Everyone remembers the months leading up to Oblivion - seeing gameplay videos of radiant AI and hearing stories about what it will be like...I remember watching the video of the woman and her dog when they were showcasing the system. It was very exciting stuff..

But as we all know, the radiant AI was scrapped or dumbed down at the last minute because the NPC'S were out of control.

Game Informer's article got me very excited for all of the improvements in Skyrim, especially the announcement that they're taking a second shot at it.

Buuuut... I'm skeptical about their announcement this time around. Bethesda will surely create a great game, but...i've heard them boast about their radiant AI for months leading up to the release of Oblivion...and we got diddily squat.

Bethesda will surely create a great game...but I will be very surprised and impressed if radiant ai works the way they're already boasting it will.

Do you think they'll be able to put their money where their mouth is?

Any other thoughts on the game's AI?

Since I can't honestly say that Oblivion was a great game, even thou I spend hundreds of hours on it, I try not to get my hopes up this time around. When I stopped playing Morrowind I did it because I did everything imaginable several time over and it was just time to move on (I recently started playing it again btw, with 10 gigs of mods for a refreshment and it's a blast! )
When I stopped playing Oblivion it was because I cough my self on a thought that I simply don't want to play, I rather go read, chat or do just about anything else, but not play it. For a moment there I even got a fright that I finally "outgrown" playing altogether, but thankfully I got Mass Effect, just out of curiosity and found out that I still can sit 20+ hours playing and be ecstatic about it.
So since the whole Oblivion experience nearly put me off of gaming at the end of it, simply because it was dull, stale and frustrating after the novelty of beautiful graphics (that had many faults when you looked closer as well - like static, bulky hair, unmoving cloth and so on) [censored] off and a couple of good quests that it had where done, I am very courteous about Skyrim. And don't even start me on Fallout 3 (and no New Vegas does not count, it's not Bethesda that made it)...
In fact SI is the only thing that makes me hope that Skyrim would be a great game - it showed that they still got it in them to make an interesting game with interesting setting and fresh ideas. I sincerely hope that they'll fix the issues Oblivion had, both gameplay wise and for modding purposes, add a SI spirit to making quests, characters and details. And that Skyrim would be awesome and a rebirth of the series including both Oblivions graphics and accessibility, and Morrowinds depths and attention to details, but I'm reserving my judgment until the game actually comes out.

They promised it for Oblivion, but they broke their promise. I don't see them doing that same thing again with Skyrim.

Oh, the painful memories... :nope: that was my biggest disappointment with Oblivion, even bigger than level scaling. And NO, I don't think they can pull off this kind of complexity. They may call Radiant AI those pretty little fully scripted things that the Npc's do, but that's not THE Radiant AI.

Pretty sure the reason they didn't get it down with Oblivion was that they didn't have a firm hold on the 360's technology, because they only had six months to work with it. But now, without those restraints, the Radiant AI should be everything it could've been in Oblivion and more.

im sure it will work, and do a few amazing things like the stuff mentioned in the article. but i dont think itll respond in a good matter all the time - thus i dont think it will blow our minds away.

I think they'll pull it off, and it will blow us away. BUT...I also think there will be flaws with it. Obviously it isn't going to be perfect, nothing is. We'll probably always have that npc that suddenly bolts away for no real reason at all, or that one that stands there dispite his friends lying there on the floor. There will be improvement, much so I believe, almost to the point where we forget we're playing a game for a few hours or so. It just isn't going to be perfect.

Bethesda has had years since Oblivion to perfect and tweak the Radiant AI (Don't forget Oblivion only had 6 months of development on the hardware, and a lot of features were cut due to not having enough time and understanding of the technology). With Skyrim, they are already adding a Radiant Storytelling system. I would be surprised if they didn't fix the issues that Radiant AI had by now. It truly is a revolutionary piece of technology, and could very well give the most intelligent enemies a player has ever encountered.

They have had four years to implement it this time, you guys who doubt them all the time, dont really keep up with whats being said do you, do you really keep up with info online, or just jump in with random gripes ? ,.... you just like to worry and moan all the time,.. what terrible unfulfillable lives you must lead to be so negative all the time

could also be the fire they had in their offices ,i believe they lost some stuff..

Oblivion's NPC have AI packages. this is an improvement from Morrowind. This time the radiace of AI will go farther and in next game even farther. It's how things progress, by steps. Sometimes littles sometimes bigger.

They should be able to pull it off but probably not to the extent they say.
I mean now they have more technology and it has been in development for five years.
But i vote i am just gonna wait and see.

Its funny, cause youre being negative about their negativity. Cause turning off the last light in the room would make things brighter. lolz

They've had the time and the tech. I can't wait to see what they pulled off.

Taking into account the extra employees, the experience from making the previous games, and better tools. If Bethesda were to make Oblivion again, it could be done in a third of the time it took originally.

Why do you think the A.I. was limited by hardware issues? I thought it was all about difficult programming. They were afraid that the "unleashed" npcs will do non-scripted actions that would break the game for the player.

I think the Radiant AI will be good, certainly better than Oblivion's, but not groundbreaking.
I don't really blame them for the disappointing AI in Oblivion. They had the technology and were really excited to show it off and implement it, but they ran into too many problems without enough time to fix them to be able to put it into the game.
They have had plenty of time to work on it this time, so I'm excited to see how it works out.

I don't remember them promising it. They said it was going to be in but if you were in game development, you would know that not everything works out like you want it to. I didn't think there was anything wrong with Oblivion, just because it doesn't have such an amazing main quest line as Morrowind, Oblivion had a far better persistent world and side quests. Would you rather they kept the full radiant AI in and have the world self-destruct around you? The Radiant AI was so far ahead of it's time it wasn't quite finished so they had to push it back. It's been 5 years, they've had plenty of time to work on the radiant AI system that was already almost complete. The system is going to blow us away.

i say wait and see

only when skyrim AI tries to hack into the pentagon control bunker and launch all nukes on Russia thus ending all human life with a nuke Apocalypse, then sending a robot into the past to kill John.....

anyway that's when an AI will blow my mind.

I remember walking into a tavern in Oblivion and a random npc got sneaky and was stealing some ale or something, next thing I know about 6 guards are all over him, he runs off down the street and they kill him. It was a bit harsh for some booze.

I thought it was impressive though, and i've only ever witnessed a random guard attack twice in the entire time I've played the game. If that kind of random action is radient AI toned down then I'd be interested in seeing what it can do with tweaking.

I really hope so. And judging by the interviews, that seems to be Todd's main concern, is how NPC's react to the player, and the world. Ect. Rather than focusing on shiny new graphics.(which are also great)


Although I was sad that RAI did not live up to its potential in OB I think it was and still is damned impressive, and did add a lot to my experience.

I have faith they will make RAI and Radiant story into something special.

They've been smart about there announcements, and have had a long time to figure things out, I think they can do it.

I don't want to get my hopes up too high so I won't be too disappointed if it isn't implemented the way they're saying it will be.

They didn't have enough time to fix the problems, so they just had to scrap it all togethor.

I was disappointed it wasnt implemented like they said it would be but it never affected my love of the game to any degree and I never felt cheated one bit at any time it was an excellent game and I did see some radiant AI actions in game such as 2 rangers fighting over the same buck out in the woods, or 3 mages fighting each other when a spell was area effect and I had disappeared

What is radiant AI?