outside of a few guards (literally) at kvatch and the order of the pink rose or whatever, the NPCs in oblivion were the most self centered, lazy, unmotivated tools i can recall in recent game history. barely any of them showed up at the FINAL battle. i hope that Skyrims citizens take a more active role in defending their homes than the good for nothing louts that filled oblivion. i saw NPCs walking right by open oblivion gates and they didnt even bother to go get some guards. WTF. im hoping that because this game is filled with nords who are less tolerant of people or monsters that piss them off it wont be an issue this time around. if im halfway through my first playthrough and i dont see anyone doing anything other than "radiant AI" [censored] im tempted to just watch playthrough videos on youtube or read a walkthrough.

Hated how uninvolved the NPCs were in Oblivion - they all just acted like (and oft resembled) old, retired people. I believe Bethesda lampshaded this in one of the recent Gameinformer articles by claiming that actors in TES IV could only support a certain number of actions on their schedules. Even Morrowind's NPCs felt more outgoing to me. They mostly stood around, but everything from their idle animations to the way they'd say "my time is precious, so make it quick", they felt very involved and frankly downright badass.

With various NPC trades and things such as mines and mills near the towns in Skyrim, I'm hoping we'll see an actual working class. Wouldn't it be interesting if NPCs had to earn money before they could spend it in shops?

With all of the information we have on the AI, I'm going to have to say no.

So this isn't a problem in morrowind? Right...

I can't wait to see how the npc's look, move, talk, and react in skyrim. I'm thinking we will hopefully get to see them in action at e3.

I would say the reason we felt Morrowind to be more thorough with it's NPC's was because it was more populated. To be honest, NPC schedules made them feel less realistic to me. When I saw Gin-Wulm strolling through the Market District, I thought of how it was in his schedule to go to this place at this time. It made them seem like robots.