While Cyerbpunk 2077 will afford players quite a few options when it comes to building their characters and resolving problems, developer CD Projekt Red confirmed that you will not be able to attack children or kill certain story important NPCs.
“You won’t be able to attack children or NPCs connected with the plot,” said a CD Projekt Red representative in response to a question from a Reddit user (later confirmed by PC Gamer). “Other than that, you can be aggressive towards most people you meet.”
CD Projekt Red also confirmed to PC Gamer that acting overly-hostile in certain areas (or just causing too much mayhem) may trigger a response from enemy gangs, police, and others who aren’t on-board with your hostile behavior.
It’s hardly a surprise that you won’t be able to attack children in the game. Basic decency aside, including such a feature is a pretty good way to ensure that any rating board is going to either refuse to rate your game or slap it with a rating that will make it harder to sell it via most outlets. It’s why some open-world games just don’t include kids at all.
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The fact you apparently can’t kill certain important NPCs is a little more interesting. Everyone who played Morrowind remembers that it was actually possible to kill any character in the game even if doing so would prevent you from being able to finish vital quests. However, we have been trending away from that design direction in recent years. Developers are, somewhat understandably, more hesitant to allow gamers to ruin not only the intended experience but potentially face a no-win situation.
Still, Cyberpunk 2077 remains one of the most promising RPGs on the horizon alongside Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds. Of course, the latter game has a distinct lack of Keanu Reeves (at least to our knowledge).
Matthew Byrd is a staff writer for Den of Geek. He spends most of his days trying to pitch deep-dive analytical pieces about Killer Klowns From Outer Space to an increasingly perturbed series of editors. You can read more of his work here or find him on Twitter at @SilverTuna014.