Line #61 Main/VulnerableCivilians


1	Some video games have InvulnerableCivilians, where not only can the player not harm innocents, but neither can enemies.
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3	Others have Vulnerable Civilians. Some games, like the infamous ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' series, allow the player to go on a killing spree and cause all the chaos they want, but some put the [=NPCs=] directly in harm's way. These are Vulnerable Civilians, the people whose lives are at risk from the dangers of the game world itself.
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5	If shooting Vulnerable Civilians comes with a penalty, particularly a health-based one, you have HostageSpiritLink.
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7	!!Examples
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9	[[foldercontrol]]
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11	[[folder:Action Games]]
12	* Used in the ''VideoGame/{{Crusader}}'' games. Friendly fire is quite possible if there are enough enemies, and since there are [[NoOSHACompliance civilians present in many dangerous areas of the game]]... In fact in some cases you ''should'' shoot them, as some of them will try to sound the alarm when they see you. The closest the game gets to penalizing the player for killing civilians is the fact that in the second game, they don't have anything of value to loot from their corpses.
13	* ''VideoGame/{{Extinction}}'' have civilian groups which are vulnerable to being snatched away by Jackals or devoured by the Ravenii. You'll lose the game if too many innocents are killed in any level.
14	* Used in the ''Superman Returns'' games....in fact, it's rather the entire point. YOU are pretty much invulnerable (the worst anything can do is stun you), but instead the city has a life bar when it takes damage and/or citizens get hurt. If it gets emptied, then it's game over. Nice touch of realism, but sadly it pretty much turns the entire game into one long EscortMission.
15	** Averted with the kittens, which are unharmed by all of Superman's attacks.
16	* Civilians in ''VideoGame/MetalSlug'' are invulnerable to all harm from both the player and enemies, ''unless'' mummies or zombies are involved. Those hit by a mummy's purple breath will be turned into mummies, and those hit by zombie vomit will be turned into zombies. They're thankfully immune to player and non-undead attacks while they're still human.
17	* ''VideoGame/SteelHarbinger'' have civilians in the streets which can be killed in the crossfire, either by alien converts or by UnfriendlyFire. You don't get penalized for killing them, even by accident, though tagging them before they're killed will net you extra points.
18	[[/folder]]
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20	[[folder:Action-Adventure Games]]
21	* In ''VideoGame/{{Crackdown}}'', jaywalking civilians can repeatedly get up after being struck by a car at high speed, provided that the driver is another civilian. However, they're very vulnerable in other ways -- freaks specifically target civilians, for example.
22	* Played with in ''VideoGame/TheMatrixPathOfNeo'' during some escort missions. If you attack an [=NPC=] they won't take damage, but if an enemy hurts them enough to kill them it's mission over.
23	* Used in ''VideoGame/{{Prototype}}''. The zombies of the zombie apocalypse will happily chow down on the hapless citizens of New York City. [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential And you can kill them yourself,]] if you want to.
24	* Used in ''VideoGame/TheSaboteur''. The Nazi soldiers occupying Paris gladly abuse and execute civilians, often just for the hell of it. It gets sadistic (as expected of the Nazis) when German soldiers pass civilians on the street and proceed to punch them and beat them up for no real reason other than that they can. And if the civilians fight back, or are simply witnesses to the abuse, they get shot down as they attempt to run away, or get arrested and sent to some unspeakable fate.
25	* ''VideoGame/ScarfaceTheWorldIsYours'' is a mixed bag. Tony Montana won't shoot the innocent. His (playable) employees can murder whomever they wish to. With the exception of some plot relevant characters such as the bank teller.
26	[[/folder]]
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28	[[folder:Adventure Games]]
29	* Creator/{{Accolade}}'s ''Law of the West'' permits the player (as the Sheriff) to gun down every civilian they meet, including children. No, [[Website/SomethingAwful Mr. Parsons]], just because you ''can'' doesn't mean you're ''supposed'' to -- it will be reflected negatively in your score and may cause the Doctor to refuse to treat you if you get shot.
30	[[/folder]]
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32	[[folder:First-Person Shooter]]
33	* In ''[[VideoGame/BoilingPointRoadToHell Boiling Point: Road to Hell]]'', the player is free to engage in hostilities against everybody in Realia. This includes the civilian faction. They're not completely harmless, 'tho -- cross a certain line, and old grannies will start peppering you with grenades, which they carry in their handbags. It's a tough country, after all.
34	* Mostly played straight in ''VideoGame/DeusEx'' -- the New York, Paris and Hong Kong levels are all full of [=NPCs=], and just about all of them can be hurt or killed... except for some plot-dependent characters such as Paul Denton and Walton Simons, who are invulnerable until the game decides otherwise.
35	* The invulnerabillity of the ''VideoGame/GoldenEye1997'' civilians depends on the difficulty levels. Turning them from meat shields into bullet sponges... which the military doesn't seem to care about either way. Of course, hiding behind them is fine... but rolling them over in a tank is not. Eventually.
36	* In the original ''VideoGame/HalfLife'', and its expansions, the player can kill just about everyone, including their fellow colleagues and security guards meant to help them. The only person that cannot be harmed is the mysterious and seemingly bulletproof G-Man.
37	* ''VideoGame/PAYDAYTheHeist'', ''VideoGame/PAYDAY2'' and ''VideoGame/PAYDAY3'' have civilians that run around in panic when a heist goes down. Players can scream at the civilians to get down and even tie them up to claim them as a hostage. Because firefights between the players and the cops can get heated, civilians that are running around could get shot by you, resulting in a longer wait when respawning and losing money at the end of the mission as a penalty. Naturally, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard the cops can shoot through civilians without hurting them.]]
38	* This is true of ''VideoGame/Postal2''. A lot of [=NPCs=] will want to kill The Postal Dude, sure, but a lot of them will also readily attack each other--sometimes along ideological lines, sometimes just for the hell of it. You even get an achievement for seeing an NPC snap and start a fight unprovoked. Naturally, the rather dickish civilians of the hellhole known as [[IronicName Paradise, AZ]] are all completely vulnerable to ''your'' violence, but there's nothing to keep them from becoming threats to each other.
39	* Done in ''VideoGame/{{STALKER}}'', where every character (including major characters) could be killed, and most human settlements were subject to random mutant or bandit attacks. The only two exceptions are Barkeep and Sidorovich[[note]]Because of an oversight with a late game scene where you suddenly teleport back to his bunker for a few seconds, it's possible to kill him with a grenade, but from a gameplay standpoint this is actually just a copy of him.[[/note]], because they stay in bunkers where you can't draw weapons. Thus, it was entirely possible for quests to become unobtainable as major characters were killed in random shootouts.
40	* Various Franchise/JamesBond games, including the Playstation adaptations of ''VideoGame/TomorrowNeverDies'' and ''VideoGame/TheWorldIsNotEnough'' contain civilians in several stages, and shooting them will cause an instant failure on 007 difficulty.
41	* The ''VideoGame/RedFaction'' games featured theoretically harmless NPC types, which were mostly non-threatening civilian types such as technicians or white-collar clerks. Their main purpose was to get in the way of your bullets and dock your score or KarmaMeter when they died whether you were the one who killed them or not. One irritating example in ''Red Faction 2'' involves a handful of civilian [=NPCs=] who run blindly down a hallway only to physically run into your captured PowerArmor suit, killing themselves (presumably by crumpling their delicate, spongey heads on your knees). Since your stolen suit of armor can deal CollisionDamage, you will usually kill the idiot civilians whether you intended to or not.
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44	[[folder:Light Gun Games]]
45	* ''VideoGame/Alien3TheGun'' have the prison stage, where you're given the task of assisting in covering fleeing prisoners in the middle of a xenomorph attack. Prisoners ''can'' be killed if shot by accident, though you don't actually suffer any penalty for AccidentalMurder (but saving prisoners will grant you health boosts and bonus points at the end of the stage, so there's that).
46	* Multiple stages in ''VideoGame/GunfighterTheLegendOfJesseJames'' (both games) contains innocent bystanders, and shooting them will either remove points from Jesse's life or reduce the timer.
47	* Both installments of ''VideoGame/LethalEnforcers1'' and ''VideoGame/LethalEnforcersIIGunFighters'' contains bystanders all over the place, and not only does shooting them remove points from your life, but will actually ''demote'' you by the end of the game (turning you from a sergeant or commander to a lowly patrolman or detective). Naturally, these bystanders have a [[TooDumbToLive nasty habit of sticking themselves out during shootouts for no reason]] other than to get into the players' way.
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50	[[folder:[=MMORPG=]]]
51	* There are a few ''VideoGame/GuildWars'' missions and quests where different types of civilian [=NPCs=] get attacked by monsters. They generally do very little damage and die quickly, with attack animations resembling punches and hits.
52	* In ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', some mobs will attack critters (small creatures that won't battle and have very little HP like rabbits, etc). The game keeps most [=NPCs=] and mobs seperate by design (apart from the odd EscortMission) though.
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55	[[folder:Real-Time Strategy]]
56	* In ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer'', civilians (and their technician brethren) are very weak, they fire at their target for a few seconds then run around uncontrollably with their arms flailing for several more.
57	* ''VideoGame/StarCraft'' has a number of "civilian" and "scientist" units in some of the missions that are considered non-neutral units. They cannot attack at all, and have somewhat lower hit points than terran infantry units.
58	* ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII'' has several levels where you need to kill civilians, whether to preserve their souls as they turn into zombies or to prevent them from escaping and joining the resistance against the undead. [[spoiler:[[FaceHeelTurn You play the same character in both cases]].]]
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61	[[folder:Role-Playing Games]]
62	* In ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' and ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsII'', non-player characters won't draw aggro from enemies, but enemy attacks can still hurt and kill them. Your attacks can also hurt and kill them. In most cases doing so will raise your Sin level (a bad thing unless you really enjoy being invaded).
63	* In ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'', monsters never invade walled towns, but monsters that travel along the main road will attack travelling {{NPC}}s on the road as well as smaller settlements and farmsteads, if they spot an NPC working on their farm. Because all [=NPCs=] in ''Oblivion'' (except for patrolling imperial guards) are unique individuals (many of whom give sidequests) rather than randomly spawned characters, each NPC killed by monsters is one less person in the game world, who will not be replaced, and if they were part of a sidequest, their deaths make that quest unfinishable.
64	* Most of what was said about ''Oblivion'' above also applies to ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'', with the added fact that a dragon can strike almost anywhere outdoors, including towns, and if you don't take it down quick then an NPC or two will most likely get caught in the crossfire and die. Some plot-critical [=NPCs=] are [[InvulnerableCivilians invulnerable]], but more often a family member, friend, or apprentice of the deceased will often take their place (if they were a shopkeeper or blacksmith or something), and those who knew them will now comment on what a tragic waste it was that their life was cut off. ''Skyrim'' at least gives [=NPCs=] regenerating health so if they do survive a random attack they won't die instantly when the next one happens.
65	** With the ''Dawnguard'' expansion installed, vampires can be even worse than dragons. Dragons can hit the small towns that are part of the overworld, but won't trouble the major walled cities (like Whiterun) that are treated as separate areas. ''Dawnguard'''s vampires, on the other hand, could care less about that -- they can and will spawn inside those cities to kill [=NPCs=], possibly before you ever reach them. And the major cities tend to contain the more important [=NPCs=], so a vampire attack in one of them has a much higher chance of locking you out of a quest or otherwise inconveniencing you.
66	* ''VideoGame/Fallout3'' uses a system similar to ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'', where the smaller, open-area towns like Big Town, Canterbury Commons, Arefu, or Republic of Dave were occasionally subject to random monster attacks, which can result in the death of quest-related [=NPCs=]. In fact, monsters would sometimes spawn ''right inside the town itself''. At higher levels, this would often involve Yao Guai or Deathclaws, resulting in the death of everyone inside the town. Additionally, there are a number of named [=NPCs=], most notably the merchant caravans, that roam the wasteland and are likely to be eventually eaten by monsters. Especially the high-level monsters such as Albino Radscorpions from the ''Broken Steel'' DLC.
67	** In ''Point Lookout'', Madame Panada, one of the DLC's two merchants, has set up shop outdoors in the fairground ruins, leaving her a sitting duck for the hostile Tribals that spawn after you place the Cogwave Jammer. As with the caravan merchants, you can retrieve the key from her corpse to loot her inventory.
68	** Most ''Fallout 3'' [=NPCs=] central to morality-type quests cannot be killed, only knocked unconscious. For example, the NPC [[spoiler:Victoria Watts]] will start following your character around when her morality-type quest is activated, meaning she can turn up almost anywhere in an invulnerable state (as I discovered when accidentally [[spoiler:Mini-Nuking]] her [[spoiler:up north near Raven Rock]], assuming she was an attacker). These same [=NPCs=] often lose their invulnerability right after giving you the quest-specific message.
69	** All of the child [=NPCs=] in ''Fallout 3'' (those who aren't killed by scripted effects) are completely invulnerable.
70	** In previous ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' titles, any human can be killed: shopkeepers, random civilians, even children. Killing children makes everyone hate you and [[VideoGameCrueltyPunishment can even draw bounty hunters after you]]. Also, killing people in your hometown can trigger a NonStandardGameOver. Unlike ''Fallout 3'', however, towns were never subject to random monster attacks.
71	* ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' fixes the monster spawning locations so that monsters no longer randomly spawn right in the middle of settlements. It's still possible for monsters(such as the Deathclaws near Sloan or Cazadores near Jacobstown) to chase you into town and kill the residents, though. As with ''VideoGame/Fallout3'', travelling and outdoor merchants, such as the 188 Trading Post and Grub & Gulp Rest Stop, are easy prey for Legionary Assassins, raiders, and other baddies. Often, they will [[LeeroyJenkins suicidally charge the enemy]].
72	* In ''VideoGame/Fallout4'', settlements can be attacked by Raiders, Gunners, or other monsters at any time, though Defense assets reduce the likelihood of this. Although merchants and most settlers can only be knocked unconscious by NPC attacks, [[IJustShotMarvinInTheFace the player can still accidentally kill them while they're down]], and one's death renders any [[InfinityPlusOneSword unique gear]] sold by them [[PermanentlyMissableContent unobtainable]]. A few NPC's, such as the Vault-Tec Rep, lack the partial invulnerability of settlers and can be killed by invading enemies. Like ''Skyrim'', [=NPCs=] have regenerating health so if they survive a random fight they won't die instantly when the next one happens.
73	* Done in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' when you're in areas where you can actually fight monsters. The [=NPCs=] (who generally tend to be adventurers themselves) can and do get into fights with monsters all on their own, while monsters will even pick fights with each other as predatory animals are wont to do in RealLife.
74	* The ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' series uses this from time to time. Most notably in the Jugdral games ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemGenealogyOfTheHolyWar Genealogy of the Holy War]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemThracia776 Thracia 776]]'', which prominently featured a demonic cult that hunted down and sacrificed children. Interestingly, saving a civilian resulted in an automatic level-up in ''Genealogy''.
75	* Played straight in ''VideoGame/UltimaWorldsOfAdventure2MartianDreams'', where roaming monsters would attack and kill members of the Martian expedition if you left the doors to their houses open after visiting them. This made the game unwinnable, so you needed to remember to always close doors behind you to keep your buddies safe.
76	* Almost all of ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines''' civilians can be killed, except for those in {{Truce Zone}}s. However, doing so depletes the KarmaMeter and, especially if overtly supernatural powers are used, can cause a NonStandardGameOver for violating the {{Masquerade}}.
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79	[[folder:Turn-Based Tactics]]
80	* Done in very strange ways in ''VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown'': during terror missions, the aliens would often ignore your soldiers for the chance to kill a civilian, if they had to choose. And FridgeLogic rears its ugly head when you realize the aliens had ''hours'' to themselves from when you were alerted of the mission to your actual arrival on scene, and apparently waited for you to show up before starting the civvie killing. Psychological warfare?
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Context Main / VulnerableCivilians