The only signs of decay of bodies in OB were rarely you'll have a quest and find a zombie with an actual name, not just "zombie". I think it would be cool to have a skeleton model for each creature, race and gender. It seemed very odd to have murdered someone in OB and come back a year later and the body hasn't changed a bit. I'd like to at least see the clothes be mostly torn apart from animals trying to eat the corpse, I'd like to see maybe flies swarming around the body and just a basic body decay over time. Point is: make it more realistic and not like OB where it looks like a guy is alive and napping for eternity.

2nd opinion: Now that I think about it, why not just have the body disappear when you're not around. If the body is located in a city, we can say the guards have been notified and took care of this. And we can also find a new tombstone with the name of the victim on it. Or if the body is in the wilderness, we can just say some animals took it home for dinner.

body decomposition is really awesome! i wanted the bodies to rot away or get eaten

This would really benefit immersion. I support the idea!

Yeah... The only reason I feel like something like this is necessary is because it's really lame in Oblivion how you can leave a body somewhere for months, come back, and it's till there, perfectly preserved. I personally would be happy if they just made it disappear after a few days.

Because this is an important thing to spend time on.

Well they did say that when a wolf makes a kill it hangs around the corpse.maybe they could add an eating animation.so if you leave a dead naked bandit in the wilderness,maybe you come back later to find a half eaten corpse with a wolf pack knawing on the remains.

and liek maybe looting a rotten corpse u could catch a disease or two

The bodies in Ob don't disappear? That's...odd. I'm all for for them disappearing without rotting. Obviously if theres a quest or something it would be col to have a stage in between fresh and zombie/skeleton.

But realistically...either the body will be found and buried, or wild animals would eat literally all of the remains. We don't have this in modern times, but even 200 years ago, any meat in the woods is gonna be gone, bones will be scattered...in a matter of days. I hunt deer, and when we clean em, we just leave the "gut piles" sitting in the cornfield. I've never seen them after the first day, because coyotes come and eat 'em. Obviously, a whole body with 5x more mass and hard bones might stick around, but like I said, it's only coyotes and maybe raccoons now, not cougars, wolves, bears, etc. Although I think most cats only eat fresh kill...

See, this for me is in the category of "too much" realism. I don't really want to see a decomposing corpse that I originally killed. I mean i'm okay with zombies being "decayed" or bodies hanging off of hooks in a few torture chambers or like they were in oblivion, but I don't want the world filled with decomposing bodies, I find it kind of disgustingly unnecessary (it wouldn't gross me out too much or anything, its just kind of a "Really? Do we need this?") . Even a disappearance or they just turn into skeletons after a while is okay by me, just not real decomposition

Bodies should be removed or buried if they're in towns or villages and rot or be removed by scavengers anywhere else. I didn't like Oblivion's unremoved, still fresh bodies after someone attacked you in town months ago.

I mean in a town they shouldnt last a day laying there. But in the wild I would say day two shows some rot, day 3 a pile of bones, gone by day 4.

easy, if they die in an exterior, they will disappear in a few days because either a guard or an animal found them and ate them or had them buried.
if they die in an interior they will either rot away over time, and eventually turn into a rotten corpse looking something like a draugr, or a guard finds them somehow and they get buried. if a guard finds them then they will know you killed him which is why you will need to hide corpses if you didn't legally kill them. adding this into the quest log would be easy so as to not be confusing.

How would they know you killed them? even if you didnt hide it, if they didnt witness you they cant say oh well... he did it. that doesnt make sense.

"Legally kill" them... i lol'd at this.

In Morrowind, you could carry out writs of execution. A legal killing.

dead bodies dot last but 3 days, we wouldn't be able to see the decay

this idea has my support too!

it would be cool to see but if its not in it wouldnt bother me

A good idea, would add a bit of realism thats for sure, but either way no bug deal if it wasnt in the game.

^Big, not bug! :unsure:

Oh wow, that's a good way to have a lot less people working for Bethesda. Morbidity aside, that would take a tone of CG and scripting work. Such realism sounds cool, but your talking a lot of overtime. Any Dev who is reading this is likely already on his 5th pot of coffee today as is.



Who's to say that's not what happened anyway?

Actually if anything the bodies need to disappear faster in these games. On of the reasons that caused all the slowdown and freeze ups in Fallout 3, was that the bodies hung around for a long time, which added addition lag to the gaming world. This is why it was advised to dispose of every body in Morrowind and close every door after you opened it.

I could get behind this idea. I also want the zombies to be a little more individualized

An idea rolled around in my head just now. I wonder if they have a graveyard like shivering isles. When you kill someone you can go visit their graves. You could totally do roting corpses though,that is always a nice touch.

It is a good idea, and not so difficult to implement. Reneer has done a good job making this happen for Oblivion:

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=oblivionmods.detail&id=2340

This mode also has an optional chance to have the dead rise as a zombie after a while...

I didn't quite get it why in Morrowind they put in a system which allowed you dispose of the body, where as in oblivion they took that bit out. So you have no way of avoiding the guards. '

I'ma be stealth kill that guy and hide in the shadows, hopefully without the alarm going off and people finding out but hey... Wait a minute... I can't remove the body from the scene... What do I do? Ohhh nooooo''

alarm meaning some kind of ... bell..... Or guard shouting HE'S OVER THERE.

What if you cut off the head and burn the body. Even if they find it how do they know who it is?