Ted gives me an anecdote from Ultima Underworld 2, where he decided to kill the king after earning an audience. After he’s subdued and arrested, the king reappears with a vague platitude about being prepared for assassins. His “psychotic break” was then mentioned in later dialogue, the game acknowledging and remembering what he did, but not letting it railroad his current save. This shaped much of Arena, Daggerfall, and Morrowind, and its absence is another “defensible philosophy” where he and Bethesda now differ.
“I believe in role-playing games you should have the freedom to do whatever you want, but there will be consequences for it. It’s probably good not to have the player have the opportunity to make really fatal errors early on in the game,” he says. “If the important NPC is some homeless guy outside the town that you first encounter, then maybe you’re going to try out your dagger on him, then you don’t want to ruin your game on that. But if it’s a king, and you’ve taken a long time to get an audience with him, and you decide to attack him, then yeah there’s going to be consequence. I don’t think it should be the end of the game, but you’d have to be really dumb not to expect something from killing kings.”
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