so the ai is smarter now on guards so when you commit a crime every guard in the province doesn't show up at your door screaming "DIE CRIMINAL SCUM!!!" I'm just wondering if the same applies to murdering them? I was just wondering because in oblivion whilst walking upon the woods outside choral(spelling?) I saw a bear fighting a imperial guard the guard killed the bear but was badly wounded and I thought hey this armor looks way better that the stuff I have from the starter dungeon so I sneaked up on him shot him in the back almost killed him and back pedaled spamming fire bolts (starter spell name?). Anyway I finally kill the guy take his armor and head to choral to sell my old stuff. about half way there I can kinda see the city through the trees at the top of the hill five town guards in their blue armor show up and attack me for no reason. I managed to do the block thing where they chill and you forfeit the fight and they say I killed an man 100 septims, I assaulted an officer of the law 500 septims, resisted arrest 250 septims, stole the guys armor like 1200 septims (the combined cost of everything I took from corpse?)
my question is how? HOW DID THEY KNOW i WAS THERE!!!!!!! I wasn't even in eyeline of the city. I just hope they fix that like I kill a soldier out on patrole cause I like his armor or sword or horse or whatever. when I pass a fort will the guards auto know I am there and just attack me even thought there is no way in oblivion they could know I was there or what I did?

It's been confirmed that, if all witnesses are killed, you won't have a bounty.

They fixed most of it, not ALL of it. It will be a lot less quirky and with all these "all knowing" guards.

Read a guys review, where he says he kills an Imperial Guard and the Noble he is guarding on the road. Left no witnesses. He gets to a town and is promptly confronted by a guard for his actions. Give me a second and I will edit with a link.

Edit: http://www.gamehounds.net/2011/08/29/pax-2011-skyrim-preview/#more-4035

Paragraph 3, 6, & 7.

Maybe he did leave a witness without realizing? I hope..

Perhaps the Horse told on him.? Who knows.. :celebration:

Just read for yourself.

This is a bit concerning. :confused:

:yucky:

I giggled at paragraph 3 lol

It is a goofy article.
But still concerning..

Might of been some Master of Sneak dude lurking amongst the trees who was planning on killing the noble until the player run in and killed him, in rage the dude told the guards of the occurrence.

The Sneak Trainer just so happens to reside on the side of said road? :wink_smile:

Its a possibility, can see why he may not have seen the person and deemed him to be a witness
On topic; It seems the game will turn into a killing spree lol, hunt down a witness to find someone witnessed you killing that witness to have to hunt them down too...

Lmao, after slaughtering the entire population of Skyrim you can relax knowing there are no witnesses left... then your character jumps off the throat of world because he feels so alone

I got to wondering this too. I hated not being able to sneak back into town to my local Doyen before these magical guards found me hiding behind a barrel demanding that I pay em. Most the time I had to run through the cities with them chasing after me with their swords. :L Even worse was exploring the wilderness and attempting to sneak up on a group of bandits, only to have my cover blown by a guard screaming, "STOP! Criminal scum!"

Let's just hope it's a little bit better in Skyrim. Maybe bounties that go away with time (if they're not too major, like a 5g bounty for stealing)? I wouldn't mind hiding out in a cave until my bounty drops and I can casually stroll back into town. Or until they happen to send bounty hunters after me. :\ It's just fun to speculate all the stuff that I wish could be in there.

He left a witness - the horse.

While it isn't realistic for a horse to tattle, it's also not realistic for a horse to chase after someone trying to kill them for revenge which this horse did. Seems reasonable that horses are considered generic NPCs and all generic NPCs are counted as witnesses by the game.

I think it's more likely that guard consciousness is still connected (at least within a region). The only witnesses are non-guard NPCs. So attacking a guard or another NPC within sight of a guard will always put a bounty on your head, even if you make sure to kill the guard too.

I truly hope that's not the case since it completely defeats the purpose of killing the witnesses to avoid a bounty. I hope it wasn't the horse reporting it either since this is a new game in a new engine there's no excuse for that mistake again.

The horse was a guard in disguise!!

Apart from joke...I hope they'll have it solved before launch, because it would be a true faux pass for Bethesda, since the information that guards won't have auto-crime detection was "already sold"...
Skarm

Thank you for the info. This is disturbing. Hopefully this will be "fixed" and killing a man on the side of the road is not resolved in my being arrested 8 towns over. Like they say "should a tree fall in the woods with no one to hear it does it make a sound?" (if you kill a peasant in the wilderness will the guards know?)

Gotta love the omniscient, omnispective guards. This has been a problem in both Morrowind and Oblivion as well.

They have said they are really working to get rid of the guards "hive mind" for lack of a better phrase.
I hope it was only a small bug, because no other previewer had that issue.
I mean, if you read the other PAX Gameplay reviews, they are riddled with "so I killed them, then them, and them too."
But he seems to have been the only one caught.
So, while it does raise concerns, it looks like more of a bug.
Here's hoping.

I was hopeing it was a bug because a lot of the "I killed him and her and them and them and them too." Maybe its me but a lot of the articles that dealt with that ended in "and so I died and tried again".

Judging by the review read on gameshound, it seems as if there was a witness. It doesn't say that he went for a stealth kill, there could have been a traveler on the road, or the horse could have had telepathy (he did hold the horse as a force to be reckoned with, perhaps it was magical). My only problem was stealth-killing an individual - no witnesses, no second shots at him, I killed him instantly without being detected once - yet the guards' "Criminal Scum" sense was clearly tingling, and was confronted by at least 3 as I exited the man's house.

Was there animals, mainly horses, around? I think horses affect your ability to be undetected. A stupid flaw I hated in Oblivion

Nah, this is a longtime problem with the games. The guards know things they simply shouldn't know, and instantly. I could kill someone inside a house in Balmora, teleport to Tel Mora the second they die, and promptly be arrested.