It's not so much a question about the ending, it's more about something I tried to do towards the end of the game. Have you tried to kill your dad to see if the game would break? (after saving of course) I understand it is a pointless and "mean" thing to try and do, but I was just curious.
I did on the return trip with him from vault 112. Next thing that happened was every quest related to him ended. I started it over from a previous save.
I'm kinda scared to try it out, so I'll have to create a custom save and put this theory to the test. Sorry Dad, but that's what you get for abandoning me and having me track you down!
I... thought he is Essential? So he can't be killed? Like, if you shot him, he'll just fall down on his knee then stand-up again when there are no hostile actors?
You can actually kill him? I'm surprised they would let you kill him, since he's important for the main story. I guess they did what they did in Morrowind, where you can kill every single character. That will, of course, fail the quests that they have, but you can always reload to a previous save. However, a lot of characters in Fallout 3 are essential and can't be killed, if I remember correctly. So why is the dad not essential?
He is essential. I don't know how the other poster managed to kill him. Maybe using the console to make him non-essential? My original post was about trying to kill him to "test" the game in a way. I didn't clarify that I never managed to do so.
Oh, I thought he had killed him, which would have been weird, because they didn't allow you to kill non-essentials in Oblivion, so I have no idea why they'd let you do that in Fallout 3, especially because I know that a lot of NPCs are essential and can't be killed, which made it even more confusing since James is kind of the most important for the story. Yeah, it's possible to kill him with the console or using mods, I think, but that's not the point. The games nowadays are babysitting us too much, not letting us go on a killing spree and completely failing the main questline.
Darn, you actually got my hopes up there since I play the game on the 360. Oh well, I had fun emptying my shotgun rounds into him after I got him out of Vault 112 for all the crap I went through trying to find him. That made me feel better.
There is a mod that makes essential NPCs non-essential, however it wouldn't affect the story in any way and I think it would break the main quest since there would be no way to finish it. Still the mod can be pretty useful if you just want to kill every single NPC in the game.
Have any of you watched the videos on Youtube of the person who killed every person in Fallout 3 (that could be killed). It's actually quite hilarious. Fallout New Vegas was better for it though because there were so many more NPCs. In FO3 the game really doesn't want you to go that route and be totally evil, so it is funny seeing how you can still progress through the main story line even though you have killed most of the members of your own faction.
I saw those videos as well. I tried to not kill too many people because I thought the story was unfinishable if I did that, was surprised to see you can still keep going.
I don't think I ever tried? Pretty sure he was "invincible" so there is no real way (besides modding) to kill him. I think it would break the game or at least the main quest though.
I thought it was pretty funny they had your dad run all the way from the vault where you save him to Rivet City. They kind of expected you to travel with him, I guess? It was pretty fun to try and beat him up then.
