So, I remember before Oblivion came out we were hearing a lot of crazy stuff being said about the RadiantAI. How smart it would be. All the stuff NPC's would do that will just shock us. We were told NPC's would decide for themselves what they wanted to do, providing variety and immersion. What comes to mind, and I may be remembering this all wrong, is one interview where it was said that if you killed a character's mom he would find a horse and hunt you down. But then when Oblivion came out, and everything felt rather scripted, at least to me.

I dug up an interview from a few months ago http://bitmob.com/articles/dimming-the-radiant-ai-in-oblivion that details how those qualities actually WERE in the game, but were taken out because they can possibly break quests.

Would y'all want stuff like this in Skyrim? Obviously there are large drawbacks but it would be so awesome to see this stuff happen without your instigation.

with a entire quest generator for us ( the radiant story ) yes i would like the option to other npcs to break my quests, since probaly the reward would be completely useless to me and some times the quest wouldn't be fun, and now, bethesda have the technology necessary to make those dreams come true, obviously with some bugs , but who can live without them

As long as they built it so that no quests would be totally borked, this sounds awesome. Though with the ability for a dead shopkeepers family member to take over the business could be moved into quests as well. Like a scenario where you are supposed to meet somebody, but their son shows up with "Im sorry but my father has died because (insert inevitably comical to me way to die here) and I was left with a note telling me to meet you here" kind of thing.

I don't care what NPC's may do to my quests, I want to have NPC's that are smart, and crazy, and maybe sometimes stupid.

Yeah that would be awesome. Definitely, especially if there are children in the game, I'd love to see familial relations between characters, something that was only rarely seen and almost never used to its full potential. There should be quests involving parents, kids, relations between and within families, etc.

I want an option in the console to turn on "Full scale RadiantAI", like have it do all the stuff they said it could do in the interviews before Oblivion came out. A crazy mode if you will.

Hehe, yeah I would have loved to see that in action, even if not used in the game normally

Bethesda toned down Radiant AI because it broke the game and made everything go to hell. if you want to see pretty much what it was like before, load up the construction set and delete every faction.

i don't get why people think HORRIBLY BROKEN AI is so cool. it's not nearly as interesting as you're imagining it to be.

This, pretty much.

Think about it. To put it quite simply, if the original version of their most touted feature in Oblivion DIDN'T svck, they wouldn't have watered it down in the first place.

What makes a monster more difficult to kill isn't its stats and spells, randomly thrown at you, but its tactics. Its intelligence. Intelligence is the deciding factor for difficulty, without that, it's all hack'n'slash like Dungeon Siege. Run forward, slash, kill, run forward again.

Toward that end, I myself would love to see more "crazy A.I." as you put it. There are a number of things that could improve the A.I.:

1. No More Terrain Glitches ... as already discussed in the other thread about this, monsters need to be able to calculate when they are taking damage but you are not taking damage, realize something is wrong, and change their tactics. Run away, hide, or learn how to JUMP really high so they can overcome the terrain glitch in order to get close to you for the killing strike.

2. Combat Distractions ... intelligent enemies could throw a flask of firewater at the ground between you, causing a huge fire to erupt blocking off the space between you, and while you figure out what to do, they could quaff a few potions and pull out a bow and start plunking you in the head. Now that arrows are more dangerous, you'll have to watch out for bow-weilding baddies in Skyrim. I look forward to this challenge. Back on point, the number of challenges offered by these distractions could be quite various and surprising. Perhaps the enemy already placed a trap and when you stop on it, a bright magical light flashes in your face, blinding you. Perhaps they have the time to get behind you while you clutch your eyes, to get in place for a backstab on you (for double damage etc...) Perhaps they knock over a bookshelf on you, which causes you to fly backwards, falling down, and taking damage? Or perhaps they open a jar of specially-trained wasps that swarm you, literally obscuring your vision 50-80% so you literally can't see the guy as he sneaks around behind you? There could be dozens of such distractions to surprise you, throw you off balance, or cause you to be confused (I don't mean your character, I mean YOU the player).... distractions are intelligent ways to buy time, trick you, or grain the upper hand on you... and as such, would help with enemy A.I.

3. Teamwork Tactics ... Tactic A: One to Your Back. two enemies face you. One runs forward with shield in hand, the other runs around behind you. Every time you turn to face one, the other moves around behind you, doing double damage strikes. You can't seem to get your footing, or a grasp on the situation, you are always slightly off balance. You can't back up quickly like in Oblivion because that feature was removed, so you can't put them both in front of you THAT way.... so now you have to THINK ... what do I do? Tactic B: Arrow Switch Off .... two enemies face you. One is forward in meelee with you, sheild raised. The other stands behind, off to your left side (mostly forward), shooting arrows at you. He whistles to his friend, who always takes a step to your right just as the arrow sails, so he avoids the arrow coming behind him as it strikes you. Once the enemy in front of you's health is reduced to a dangerous level, the two warriors switch places suddenly, both switching out weapons.... the bowman becomes the fighter with sheild and the fighter becomes the bowman. Now you have a fresh new enemy facing you and the dying bowman is off healing again out of range of your strikes. This intelligent combo-duo would be LETHAL to you! These are just examples of said "tactics" but would include dozens of such plans, and the programming for each one would be fully worked into the game's combat system .... so there could be tons of different and unique battles based on these "tactics packages" ... And maybe there could be an editor built for this, where we could literally design our own tactics for upload to Bethesda, who would add them into later patches of the game, meaning the A.I. system could grow on its own, based on Community Mod work. Wow, so awesome!

4. Calling for Help ... Enemies, when reduced to less than half of their HPs, could call for help in some way. You are battling a troll, you've almost killed it, so it pulls out a horn and blows it, sending out a loud battle cry into the night. A few minutes later ANOTHER Troll appears and if you haven't killed the first one yet, you'll have to fight another one! If you did kill your first one, you can run off, but maybe the Troll has a good sense of smell, and now he wants to hunt you down. So he begins following you! ... Or maybe you are killing a wolf pack, one suddenly the lead wolf howls into the night. Now you know more wolves might be coming. You aren't sure, sometimes no one responded to the call, but sometimes they did. So now you're afraid you have no time to kill the ones you already face because more are probably already on the way! It's always more intelligent to ask for help. Most idiot guards in the movies and the like go and investigate a threat alone, and die, leaving the assassin a clear road ahead. But what if enemies, when they heard a noise in the night, sounded the alarm first? Then it would be pretty darn hard to advance, if you were the assassin! It's not very smart to be a guard who leaves his post to investigate a sound, getting killed for it, leaving your post unmanned and the enemy already inside. The default position of guards should be to raise the alarm and apologize later if there was nothing there. But... people are afraid to lose face, so often, sadly, the guards die just so. Another aspect is what about your fame as the Dragonborn? What if when you went to an outpost and faced several orcs, having spotted your face, they suddenly realize out loud, "Dovakhiin! Arggggh!" and immediately sent the word out for reinforcements? Suddenly 3 easy orcs becomes 12 not-so-easy orcs. That's always a bit more intelligent to call in reinforcements when faced with a real threat than just 3 stupid orcs watching each other die before your blade, and yet still charging forward to die the same fate as the rest.

In these ways, and I'm sure many others, we could begin to see some real "crazy A.I." beginning to emerge in Skyrim that could even be saved and ported forward into the next installment 5-8 years from now. Woo Hoo!

I can see wtf moments already in place, dropping the sword and 2 men fight over it? what happens if the guards get invovled?
what if the men fighting over the sword are a part of a specific faction, say the fighters guild, with they join in the fray?
potentially one massive cluster**** can occuer as is from what we have been told.