It's worth noting that there's a distinction between Radiant AI and Radiant Story. Radiant AI = the way NPCs live in the world, generally. Radiant Story = the way NPCs react to and are affected by your character and their actions.

In the recent GI interview Todd said making NPCs more 'human' in how they react to you and your actions was the key challenge in gaming today. Regardless of how it turns out (I hope well), it's clear they're giving Radiant a lot of love and attention this time.

Reality check guys.

If they had mastered THE radiant AI then why was it not in either fallout game?

this happens.



i highly doubt it'll happen often enough to get annoying. also, i highly doubt it's always going to be the same thing - they're smart enough to add some variation to the idea of random quests and random questgivers.



guards are always incompetent and corrupt, and i doubt many cities are willing to send out half their garrison in the middle of a civil war just to save some kid from a cave. it stands to reason that if you're capable of killing dragons on your own and people hear that you kill dragons on your own, they'll probably view you as this really hilariously powerful dude and hope that you just might have enough time in your busy schedule of killing dragons to help out.



i don't think Bethesda's ever done this with any quest refusal ever. at most we'll probably get like a downtrodden "oh, okay...i understand you're busy, maybe i can find someone else..."

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because Fallout 3 was always meant to be on a smaller scale than Oblivion, and really only focused on improving the core gameplay flaws while delivering a game different and solid enough to stand on its own.

also, because they didn't work on New Vegas.

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what did you people seriously expect out of Radiant AI? what did you want that it isn't capable of doing? i want a list, not a poorly-formatted paragraph.

i also want a list of comparable sandbox games with AI that feels genuine and realistic. the only ones i can think of are STALKER (which functions almost exactly like Radiant AI, except that when things spawn they move around the world instead of just hovering around their spawn point) and the X games (though the AI in these really only extends to the economy and to a lesser degree sector wars).

Just watch the old video. Sorry lost link - it is out there though.

We want that plus more.

NPCs that are programed with motivations not with scripts to follow schedules (well some of that would of course be necessary).

The pessimist in me wants to say Yes but not to the full extent as they are talking about. I just don't feel like being skeptic about it this time around though because they've had a long time developing this game, more people in this process then when they made Oblivion, and plus they are not working with a new console. By now they know full well how the 360 and PS3's work and should know how to come through with this promised feature.

I think it's one of the best new features for taking a step forward in TES series. Same with the new take on combat and magic (left and right hand system). If they can pull them both off combined with the art style and setting it will make Skyrim the best TES game yet, IMO.

Better animations would go a long way to improve the believability of even the simplest of AI functions. That being said, I'm not expecting anything out the ordinary. AI has never been one of Bethesda's strong points. They'll probably just dot the world with tiny scripted events (boy picking up sword) and other points of immersion (NPC's farming, woodcutting, working, etc), which is fine - really.

I didn't see a link posted for the video, for http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjbx6-KQoRg.

I'm silently optimistic. They have an extra 40 sets of hands now. The extra manpower might just do it.

I watched the same video on the "Making of Oblivion" DVD the other week, when they are going over this in a meeting before that E3. Pretty cringe worthy now!
That said, it really isn't that difficult to get goal-orientated AI working provided there is good world-context within which it can work - Dwarf Fortress does this in a stable manner in Fortress mode and it leads to some cool emergent behaviour that the player can use to tell their own story. Heck, Theme Park did very basic mood tracking and goal driven (?) AI more than 15 years ago. I'm sure they have the context with Skyrim, places, objects and new actions for the NPCs to interact with, and the NPC detail is an order of magnitude simpler than DF; so no reason they couldn't do it as far as I can see. But I checked "wait and see".

Fallout was just more testing for TESV. I was disappointed they went to FO3 before TESV, but now I'm glad they did because I believe they learned a lot more which have allowed them to make TESV even better than if they did it before FO3.

One worry that I have on this system is that like in oblivion any NPC will have a preset dialog with any almost any NPC. I want my NPCs to have relationships people they dislike and avoid, people they love and might spend time with and walk together. For instance you're in the store and talking to a shopkeeper and then a new customer walks in. I would hope some would greet the new customer, some might ignore them and some might ignore you and talk to their dear friend saying something along the lines of "I'll talk to you later if you wish." and if you keep pestering them then they'll either ignore you or be aggravated and talk to you, or throw you out of the store or call the guards to throw you out. That's what I hope, for NPCs to have real lives and personalities.

Oblivion's radiant AI was much better than Morrowind's billboard people. Everyone was just a walking encyclopedia with tons of crap to say. They were more like just terminals for accessing information. The world in Oblivion at least felt like it was living. Shops closed, people slept, went to taverns, walked to locations. Sure it wasn't what they said it was going to be, game developers always talk with these big high hopes that never get implemented. But you acted like they made some sacred promise to you that they broke or something. No, the feature just didn't pan out like they expected. The technology wasn't quite there yet for their aspirations. Hell what they were talking about back in 2004 and 2005 still has never been implemented and would still be impressive. I am expecting a large improvement over Oblivion.

I'm not expected to be blown away by anything anymore ^^ but we'll see.. minecraft blew me away

I was saying Spore tried this and it turned out to be a very nagging system with a small subset of different quests that often repeat. I'm hoping Bethesda does it better, but I'm skeptical just how much better random quests can be done.

I'm not worried about the AI and I think Oblivion did it fine with NPC schedules and such. It reminded me of Majora's Mask on a larger scale. The random storytelling is the only game play feature in the whole game I'm worried about at this point. That doesn't mean I think it will fall flat. I'm just skeptical.

I agree, I really do hope that we'll see wenches asking help from the guards. I also hope the guards will accept or reject their request. I also hope people will ask other adventures to help in their quest, and the only time you just be asked over any other adventure or guard is if you are renown in that area or have a good rep in the town, not if you're just some guy off the street that no one has heard of wearing nothing but beggars cloths.

Because I am so bloody optimistic and have yet to be disappointed by an Elder Scrolls game I say Yes and it will blow us away.

But even if they don't have it it will not hurt my feelings any. I like the series to much to be disappointed by pretty much anything they change.... Unless they change it like Fable then I would get sad.

I was pretty impressed by Fallout, people would react by me shooting a gun and I really liked that

I'll only believe it when I play it myself. Seeing it in a video is not enough, like it wasn't enough in the oblivion pre-release videos.

The probability to radiant AI to be greater than oblivion is 100%. The probablitlity of radiant AI to not reach a satisfying point is 100%.

This is way too complex to be well achieved. Military, scientific and others well more funded and with awesomely more graded, experienced, and inteligent people are seeking something similar for decades and they aint near it.

So dont fool yourself radiant AI and related things wont be stellar, dragons won t be smart.

I smell a lot of vaporware and hype around Skyrim, even more than Oblivion (or maybe as past title were very good i wasn t willing to see the true beforehand)

The videos at GI arent ressuring, they show a clear tendency to quit RPG to Action game with RPG elements all the way, and the will to not respect past sucesses to catters anyone.