megaplexes. The lower class and poverty stricken kids will attend the 'school of hard-knocks' and the only education they would recieve is that the corps are loaded, the streets are harsh and they should try not to get shot.

I can imagine swarms of little kids, operating in Dickensian style gangs, overwhelming their targets and filching everything they have.

 

[Tarathelion]

I'm hoping for a system in this game that can promise a certain amount of equal & opposite reactions. So in this example, you're out on the streets and decide to ice a kid just for kicks. You're observed by numerous people on the street (most of who will probably run), and at least some of them will call the police. You're more than likely observed by the cities CCTV network, maybe drones. Police respond. They'll either try and detain you or take you down. If you manage to get away, you could then get in contact with someone, (a fixer), pay him some money, and he makes a few calls. Or maybe you go to a Netrunner, and 'cleans' the local precinct's computer of your crime. You'd still have to be careful for a few days, maybe go to the other side of town for a while
.

Yea, 2 problems with that. Thats quite a lot of work for devs and ii think it works nice only once. If you do this multiple times, its just a system to avoid consequences that you will easily learn and exploit.

Maelcom - Yes, its a mature game . There is nothing mature about killing children or random people. In fact its quite childish. Karma meters or reputation meters are a terrible idea. Killing an innocent should not be overlooked just because you helped a grandma cross a street 10 times. Every deed should have proper consequences. Good or bad.


There is nothing wrong in playing an asshole. Having said that there is a difference between playing an asshole and playing a psychotic killer. I don't thing there is need for dev to allow th latter

 

[Sydanyo]

The ability to kill a child wouldn't be in the game so a few people could play psychotic killers.

It would be in the game so that the game would be realistic in that regard. It would be in the game so that the developers wouldn't be telling us that we can't do something. It would be in the game so that the developers would take the stand that having killable children in a game doesn't make anyone any more or less crazy than having killable adults does.

As I said before, I personally don't see any difference between killing a 50-year old, a 20-year old or a 3-year old. They're all human beings, they've all got lives to live still, and killing one is just as bad as killing the other. Coming up with some manufactured moral rules isn't at all what game developers should be doing.

The adage "women and children first" comes from brave men giving their lives for said women and children. However it, nor any other adage, does in no way mean that women or children have more of an inherent value to live than men do. That's some really twisted old wives tales logic right there. Having said that, it also doesn't mean we can't choose to save the children and let the adults die.

Thus, it also means we can choose not to shoot that child when we see it in a game, just as we can choose not to shoot any other character. It's a moral choice we make, but when you take it away as a developer, you're making our moral choices for us, and that's about the furthest from healthy as can be.

Of course, if the game comes out with the ability to shoot and kill children, every nutjob in the world will take that pulpit and blame every single school shooting that has ever happened and will ever happen on this game. Blame video games, not gun politics or the general well-being of the youth.

 

[Decatonkeil]

I don't think the child soldiers analogy you guys are presenting can go hand in hand with the concepts good writing and above all, maturity. It's bad enought that history has seen its fair share of dehumanizing the enemy through propaganda so that we become as reductionist as that. If child soldier and innocence lost is going to be about the only excuse we need to allow for killing children in the game (mercy killing if you wish, not to different from what the anti-christ of male dominated gaming Anita Sarkeesian proposed, only now applied to children...) then forget about maturity and openmindedness. Instead of making an exercise in writing about the drama of being a child soldier or a a hit child, both things that are happening in real life, we would be wrongly choosing to discard all this potential.

 

[walkingdarkly]

I don't mind if there are no kids, but if kids are there, and bystanders generally are killable, then kids should also be killable. If they are, then the game should STRONGLY dissuade you from killing them though, maybe by making it effectively impossible to survive more than a few minutes if you do.

Anyway, there was a mention of censorship boards. Does anyone know how that does work? Is it a ban/mature age limit/can't sell in Wallmart? I'm just curious on what the commercial impact would be.

Nowadays a game would be banned in America if it had killable kids because "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!! What these aren't real kids?! STILL THINK OF THEM ANYWAYS!!!" And the shool shootings as well...even though those have been going down for the past millenia.

It would be awesome, Faux News: "The devloper CDProjeckt made a simulator for killing children! See it's true gamers are sick psychos that want to kill kids!!!"


Also for several others, ya'll need to read up on the world of Cyberpunk 2020 and Night City. I think it's been said before it'll be said again, the world of Cyberpunk is ugly, raw and brutal. I really can't wait for this game to come out and I hope and pray they kept their world and keep 77 as close as possible to 2020 as they can cause it's gonna make awhole lot you people scared witless and more nervous that a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs at how raw and brutal the world that Mike Pondsmith made is.

 

[gregski]

A topic on children in the game pops up and the only thing that seems to matter is if they will be killable or not. Ah, dat hardcore RPG crowd.

 

[animalfather]

A topic on children in the game pops up and the only thing that seems to matter is if they will be killable or not. Ah, dat hardcore RPG crowd.

lol i agree, i totally RP in games so i never kill kids of any bystanders not even in GTA unless i have to drive really fast and they get killed by accident.
personally kids in the game would be nice for the realism they dont need to be on the streets but indoors.

 

[Sardukhar]

A topic on children in the game pops up and the only thing that seems to matter is if they will be killable or not. Ah, dat hardcore RPG crowd.

Well, then..SAY something.

I mentioned how rarely Cyberpunk deals with children. Blade Runner, Neuromancer, Matrix, pretty much kid-free. Why do you think this is? Is it the inherently "adult" nature of the genre? Can you think of any exceptions? Should videogames be an exception? Is it an open world thing? Do you think CDPR could inject children, killable or otherwise, in a manner that wouldn't disturb the high-tech, low-life theme of Cyberpunk? How so?

 

[animalfather]

did the witcher games have any kids???

 

[Garrison72]

Yes, we already said they did. A couple of them were NPC's you spent time talking to. One of them is plot crucial.

We've already had this discussion. I'm not even for allowing the player to kill civilians, children or otherwise, unless it has grave repercussions - as in thrown in the slammer, half of your goods confiscated, etc. There's no point in allowing this kind of behavior in a serious game. Now in DA:O you could kill a child, but it was properly set up in the story. Something like that I wouldn't mind. Killing kids just for the hell of it only means the game gets banned in more countries.

 

[animalfather]

Yes, we already said they did. A couple of them were NPC's you spent time talking to. One of them is plot crucial.

We've already had this discussion. I'm not even for allowing the player to kill civilians, children or otherwise, unless it has grave repercussions - as in thrown in the slammer, half of your goods confiscated, etc. There's no point in allowing this kind of behavior in a serious game. Now in DA:O you could kill a child, but it was properly set up in the story. Something like that I wouldn't mind. Killing kids just for the hell of it only means the game gets banned in more countries.

could u kill kids in witcher?

 

[Garrison72]

No.

 

[dragonbird]

Just to make that clear, you couldn't kill civilians at all in The Witcher series, not just kids.

 

[Mikedudeh]

Indeed. But the amazing thing is how few people even notice, cdpr really did a good job separating the chill talk and shop zones and the combat zones.

The reason all civilians were invincible was because murder wouldn't be true to Gerald's character as taken from the Witcher books. But Cyberpunk is different because your character is a blank slate so the same rules don't apply.

However it's handled, it will be well handled.

 

[Sydanyo]

I mentioned how rarely Cyberpunk deals with children. Blade Runner, Neuromancer, Matrix, pretty much kid-free. Why do you think this is? Is it the inherently "adult" nature of the genre? Can you think of any exceptions? Should videogames be an exception? Is it an open world thing? Do you think CDPR could inject children, killable or otherwise, in a manner that wouldn't disturb the high-tech, low-life theme of Cyberpunk? How so?

Well, 99 times out of 100, having kids in movies or TV series takes the level of the product down immensely, mainly because kids just aren't good actors that often, and can't empathize and emote properly. They can't draw from experience, so they have to be told what to do, or they're making shit up. For example, scenes where a child has lost their parent, when the actor in question has no clue what it's really like to be utterly destroyed like that, just aren't believable most of the time.

Too often having kids in these things ruins the whole experience. I've noticed this ever since I was a kid myself, and had a huge aversion towards kids in serious movies and TV shows ever since the 80's or something like that. Perhaps it's a conscious choice to keep them out of stuff that at least attempts to be good, like the Matrix, or is really awesome, like Blade Runner.

Having said that, this of course isn't always the case. There are plenty of shows and movies where having a kid or kids in a larger role worked out just fine, although I have to say, I'm not sure any of those roles was meant to be taken seriously. Sometimes there's good dramatic acting by kids in science fiction though. Pitch Black, for example, didn't suffer a lot from having Rhiana Griffith in it in a somewhat big role, although I think she was 13 or 14 by that time, so not exactly that young of a child anymore.

And she's Australian, so she's got that mystical acting bonus all Australian actors and actresses seem to have.

In games, children are easier to model in such a way that they don't look so phony. Voice acting is much easier to do in a believable manner than actual acting, and the characters themselves as well as their dialogue can be completely sculpted by adults. As far as having kids in games goes, I'd personally just want realism in that regard. Yeah, cities and towns are usually like 1% of their actual size, with around 0.0001% of their actual population, but it'd still be nice to look around and feel like this could actually be a real place; you've got homes, sustainability, children...

In Skyrim, in Whiterun, there are these snotty brats, the Jarl's kids, which I'd love to kick in the moat every now and then. But no, you can't touch them. I mean, kick a Jarl's kid in the moat, then go to the block (again), have Alduin save your ass (again), and then be vilified in that town. That'd be realistic, no?