Ok, so I'm a serious adventurer.

I kill stuff, smith stuff, run away from stuff, do dragon shouts at stuff and rid dungeons and caves of stuff.

But what of the NPC denizens of Skyrim?

What a bunch of boring toerags.

One bloke in Skyrim, leans against the Bricabrac shop 23 hours a days and has an hours sleep.

Could they not do a little more?

In Shenmue for the Dreamcast, if you went down to the town, they milled about, danced, went from shop to shop, pvssyd, opened and closed their business, went home did this that and the other.

The gits who live in Whiterun do very very little. Is this because there is nothing to do or because Beth simply didn't have the time to put more 'life' details into their towns?

I think that would add 100% to this game. Put a little soul into their cities and towns.

Take New Vegas, the soldiers whooping and dancing with the lap dancers in the street was lame. It's as if they couldn't think what people would ACTUALLY DO if they lived there and didn't give them anything to do anyway.

Shenmue recreated a busy lively town with soulfull NPC's that you really believed lived there.

I love Skyrim and don't care about any of the so called problems or bugs but I do think that putting some human soul into the lands and bandit camps would be the icing on the cake.

The whole Skyrim world, the civil war, the dangers outside on the tundra would just click into place. As it is, the sabre tooths and the people in the towns, the bears, dragons and giants, the bandits and mudcrabs are all the same. You don't feel like the people other than you have anything to lose. Soulful towns would fix all that. You'd see that they were hiding away from the horrors.

For me Shenmue is the greatest role playing game of all time and it was made 10 years odd ago. Nothing beats it for soul and Skyrim would be 100% better for that little touch.

That bird who runs the smithing shop by the gate in Whiterun churning out the same line over and over again even though she just said it. Leaning against that post. Nerver speaking with anyone. She doesn't exist does she. She doesn't work there. She's like a ghost or something. Give her an actual life, does she go to the shops to get food ever? No. She has no soul and is therefore not all that believable.

If you saw she had a real life in Whiterun, ou'd care about her on some level and hope that a Mammoth didn't get her. As it is she's just a bit of scenery.

Its the next step. Make it seem real.

I think you need to get outside for a bit, OP. just kidding

I would agree some of them live dull lives in comparison to our adventurers. Personally if I lived in Whiterun or some other civilized area, I would never leave. I'd be totally content to live with boredom, as the alternative would be to get pwned out on the road somewhere at some point. :mellow:

I also agree that some of them do live lives which are quite shallow and meaningless, and repeat themselves more often than NPCs in Oblivion, but this is a brand-new game, there's always the possibility that stuff could improve with updates and DLC.



BAndit camps? What's wrong with the bandit camps? Whenever I find one, my Nord could care less what sort of "human soul" they've got, he's too interested in looting the place! :foodndrink:

they used to be adventurers like you OP, but then they took an arrow to the knee...

beware OP, the same could happen to you! enjoy your day of adventures while you can

Hah some good points!

I'm sorry, but in all the cities of Skyrim I see folks going to bed at night (closing their shops), or to the tavern to drink and moderately dance with their tankards in their hand, and during the day they go to work, either at their stall to sell their "treasures" or in their fields, lumbmill, forge, workbench. Some of them walk around and discuss, or stop and sit on a bench or bend over a fence. Children run around, ask you to play with them, etc.

Yes there could always be more,but frankly, isn't there life already?

Oblivion was more like that. However, it was a [censored] to try and find someone. In the dark brotherhood, you had to constantly learn routines to pull off good assassinations