The concept of emergent gameplay is one that has fascinated me for a very long time. Seeing some in-game event unfold before you that has nothing to do with scripting and everything to do with random systems colliding in new and innovative ways is truly awe inspiring. Given the footage we have seen so far, and the incredible size and scope of the world that will become our virtual playground on November 10, the possibilities of seeing emergent gameplay in Fallout 4 will be very high.

And so, what kind of emergent events do you think we might see whilst exploring the Commonwealth, and what experiences have you had while playing other games that would fit the setting?

Fallout 2, absolutely, every time you travel from one area to another their is a dice roll basically that you might encounter a battle between two other factions. While not necessarily emergent gameplay, id like to see more systems colliding in Fallout 4, and just over all more none scripted battles between different factions and groups happening.

I find that emergent gameplay is a bit of a buzz word, but its true that Bethesda does great with this sort of stuff.

I can see a lot of interesting combat scenarios coming out of the settlement building system. Deciding by myself how best to fortify Sanctuary Hills, and seeing how much real-world knowledge ive read of the fortification the military do in the real world that the Sole Survivor would have access to that I can apply to the game.

It does interest me how the AI is going to navigate it all, I can see the programming being improved here. Anyone who has played Real Time Settler can attest to just how bad the Fallout 3/NV AI is when you start placing buildings in the open world that they don't know how to navmesh around.

Edit: One thing that I think could also lend to this sort of thing is the factions having patrols through the world, and especially if we get to set up our own. Sometimes in New Vegas the NCR and the Legion would run into eachother in the southeast of the map, and there's quite a few ways you can handle that situation.

That's why we love BGS games, isn't it? Well, that's why I love them anyway. I'm hoping that with more horsepower available on the consoles, there will be more NPCs onscreen, which increases the odds of cross-faction, unscripted interactions occurring.

Ive been meaning to try that BOS Patrol mod for Fallout 3 that adds a few parties of paladins that wander through DC. Seems like it would add a lot of new situations to traveling in that area that could make for some good emergent gameplay.

Being able to set up brahmin trade between settlements seems like it could have some fun random effects.. (if they are actually physical brahmin caravans and not just spawned goods appearing every week.) It'd be kind of like being able to control a random event. Like imagine if you can outfit your caravan team and then send that well armed team through hazardous routes. .. You could then just follow them 'sneakily' and see how it plays out.

This, and if you could outfit all your guards in the settlement, I am really hoping for this.

I remember going through some Knight Order quests in Daggerfall to kill off some Orc Warlords, and since the systrm that spawns quest targets doesn't differentiate between items and enemies, I'd always find the Orc Warlords hiding in the most ridiculous places, like behind tapestries or in closet timed rooms. One time the quest even sent me to a warlock haunt, and the Orc chief was stuck inside a cage - overall, Orc Warlords are just incompetent and cowardly.

As for Fallout 4, it's impossible to guess without knowing what the random encounters and NPC behaviors are. I imagine player settlements will be where the most interesting things happen.

Radiant AI this time perhaps?

To be fair, I found Fallout 3 much more dynamic than both Oblivion and Skyrim. So there may be hope for an improved Fallout 3.

An example of Radiant AI (gone wrong) from Skyrim.

I was approaching Riften using Open Cities. There was a pack of wolves outside, which the guards attacked. Maul (the thug who greets you when you first enter) rushed out to fight the wolves as well. In the confusion, he hit a guard (or vice versa), and so a fight started between him and the guards.

Only problem was, because he was (at that point) quest-critical, he was unkillable. So the guards kept beating him down, wandering back to their post, he'd get up, the guards would rush over to beat him down again...

This is why Radiant AI never really got stripped out of Bethesda games, but the settings got dialled back and conditions clamped down, because there's just so many ways AI can go wrong when it's left to its own devices.

This isn't a problem if you've got disposable, cookie-cutter creatures and NPCs in locations that'll never be visited again, but hell to manage in a game structured like Bethesda's. My hat goes off to any company that pulls it off well, but I suspect we'll only see this sort of thing happening much out in the wasteland or Boston ruins, involving generic characters, and almost nothing like it in towns and settlements where they've got a lot of quest important characters, and don't want a civil war over a stolen mutfruit depopulating the place

Could be fun, but hopefully there's some limits to it.

Nothing more annoying than finding out you missed out on a quest because of something going on with the other side of a loaded zone that you visited ten hours ago.

I've had 3 instances of emergent gameplay between fallout 3 and new Vegas and 1 in oblivion. In FO3 I was helping Lincoln free the slaves when the settlement/base was attack by a group of super mutants, I lead the counter attack but it was night and the muties had the advantage. As the muties pushed in the defense our side started taking heavy losses and when I though it would be only me and Lincoln making a last Stan I saw a third source of automatic gun far coming from a different direction and heading straight towards the muties. It was a roving caravan that during there supply run happened across the fire fight and joined in. With reinforcements we won, the caravan only losing one guard. I later found the same caravan slaughtered by a giant radscorpion several days later having it's firepower halved from the encounter with the supermutants.

Imagine a 3 way fight between a deathclaw, yourself, and a small contingent of synth striders.... Then a radiation storm moves across the land.

I really do hope the radiation storms are fierce, making the environment itself (at least in some areas) an enemy in it's own right.

This makes me think of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series.

See, moments like this are just awesome beyond words!

I can remember when they first demo-ed the RADIANT Ai system in OBLIVION. It looked and sounded amazing, all the NPCs having there individual life goals and they would go about the world trying to fulfill them...... Apparently they had to end up restricting loads of that system for various reasons. Some stories I heard was of an NPC whose life goal is was to be a Warrior, would go and buy up all the heavy armour and weapons in town leaving nothing for the player.....

Here's the original demo!

http://youtu.be/pjbx6-KQoRg

RADIANT Ai sounded awesome !

It's a real shame, because it sounded really cool.

I wanna see more Radiant AI in Fallout 4 hopefully.......

In that demo, no NPC has a life goal. They only have scheduled goals, the same as all NPCs have in the released game. I suspect that the Warrior example you remember is not an NPC whose goal is to be a warrior, but an NPC following a scheduled goal to acquire arms and armor.

Huh, that's the first time I've actually seen that demo. Now I understand why so many people were confused about what Radiant AI was actually ever meant to do. This demo was meant to show off the features of Radiant AI one by one, not to show off a scenario that was created completely by radiant AI randomness. All of those things they demo'd (NPC conversations, NPCs picking up and using items like the bow or the potion, NPCs casting spells on or attacking each other) do happen randomly with radiant AI, at least on NPCs with those functions in their AI packages; but Estelle won't just do all of those things on a whim without a quest script or an AI package that tells her to.

Bethesda had to rein in things like NPCs buying everything at the stores or stealing/killing each other, just to keep the world from going mad, but I'm pretty sure anyone could still add those interactions into the Radiant AI packages if they wanted to. The Radiant Story system they added with Skyrim should be able to bring back some of that randomness in a more controllable form, too - it's not just about generating endless fetch quests and random encounters, Radiant Story actually triggers events based on our actions and keeps track of NPC-to-NPC relationships too.

Radiant AI was always meant to just be one large AI system Bethesda can reuse for every actor in the game, instead of having to create unique scripts for every NPC and things that happen in quests.

The AI packages individually enables AI to do many things like that. The system is there and it is powerful. The problem is instead of goals and internal clocks, the devs only give schedules to NPCs.

So they can always update from mere schedules to individual goals and hunger meters and such to unleash radiant AI. They only need to figure out how to solve conflicts without violence.

The AI packages are the goals.

AI packages are actions. Actions are not goals, they are means to goals. Eating is a not a goal, getting satiated is a goal which is tied to another goal, to live. Or at least, it should be like that.

The example of emergent gameplay that sticks out most in my mind was in Skyrim where you use speech to talk the Silver Blood mercs to leave the mine and go back to town .

I decided to follow them. After a while we ran into a group of imperial soldiers going in the same direction as us. So it was 4 mercs, 3 imp soldiers, me and my companion all together in a group.

Let me tell you, the Forsworn that attacked us had a really bad day....

I want to see Commonwealth hunters searching for escaped Androids. And if indeed NPCs can use sneak as well as the player, I'd like to just watch as hunters search an area, while an Android is crouched down and hiding from it all. Maybe if I shoot the hunters, the Android could either take the chance to run away or take a chance and attack the hunters with me.

I had hard time remembering anything but then this came to mind:

I once engaged a group of Talon mercenaries near a place I had the Firelance -random encounter. However, I thought it was just somekind of a meteor or a rocket (I didn't find the weapon). Well, after some fighting, one of the Talon mercenaries fled (at least I thought so). After I had killed the others, he came back. Firing these blue bolts of energy from some weird pistol. I didn't stand a chance.

... anyone else worried about dormant AI on your computer just waiting to be unleashed on the world with it's full potential? Also, the "... need to figure out how to solve conflicts without violence" -part?

best for me was the Talon Comapnie hunting me, and they all get wipe out by a group of super mutants. so funny how they all turn from me to get smash to pieces by 4 super mutants.

What I should have said is that each AI package name is also the name of a goal. The package itself is a set of coded rules an NPC follows to satisfy the goal specified by the package name.

The Eat package is for the Eat goal. Eat is not eating. Eating is just one of numerous steps that an NPC may take when directed to eat.

When the NPC's schedule says it is time for him to eat, the NPC begins executing the logic contained in the Eat package. He will perform activities defined by the rules for Eat. There is finding food, and navigating to the food's location. There is taking food, and there is pickpocketing another NPC. There is sitting in an available chair, and there is consuming the food. The only thing the designer must do is direct the NPC to eat, and the AI and the NPC's stats handle the rest.

Todd explains the process in the E3 demo for Oblivion. The bookseller is told to fire some arrows at a target from a certain location -- that is her goal. Her AI provides her with the rules she needs for accomplishing the goal. She needs to equip a bow, and so she finds a bow, picks it up, and equips it. She needs to equip arrows, and so she finds a quiver, picks it up, and equips it. She needs to move to her firing position, and so she does. She then needs to fire arrows at the target, and so she does, and her goal is accomplished.