Adopting kids then immediately moving them to a homestead feels weirdly cruel

[NordOfSolitude]

So I just did the whole Hearthfire adoption thing for the first time and I'm sitting here feeling genuinely uncomfortable about it. You go grab these kids from the orphanage, they're all excited that someone finally wants them, and then you're like "cool, now live in this isolated manor in the middle of nowhere with a steward you've never met."

Like Lakeview Manor is beautiful and all but it's legitimately in the swamp. Heljarchen is on a frozen mountain. Windstad is out by the water with nothing around for miles. These kids just escaped an orphanage and now they're stuck at a homestead with zero other children, no actual community, just you and maybe Ysolda or whoever you hired as steward. At least in Solitude or Whiterun they'd have other people around.

I'm wondering if anyone else felt weird about this or if I'm just overthinking it. Like mechanically it makes sense - you get a home, they get a room, everyone's happy - but narratively it's kind of messed up? Has anyone actually tried keeping adopted kids in town instead of shipping them off to the countryside, or is that not even possible with how the game works?

 

[RiftenWanderer]

Yeah I actually felt the same way on my last playthrough. The game doesn't really give you a good option for keeping them in the city - they're tied to the homestead you own, so if you want adopted kids at all, you're kind of forced into this scenario. It's one of those things where the mechanics and the story don't quite line up.

That said, I think the in-game logic is supposed to be that you're giving them a safe home with actual space and resources, which is better than the orphanage. But you're right that narratively it's bleak - they go from a place with other kids to total isolation. At least the steward is supposed to be looking after them during the day when you're off doing Dragonborn stuff, but yeah, that's... not exactly comforting when you think about it too hard.

I ended up just not adopting kids after that. Some people roleplay it as "I'm building them a better life" or whatever, but if the game made it so you could have them in your house in Whiterun or Solitude, I'd probably do it. The homesteads feel too remote and lonely for that kind of thing.