I don't know about you but what I look forward to most about Skyrim is playing with the NPC AI. I'm worried I might be dissapointed if they aren't all that deep. The information we've got so far is pretty nice (drop item, people will return it or fight over it. Kill someone, their relative will take over their job...), but only if there are hundreds upon hundreds of different kinds of reactions you can get from NPC's. When you watch a show that does pranks on people like for instance [censored], what's the most fun? Watching the antics of the Jackasses, or watching the reactions of the people who get pranked? It's about the reactions you get that makes it so fun!

Like imagine if you took on a quest to save a womans daughter, you bring her back and after you're paid you attack them. What kind of reactions would you get? Say hypothetically you kill the daughter, what kind of AI behavior that would not impress me is the woman screaming and fleeing for her life, running to get nearest guards. Seeing her break down emotionally and through dialogue as well as facial expression express her grief, would be much more impressive.
Aye, harsh and cruel example that, but that's the kind of evil little bastard character I tend to play.

Point is, would be fun if you could push the game to the limits of social behavior and the game actually plays along rather than just have lazily programmed reactions to your actions. Offer to help someone chop wood for payment, he says okay. Pick up said wood and throw it in the water, and he would be angry and upset. How fun it would be to play a bully if the game acknowledged your actions!

Offer to take care of the customers of a store while the owner sneaks out laundring some money, and when they return they'll find that most of the valuables in the store are gone, and there you stand looking innocent. Yes, the smart thing would have been to make a run for it, but it's so much more fun to see what kind of response you'd get. Or spy on them when they return to see how they'd react, finding the store cleaned out.

What if you're on a hunting mission to hunt some deer and provide the meat for a family of farmers. Instead you go to the neighbour farmer, kill him, take his meat and under pretense that it is deer meat, give it to the family, then have the dialogue option of telling them who they're eating after dinner. Muahaha!

Remember that it has been talked about that your deeds throughout the world will bring you either fame or infamy. These kind of things would make for the most fun kind of infamy!

That's the type of possibilities I'd love to see in Skyrim. I know we're probably not going to get half of them but one can dream.

I find some of your ideas a bit worrying... I don't think I'd want to meet your character in Skyrim.

When I read the title, I thought this thread was all about roleplaying as the Adoring Fan! :biggrin:

Well, AI's actually get annoyed now if you get on top of a table and start knocking their objects off it, so there's always that lol.

I also hope that the AI is more "radiant" this time around. The news about NPC's actually chopping wood, blacksmithing, instead of just wandering or standing waiting for the player is encouraging!

I just want to be able to taunt people.

The more freedoms and possibilities and options there are, the better, and the more fun combinations you can use.

Heh, yeah, my character would be a bit of a psycho hardass, you really don't want to meet him. I don't think he has many friends. It's not that he's not lovable, it's just that he tends to kill his friends. At least his human ones. He's better among his fellow reptilians. Like crocodiles!

My plan:

Walk up to an NPC and start a conversation. Get them to start telling some long story, then start walking away. Once they realize you don't want to listen, they stop talking. Then go back, get them to start telling you the story again, and walk away. I want to see if they eventually get annoyed to the point where they just won't tell you story because you obviously don't care.

I don't think they'd go that deep with programming the AI. I wish they would. I mean it's totally doable and gives some more depth to the game. For example the NPC's could have a three strikes and you're out built in meter or something, like if you walk away from them while talking enough times they would like you less and less until your options in talking to them would be very restricted. For example you can't chit-chat about general things or get any gossip from them that might lead you onto a quest, if they have important quests to provide you could still get those but they'd somewhat unwillingly give it to you. And when aproaching them, they'd have something to say like, "I don't know who you think you are, you rude jerk, but in this village we do not ignore our neighbours."

All of your suggestions would make for an awesome experience while playing but the key thing here was what you said last:



We can only dream about it for another few years as the disk space just isn't there, but in a few years, maybe. Also, there's a large amount of pressure put on to get the game (any game!) out on time and doing all this code, art and dialogue, then translating the dialogue would take a massive amount of time out of refining the game's mechanics, making more quests and making the main quest longer and more epic.

- muddy

And that makes us all very sad pandas.

Indeed...

Actually I thinks it's very likely that this could happen. It's already confirmed that npcs will have disposition meter for you, and various actions will cause them to like you more or less. Somewhere it was stated that if you walk away from an npc that is talking to you, they might try and follow you and keep talking or just realize you aren't listening and stop talking. All they would have to do is have that cause a decrease in disposition, which will probably affect how much they will talk to you. They probably wont be able to remember/tell you why they dont like you, but it will be interesting to play around with.

And if not, I think there'll be a mod for that ^^

I just want to be nice :angel:

Save being nice for real life. What's the point of videogames if you can't use it as an outlit for your aggression and stab babies in the face?

wait... so you want AI that doesn't scream and run for its life (towards its best chance for justice/vengeance) when you murder a family member in front of it?
Personally I'd rather expect a lot of running to happen in that situation, with the mourning coming after.

Are you really that alien to human behavior? How many parents whenever they see you injure their kids would immediately run away out of fear? They'd try to prevent you from it, if they failed it is likely that they'd break down emotionally and try to attack you weakly. Running for help usually comes second in those dramatic situations.

Considering that the person would would be a non combatant (likely, as you had to go save them), I'm assuming they'd already be trying to flee as you kill the [daughter]. Assuming two family members are in total panic mode from some heartless savior turned murderer on their trails I'd not expect the remaining family member to stop fleeing and harangue you for killing her/his [daughter] instead of continuing the adrenaline/panic induced race to a guard or away from said psychotic murderer.

If you are all in a back room away from outside contact/help, and they aren't in a position where there was fleeing happening, and you just cold clocked the daughter down, sure in that situation it'd be more applicable