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Elder Scrolls V

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KvP:
They really just need to cut the Radiant AI bullshit. It's always been a big selling point of theirs and they've never implemented it the way they've promised to. Oblivion promised all the same things but the Radiant AI just broke the game entirely so they scaled it back. It's not an issue of platform power, it's an issue of implementation.

Some of that looks interesting, and Fallout 3 was much better than it had any right to be, but I can't expect much from TES these days.

Dimmukane:
I was under the impression that they only took it out because they ran out of time to balance it.  They've had some 4 years or so to work on this (with actual final hardware, no less) and have likely made some huge improvements.  I don't see why they'd extend the Radiant AI to quest-giving and story if the AI wasn't itself working really well.

In any case, the lower your expectations, the more you'll be surprised.

snalin:
As far as I remember, back around Oblivion Radiant AI was mostly cut out of the game because they realized that high end computers had problems running it with everything implemented. With no time to optimize, they cut out most of the system, leaving a core that was fairly reduced. It's a great idea, though, and not undoable - Mount & Blade pulls off stuff like that pretty well, with all npc characters picking from a varied list of goals, and creating a fairly believable environment and an interesting world that way. It's just about making a robust system of controlling the NPCs without scripting their every move. It's designing genius - once you have the  system in place and working, you can rework it for different games, and get a much more interesting game world with much less work.

And, to be fair, it hasn't "always" been their selling point. It was one of their selling points for Oblivion, and I can't remember hearing anything about it in Fallout 3, although checking around, it's mentioned in interviews. I'm not convinced that the AI behavior will be much better than in Fallout 3/NV, but it will certainly not be worse, unless they fall into the same trap as in Oblivion of making 3 conversations for for the NPCs to pick from.

Stuff they must do for the game to work, though, is getting more damned people in the cities, making combat (and especially dragon combat) interesting, and make a decently compelling story. Morrowind had the first and third, Oblivion had, well, kinda the second, so they probably have it in them. Somewhere, maybe. Exploring the world will be good - Betehsda making exploration downright uninteresting would be like Sid Meyer making a game that won't steal away 5 hours without you noticing.

KvP:
The reason I recall them taking it out of Oblivion was because over an extended period of time, chances were that any given character ending up murdered somewhere reached 1. It would be like that bug in Fallout 3 where the guy you give scrap metal to in Megaton spawns off a cliff and permanently disappears, but multiplied dozens of times. I assume the "descendants" thing is an effort to remedy that to an extent, but if you're just going to make a carbon copy of a quest-giving NPC when they die, what's the point? Especially when character interaction is entirely numeric, as it always has been in TES. Kill my dad, will you? That's a -15 disposition penalty right there, buddy. I'll need at least 20 gold or the passing of an easily mastered minigame to forgive you.

Anyway, yeah, three things that I don't believe Bethsoft will ever improve upon - Writing, Voice Acting, and Character Building.

Hopefully this time you'll be the focus of the story and not the capable lackey of the focus of the story.

ackblom12:
Well, I would say that Fallout 3 was a huge improvement in all three categories (concerning VA that is kinda sad) but the writing was mostly impressive in the occasional side quest and not the actual main quest... which actually may not be an improvement now that I think about it since it was the exact same in Oblivion.

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