Sorry. The thread out ran my thought processes and my typeing skills.

That 20 hours is the Main quest ONLY, the sidequests and the exploration would add at least another 20 to it.
Also DAO and Witcher are more linear RPGs and they tend to concentrate more on the main quest, while TES games are more about the open world and sidequests.

But even in Morrowind you can finish the game rather quickly if you concentrate only on your main quest, you just have to stop to level up at some times.

OK, let me put it like this - the same number for OB was 30. I just prefer a lengthier main quest, is all. I am getting in a bit of speculation though, so let's just leave it at that.

It also likely depends on how fast you push it. Do you stop to read books to understand the backstory of everything that's happening? Do you talk to people? Do you adventure to find better gear and get gold to buy better gear, or do go with what you find on the way? Do you take any detours at all?

Saying a game or a quest takes 'x' amount of hours to do is really completely meaningless. By whose measure, and how does that measure compare to you? How good are they? What exactly did they do to complete it? Different people play differently... some are faster, others are slower, some have an easier time, others have it tougher.. a lot of things affect how fast you can complete something compared to someone else. It's a useless measurement if more information is not given.

Didn't Pete say that the radiant story did not mean random quest generation on twitter? Something along the lines of 'If you think Radiant Story means randomly generated quests you misunderstood what it is.'. From what I've understood there are quests which can select a random dungeon that you haven't been in yet as a destination for it, but not that the quests themselves are randomly generated in the sense that it generates new quests over and over.

That's also true. In reality, it will vary depending on how you play the game. Not just the things you mentioned, but also things like whether you use fast travel or not, and how often you use it when you can (Assuming the 20 is accounting for the time spent traveling between locations.) what kind of character you're playing and a lot of other questions. Since we're not told about details like this, it doesn't tell us much, and because of this, I don't usually put much stock in this sort of estimate beyond using it as a general guideline by which to compare the length of games. For example, if Bethesda gave an estimate that a certain other game's main quest was thirty hours long, than I'd assume its main quest is longer than Skyrim's, though for that to be reliable, the estimate needs to come from the same source.

For me, I expect the main quest will take a lot longer than 20 hours. In part because I don't generally start the main quest, then go through it as quickly as possible without doing anything else. In the Elder Scrolls, one I've started the main quest, I'll generally divide my time between it and faction quests, side quests, exploration and other things, so even if the estimated length of the main quest was half of what Bethesda has said it was, I don't think it would feel too short, unless the flow of the story suffered due to its length or lack there of.



It's been said that it's not randomly generated quests, yes, but it still seems a bit confusing as to what it is if it's not, because I've heard that it can do what you described, and that sounds like pretty much what randomly generated quests usually entail to me.

Whether you call it randomly generated quests or not, though, the concern in this thread is still valid, I think, because either way, we've still been told that Radiant Story quests can randomly select a dungeon you haven't explored to send you to, and that doesn't answer how getting a new quest will work if there's no more dungeons you haven't visited to select from.

Come on!
Radiant story is a tool helping programmers design non repetitive, responding to world and realistic quest. Who said that every single one of them has to have something to do with a dungeon? Raiding them is only one aspect of the game, and Ican assure you that there will be plentiful of other type quests. That was just an loose example that Todd gave us, since dungeons are points of particular interest for most players, but Radiant story stands for so much more.

Considering that Radiant Story dungeon based quests have the main purpose of sending you to explore dungeons I doubt the quests Radiant Story generates are much more rewarding than just running through a dungeon without a quest. The dungeon is the point in it self, the quest is just an excuse to go out to the dungeon.

I imagine most Radiant story quests that send you to dungeons are basically this:
1. Talk to NPC and receive quest.
2. Travel to dungeon and explore it while clearing it out.
3. Kill specific enemy in the dungeon or find some trinket or artifact.
4. Return to NPC and receive reward.
That type of quest isn't really something i would miss all that much.

Anyways, beth hasn't claimed Radiant Story would be an infinite content generator only that it would tailor quests to fit your character and provide incentive to explore the world. And with the improved focus on dungeon design you don't need all that much more incentive to explore. You also have to consider how much data it collects on you. Does it just track if you've discovered the location or if you've delved into the deepest room an looted everything there. If its the latter Radiant Story could send you to a dungeon you've already found but not explored completely.

This isn't the point of this thread. What if there are NO dungeons to select from?

This is what I meant. Obviously nobody has an answer, so let's just wait and see. It still remains a concern of mine, but thankfully one of the very few I have.

This.
Most modern RPG`s are easily completed in under 20 hours these days. I completed Two Worlds 2 in under 20 hours and that was with a few sidequest and wandering. Mass Effect 2 was easily completed in under 20 hrs.
So yeah if you just blaze through the main quest then yes you will have a short game, but the whole joy of TES games is the sidequests and exploration, well for me anyway. I spend 100`s of hours in each TES game, just taking my time and enjoying it.

I seriously doubt that SQ`s will cease to be generated when all dungeons have been visited. Nope.

So just because everybody's doing it it's acceptable? And you just named the only 2 shorter RPGs. Dragon Age? Risen? The Witcher? Besides, I was comparing the length to the previous games - the OFFICIAL info is 20 hours, while the OFFICIAL info for OB was 30 hours. If they evaluate the length the same way and I suppose they do, then the quest IS shorter any way you play it. Again, this was just a side note, the main point of this thread has already been aswered, so maybe someone should just lock it.

Edit: Or a gamesas representative could answer the question about the Radian Story thing? I mean, I can dream, can't I?

Well nobody can say for sure whether there will be no more radiant quests if you visit every dungeon, but I highly doubt it that seems like it would be a major oversight.
And I think 20 hours for the MQ is alright considering that is only a fraction of what the game will have to offer, you still have to consider all the SQs and exploring you'll likely be doing.

Couldn't radiant story push us towards a camp on the surface? Maybe perhaps some mountain lions are up a little ways in a mountain terrorizing a small 3 shack village.

I would think that the devs would have thought about this and created alternative quests to compensate. Then again, in game time, the first dungeon you explored may have changed a lot by now. Perhaps some ogres or mercenaries have taken the cave as a headquarters and storage place for their nightly pillaging of the towns surrounding it.

Going back to old dungeons for a decent reason wouldn't be all that bad.

The way i see it working is this. If you go explore a dungeon and run into some trolls you can't beat and you leave, the dungeon gets stored as in progress. You can then come back later and clear it out. But after that it will most likely get repopulated after a certain amount of time just like in oblivon. It's not hard to imagine some bandit's finding an empty troll cave and making it there hideout. Just because the game looks for unexplored dungeons to send you to, to help you find and explore more, does not mean they can't send you to previously explored places. The fact that the quest system can pick random dungeons and populate them appropriately depending on quest, already tells us that dungeons will not just have one specific mob type in them. There will still be leveled lists they can pick from. Even if it is more static then oblivion was, i seriously doubt it will be completely static.