First of all: I love the new way of interacting with NPC's, and I would never go back to Oblivions style..

Now I've thought about this for a long time, and I have yet to find any answer to this. What would happen if someone (or something) decided to go nuts in the background while you had your pleasant little conversation? In Oblivion the solution was simple: Everything else froze, making you safe (enemies targeting you froze), but how will this work in Skyrim? Will you not be able to have a conversation while there are enemies nearby? Will the conversatiion be interrupted?

Remember that Radiant-AI will be featured in Skyrim, and it would be natural if there was occasional violence or other disturbances that you for once are not involved in! :tongue:

What's everyones thought on this? Have Bethesda answered how this will be solved?

Yeah you can just leave mid conversation even if there's nothing going on. Which is cool cause that means you can storm out when you're tired of someone's [censored].

I can just imagine the problem of having the person I'm talking to just randomly get killed... That would be kind of funny though...

I assume that you deal with the problem and then resume the conversation? Shouldn't be much of an issue.

You spelled Potential wrong. Anywho, you might be talking to someone, and then a dagger will suddenly be protruding from the base of the person's neck. THAT, my friend, would be interesting.

I'm buggered by the idea of while talking to person A, person B (who I also wanted to speak to) wanders off in the distance and I have to spend time looking for them. Other than that, I'm cool with real-time convos.

I want to see how this works with the guards and the justice system.

To me that's all part of the fun... :celebrate:

You can usually get people to say what they said before. I imagine if the player is in combat (something chasing him) they won't talk to you, it will be "lookout" etc like Oblivion. Once the danger is solved then you can talk to them. And if your talking to them and you start causing trouble I'm sure the conversation will end. I can see the youtube vids already where the player is shooting people in the background with arrows or magic while in a conversation, lol.

If you want the 500 gold, I need you to- *mudcrab kills him*

im guessing things dont actually 'happen' when your in conversation
animations may still occur in the back ground (people walking around, water moving, horse shaking head) but i doubt anything, like someone killing somebody or a dragon starting to attack, will happen while your in convorsation
unless something like that is scripted to interrupt a convo in a quest or something

Actually, everything they've said/shown so far indicates that the world continues as normal while you're in conversation. You can walk away, mudcrabs can form an army and attack a village, M'aiq can strip down and run through town screaming. The game doesn't pause anymore.

This.
It is known already that you can move away from the person you're talking.

My thoughts stemmed more on what happens if the story is interuprted like "So listen, there is a secret way into the keep which only I know about and since you did (insert random Quest that took forever but you loved it anyway) I'm going to tell you the way in to the vault filled with gold. The way in is..."

The person stops talking because he just got eaten by a dragon, he's dead, you'll never ever get that sweet gold.

If Radiant Story works the way I think it does, then someone else would help you out with that.

Unless the dragon was really hungry...

Yeah exactly. There are no guarantee that the quest-giver is aware of every threat in the world: "dragons, mudcrabs.. etc" waiting to strike behind his back.

What I'm looking forward to is committing a crime and running away while the guard is still trying to read me my rights. :trophy:

Never again shall anyone finish the sentence "Your money or your life".

And what if that person was a quest giver who was about to give you a nice quest reward as promised? That would svck! Not cool.

How in the world will the guards arrest you in real time?!?!?!

Stand still. Let them talk. Pay your fine, or go to jail.

Running away mid-convo is as good as resisting arrest and the guards will treat it as such.

i just posted in another topic about this very issue...id imagine there is some sort of universal interrupt system where NPC's break conversation when something...interesting happens, and perhaps has them try and resume conversation when everything is back to normal. like, say a villainous mudcrab wanders into town; the NPC in question would naturally run away in fear, but 10 minutes later after half the guards have died slaying the monster and safety is restored, he might seek you out to resume talking.

or more likely they just break conversation and you have to track down the cowards every time your interrupted...thatll be annoying. and can you imagine talking to companions? granted one should expect an inherent danger in conversing in the middle of a bandit-infested dungeon, but it will still be annoying being attacked so often while trying to talk to them.