Invulnerable Civilians: Difference between revisions

But sometimes these friendly faces show up where the monsters also live. Sometimes they don't, but follow you there. But the funny thing is, the monsters often just seem to ignore them. They only care about hurting you. Even attacks that catch the friendly characters in their wake don't seem to hurt them at all. Why is that?

 

 

A number of games have these. It's often a compromise between allowing more friendly characters to wander around the world to make it feel alive and populated, while at the same time avoiding violence that might upset [[Moral Guardians]] or come across as inappropriate. Obviously, violent games tend not to do this, allowing civilians to be killed if they are not protected. Most games avoid the issue by not allowing friendly characters and enemies to coexist in the same location.

It's generally the norm for players to not be able to hurt civilians, of course (though some games allow the player to [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|commit such atrocities]]). This refers mainly to when enemies ignore or cannot hurt them.

 

 

* In ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]: Ocarina of Time'', Dampe the gravekeeper wanders around the graveyard at night. As you pull gravestones and ghosts come out of some of them, the ghosts attack you, but kindly ignore Dampe, who in turn ignores them. Always wondered why the hordes of skeleton monsters wandering around Hyrule field at night didn't march into Lon Lon Ranch and go on a stabbing rampage. Its door was always open.

* In ''Guild Wars'', a young girl you meet in an early area playfully follows you around. Enemies ignore her and only try to hurt you. This is more a case of [[Infant Immortality]], since most other civilians can be killed if you lure monsters close to them. And when the same character shows up as a teenager in Eye of the North, she is most certainly not invulnerable (though she's not a civilian anymore either).

* Comedic example: In ''Crazy Taxi'', pedestrians jump out of the way of your taxi when you drive towards them. It's impossible to hit the pedestrians, even if you realistically should be able to. The only exception is that it is sometimes possible to reverse and turn into a passenger that you've just dropped off, but the game doesn't register the collision (the person's body passes right through the car).

*** The Simpsons Road Rage, however, subverts it. You ''can'' run over both the pedestrian you've dropped off and other pedestrians waiting for a taxi on the road. However, other than complaining at you and being dragged off like every other object you can collide and drag with you, the pedestrians aren't any worse for wear afterwards.

** Same for the earlier ''Driver'' games.

** The pedestrians in ''Midtown Madness'' also have incredible dodging skills, though in the first game, you could turn the weather to snowy and drive down the sidewalks of Lakeshore Drive to force them to dive into Lake Michigan. They would welcome death after that.

* Used and subverted in ''[[City of Heroes]]''. Civilians will often find themselves struggling over purses or ancient artifacts, but most of the time, they'll walk through groups of evil body-possessing mages without a problem.

** Also in the villain-side Mayhem missions. These are the only times they ''are'' attackable by players, just like enemies and scenery. However, the same attack that puts a dent in a SWAT officer's armor or destroys a car does absolutely nothing to a citizen.

** In the Orks' defense, killing fleeing civilians it a lot less fun than killing Space Marines.

* While this trope technically does not refer to your inability to hurt civilians, there is an interesting note for ''[[Harvest Moon]]''. In HM, if the player were to accidentally strike (or all-out attack) a livestock animal with a farming tool, they will lose a "heart" of affection, and may become sick. It would have been easy to cost the player a similar heart of affection if they strike a civilian, but this does not happen!

* Not a game, but the concept is played with in the webcomic ''[[Kid Radd]]''. "NPC Invulnerability" possessed by former NPC's makes them useful in dangerous situations, as they don't possess the ability to be hurt. Characters that have both NPC Invulnerability and offensive skills are quite rightly considered some of the most frightening things in existence.

* ''Neverwinter Nights'' features one of the most frustrating applications of this trope. Some Invulnerable Civilians will ignore your attacks, but God help the adventurer who takes a swing at an NPC only to discover that a.) he's invincible and b.) he's ''pissed off.''

* [[Justified]] with Namingway in ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'''s DS remake: he has the ability to always appear in whatever location the story mandates your party to visit next, complain about his current situation, find a new calling, change his name to <Insertcurrentsituationhere> way and ask Cecil to help him out in some way and possibly reward him somehow, in no particular order. Said locations are invariably filled with lots of dangerous monsters, and the one time you actually need to fight him a good way into the game, he only has a measly 32 HP. So how does he survive? Simple: after you complete his subplot and find him in one of the randomly chosen locations afterwards, he gives you his good luck charm that he's apparently carried with him the entire time: a Safe Travel augment, which eliminates all random encounters. The game doesn't bother to elaborate if the very first monsters he runs into afterwards kill him brutally or if he barely manages to escape to a nearby town, realizes the danger he's been in the entire time and spends the rest of his life sobbing in the corner of a nearby inn.

* The webcomic ''[[RPG World]]'' lampshades this trope (just like it does for every single other video game trope in existence), in [http://rpgworldcomic.com/d/20021027.html this comic].

* In ''Might & Magic VI'', if you lured monsters into town, they'd continue attacking you, but would completely ignore the townspeople walking around (funnily enough, the townspeople would be happy to attack ''you'' if you start killing them).

* Certain areas in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' have wandering predators and wandering herbivores passing right by one another...but so help you if YOU should happen to walk near either of them.

** That specific case (herbivores and carnivores walking right by each other) was actually addressed in the games latest expansion pack, where in some cases you have predators ignore you to go eat something that they actually hunt (wolves on some sort of moose like animal), though they will gladly start attacking you as soon as they are done 'eating'.

* The Demon Scrolls in ''[[Okami]]'' will happily float right past any NPCs in the area, but if you get anywhere near them, they actually ''chase'' you out of [[Suicidal Overconfidence]].

* Played straight in [[Lagoon]] for the SNES, where the first major thing you do is explore a dungeon and do an [[Escort Mission]] with a little boy. He can't be hurt at all, but goes at quite a slow pace...

* Mercilessly averted in [[Fire Emblem]] games once green "Other" units were introduced. While you couldn't kill them yourself, bad guys would regularly take them hostage and either leave them to be slaughtered by something else or do the killing themselves.

 

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[[Category:Video Game Characters]]