Playing back through Oblivion and the two Fallout games especially, I found that when I wanted to goof off and go on a mass killing spree.. There actually were big clusters of people..

I'm wondering ( and hoping ) If Skyrim will be able to take more NPCs than Oblivion could?

Id expect roughly the same amount of npcs due to the fact consoles can only handle so much. I'd like to see a lot more myself, especially on the pc. Mods where made that add a whole lot more, and it really makes the world feel that much more alive.

Even just adding more random npcs on the roads, traveling merchants, more random encounters and such would help out in making the world feel more real. I just hope they've payed attention to the most popular mods, and run with some of those ideas. The fans made it, the fans used/liked it, so it's a no brainer. Consoles only hold back numbers if they are all in the same small area, but I'm sure they'd be able to handle more life outside the walls.

That'd be perfect. :celebration:

There are plenty of games that have a lot of npc's on screen at once. The problem was Beth engine for the past games svcked at displaying a lot of npc's in an efficient manner. I also hope for more crowded cities, but there will be mods so I am not too concerned.

@OP I find your avatar quite comical and cute.

5+ years experience with current hardware and new Creation Engine bodes well for more life in cities/towns. Hopefully we get to see this at E3.

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 they have any family?" or "some people in town were mentioning them, I wonder why they turned to a life of crime". Morrowind feels special because it was a world first and a game second. You can tell the developers really had fun making it, adding their own little cliffhangers and mysterious backstories to every person and location.

That, and after Arena and Daggerfall I'd frankly be surprised if Bethesda didn't have their own in-house NPC name generator they could integrate into the game.

Well, I think that the NPCs in Skyrim will be so detailed with graphics and the radiant story and the dragons and stuff that having too many of them could cause a lot of performance issues. Also, you're just going to reload after the mass killing spree, so why not use the console to move a bunch of NPCs to your location and kill them then?

i want it to be bustling like assasin's creed, even if it means a few alike npc types.

If Assassin's Creed can have the amount of NPCs it has, then I expect Skyrim to at least have 150% as many NPCs as Oblivion had.

Can you engage in dialogue with all those NPC's in AC? Can you pickpocket them? Do they all live by independent schedules? How many of them talk?

Ya I know, but my main concern with this isnt so much graphics wise, but having more npcs and their ai in the background. They could add a butt load of random npcs, but not really doing anything that would be even worth adding them. Dragonborn makes a good point about the experience etc, but I'm not expecting anything dramatic. If radiant ai is going to be as good as they are selling t then I'd imagine more or less the same amount.

Honestly, I'd much rather have 10 great npcs than 20 mediocre ones, ya know? That's why just makignmore going on outside of a city would be better than what was in oblivion.

Exactly, quality trumps quantity.

You guys are missing something, it was confirmed a long time ago that citizens in towns (Non-important people) will have 1 liner/simple dialogue, thus allowing Beth to put more NPCs in towns and such.

Plus the new engine will help out a lot.

thats not gonna happen the main reason assassins creed was able to fit so many people on the screen is becuase they were such low quality, or at least lower than fallouts, those NPCs were design so that it looks good from a distance, but if you zoom in while some are talking you can see that their lips arnt moving, the main characters were better but the normal models were bad. Also Fallout and skyrims were designed to be zoomed in on, so the poly count on the face would be much higher, ubisoft mainly used a texture for the faces to make it look like the models had a higher poly count. With the new dialog system though, so the models can suffer a little and still be all right. Also with assassins creed, all of those characters in the street were just 1 sided all that they did was walk and die, you can interact with NPCs in a variety of different ways and as a result it needs more work. Skyrim will probably have more just because of the amount of experience with the hardware. Some NPCs in skyrim will not have as much dialog so there will be more atmospheric ones

As long as I can chat with every NPC in a city, that's all I care about. I don't want random, filler NPCs in cities.

Morrowind and Fallout 3 have good numbers for their world size. It's a hard call, you can really have "Too many" NPC's. It has to seem like a rugged wilderness. So, the only real answer is, they should have as many as they need. With the new Dialog system, I'm actually expecting quite a bit more than Oblivion though.

I'm hoping the "Useless" NPC's have a bit more dialog than a "Greeting" though. Even if it's just recycled lines like what we saw written for the "Latest Rumors" "Little Secret" "Little Advice" or "Skyrim(Morrowind) Lore", filling the game world with a bit more context, though with voiceovers, that might still be a bit much.

Minimum of 2 reads per race, so 20 per comment, per subject, so 80 recordings per comment. Morrowind had what? 10 for each, so 800 lines of Dialog for "Filler", and that's just with minimum voice. If you add in 2 other Voice Actors per race, the number expands real fast.

You will be able to.

Hasn't it always been like that though? In oblivion half the people used the same voice and rumors was about the only thing they talked about.

Its a perfomance issue plain and simple. I just watched the gameswelt interview with Todd and he said they decided to make another Elderscrolls for this gen of consoles because the tech wasn't holding them back. While I'm glad of the decision, I think thats a load of bull.

I agree with Crytek's lead programmer. In a recent speech he demanded the next gen of consoles have 8gm or ram instead of the measly 512mb they posses now. Thats 16 times as much speed and overall thinking power. Just think, If the imperial city had had 16 times as many civilians, just as detailed as they were...

They're going to have many more voice actors in Skyrim. The quality will also be high. BGS is working with a very nice budget.

Yeah, I know. Bethesda wouldn't dare resort to filler NPCs like Ubisoft.

^makes you wonder how much those svckers will cost when they first come out! People better start saving now.

Also, they always have had filler npcs. I think the fact that we won't zoom in on conversations anymore is going to make this more pronounced.

Haha agreed

It's not 16times as much speed. It's just 16times as much memory.

But yeah, with how cheap memory is, I'm not expecting any less than 4GB for the next gen, which considering the Game consoles don't have to run a burdening OS and other applications like a PC, is more than enough... to start. 16GB might be a bit much for a console though, most PC's don't even come close to benefiting from that much, much less actually utilizing it, but I guess with static console hardware, it's better to have it, and not need it?

When Todd said the "Tech wasn't holding them back" He meant in terms of Game design I think, not so much in the snazzy graphical (NPC count is Graphical, it's a rendering process to create more NPC's on screen) things, which he acknowledged, as tech gets better, most of the benefits are graphical.

Anyway, I'd rather have a new Elder Scrolls game now (or rather, this year), then have to wait another year or two or three. Besides, I'm a PC gamer. Console cycles mean nothing to me, though I do respect my console counterparts.