My question is:

Will NPC's finally have emotion and life, or should we expect dull robots again?

Maybe this wasn't a problem for any of you, but for me it was. In Oblivion and Fallout 3, we were given this great, detailed, and immersive world where everything had life and beauty... except for it's inhabitants. I mean simply talking to folks in a town was sort of depressing to me. Hearing them greet you in their repetitive and monotone voice, and seeing their dismal, lifeless faces look at you was nothing short of boredom. Will the large increase of voice actors fix this? Or perhaps the new graphics engine? Or is this problem un-fixable? Or am I just crazy for finding this irritable? What do you think?

I'm pretty sure There not going to be emotionless robots.

Well that is...actually a good question. Have we seen much emotion in NPC in any gameplay?

Hopefully there are some emo npc's. They show lots of emotion!

I think the fact that you now talk to people without time freezing and zooming in to be face to face with them will help, along with the addition of more voice actors.

If you mean In Skyrim:

I'm not sure, we haven't seen much dialouge in Skyrim except for the good-old blacksmith in Riverwood, which seemed decent. A huge step up from FO3.

If you mean in previous T. Howard games:

No

If you mean in ANY game:

Good question. I can't think of one right off the top of my head. Maybe this is a problem because MOST games that include dialouge, use cutscenes.
Every decent open world or RPG game that has good conversing uses cutscenes. Ugh, now I'm thinking too much.

I would say it will be improved, both in animation and voive acting.

You know, Todd doesn't make these games by himself.

This. Lets face it, the voice acting in Oblivion was horrible. I've been reading here and there that they've put effort into improving that. If the voice acting is good and expressive, the animation point is easy to forgive even if it is fairly tacky.

I know, I just thought saying " In previous Bethesda games" would be naive considering they make more than the ES and FO.
So, since Todd was in charge of development for those games, i found it suitable.

I recall hearing that in every town or city you visit, every NPC has a type of "job" that they need to do, so that they are always occupying themselves with something, whether it be working on a lumber mill, or going out for a stroll, or sitting down and watching the city move or something. I don't think that there will be that aimless standing that seemed to occur too often in Oblivion.

That sounds great. I only replied because you have my childhood hero Asterix as your default picture.
*sniffles* Oh the nostalgia.

As long as it's better than the bipolar bastards we saw in Oblivion. "Oh. It's you." to "I saw a mudcrab the other day. Terrible Creatures."

If there's a Salmo's bakery, I want to see him actually baking some sweet rolls and glazing them, darn it. Not just standing around. Or Armor salesman polishing and arranging armor, or jewelers taking an account of their goods. I want shops to be more lively. And the taverns. In one of the screens for the taverns, it shows a woman in the background sweeping the floor. At least she's doing something productive besides just standing around chatting!

I was just watching the Skyrim game play, and as you enter the down it was just really full of life, best thing i can say is I'm sure NPC will have quite a layer of life, and since Skyrim is way more dense it will give us a lot more interaction and space between talking to NPCs which will hopefully make it a little less boring,

One day, your dream will be recognized, but there are always technological limitations. I think Skyrim will be a breakthrough. The best there is. But it won't be perfect.