» Sun Jul 25, 2010 1:08 am Or that these "Live Cities" are just going to be a bigger version of Fallout Towns? 10 or so Unique Named NPC's with 30 or so "Skyrim Travelers" walking around.
Sigh.
Oblivion's style was a massive waste of resources. most NPCs, especially in the imperial city had worthless, irrelevant daily tasks and dialogue, yet the developers still need to spend time and money doing them. What a colossal waste, especially since the imperial city still felt stale and stilted. In Arena and Daggerfall there were quite a lot of NPCs, the cities were large, almost nobody was unique, and their names were basically generated. That is how you do it, except with today's gaming technology you could have far more NPCs and actually make the cities feel like cities, not snoozetowns.
Just thought I'd add my opinion into this topic...
To anyone who claims that having cities with people whose names you don't know carry out their lives unaffected by you is unrealistic, I challenge you to walk around an actual city. Or, better still, pester someone with small talk and rumours. A percentile of 'filler NPCs', who'd follow a simple yet detailed schedule would certainly increase realism. Honestly, should everyone in the game respond to you, tell you their name engage in small talk and stand around until you dismiss them? I'd much prefer some people merely grunt, just mutter hello and tell you to go away if pushed further, blatantly ignore you in addition to chat with you. Obviously, an Assassin's Creed style implementation would not fit the game, but would it kill people to have a couple of citizens go about their lives uninterrupted? My preferred implementation would be around 10 to 50 NPCs, possibly identifiable by your Telepathic Name-Reading Ability, who have better things to do than converse all day.
To anyone who claims that having cities with people whose names you don't know carry out their lives unaffected by you is unrealistic, I challenge you to walk around an actual city. Or, better still, pester someone with small talk and rumours. A percentile of 'filler NPCs', who'd follow a simple yet detailed schedule would certainly increase realism. Honestly, should everyone in the game respond to you, tell you their name engage in small talk and stand around until you dismiss them? I'd much prefer some people merely grunt, just mutter hello and tell you to go away if pushed further, blatantly ignore you in addition to chat with you. Obviously, an Assassin's Creed style implementation would not fit the game, but would it kill people to have a couple of citizens go about their lives uninterrupted? My preferred implementation would be around 10 to 50 NPCs, possibly identifiable by your Telepathic Name-Reading Ability, who have better things to do than converse all day.
If I walked out onto the street right now and asked some random person for their name, their rumors or their life story, I'd probably get stabbed.
