I really hope that all of the NPCs in Skyrim are named, at least among the townsfolk. Think about how Morrowind named all of its NPCs, even prematurely hostile ones such as bandits. I'd look upon their names and think, "wait, I wonder if I've met any of their relatives?" or "some people in town were mentioning them, I wonder why they turned to a life of crime".

After Arena and Daggerfall, I wouldn't be surprised if Bethesda has their own in-house name generator, which ideally could be integrated into the game. Considering that there will be NPCs in Skyrim's towns of varying duties, and we already know we may encounter random characters challenging you to duels or offering to return items, I'm pretty sure not all people in towns will be pre-placed. There will presumably be filler NPCs abound, and I'm quite curious as to how Bethesda would design the towns to accommodate them. Would there be additional, unnamed houses in the cities for these generic NPCs to live in? If you kill one of these generic NPCs, will this house be freed up for a new generic NPC to use? And again, I want to stress how badly I hope these townspeople will have names, and not just be Riften Fishermen and Riften Settlers.

Thoughts?

I want everyone to have a name OR have names not be known until asked, or have it known upon conversation, and maybe a person won't want to give you their name. I wouldn't care it's like Fallout 3 though.

All NPCs named makes it much harder to find quests. I prefer there to just be some generic guys to separate them from the important people.

Not really. At least I dont think so.

No named bandits/cultists/angry natives please. Maybe it was the blindness and general stupidity in Morrowind every NPC had, how they all still started having small talks with you if you approach them unseen, but I had an incredibly hard time figuring out who is supposed to be friendly to me and who's hostile...

Not to mention, how would you figure out their names anyway?

If you would have told me that not every NPC would have a name before I played FO3 and FONV, I probably would have been a bit irritated by that, but since I have, I don't really have a problem with it at all. It really enhanced the atmosphere for me because I ignored a lot of NPCs, which made me feel less like I was the center of the universe and that it all revolved around me. Some people were just going about their daily lives while I was going about mine. It was more realistic.

You do bring up a good point, StoneFrog, that bandits and the like not being named kind of takes away the mystery of them, of making the player possibly care about who they are and what they do, but at the same time, there's no real reason why you should know what their name is in the first place.

Valid point, but if we went by that logic I'd hope to have a system where you don't learn any NPC's name unless they introduce themselves or you converse with them. That would make the notion of random townspeople who don't have any interest in getting to know you a bit more believable. It'd be great, for example, if this unnamed old dude who's been going around town and ignoring you all day suddenly reveals himself to be Esbern. Unfortunately, I doubt that will be in Skyrim.

I'd really like that though. Imagine you are directed toward some person for a quest and you know his/her description. o.O Would be very believable in my opinion.