Although i'm aware that Todd seems to be trying not to "over hype" Radiant Story. I still can't help but get excited over this feature, it just sounds so awesome. To me it's features like this that will allow for faster, maybe less scripted, quests and in turn allow for a lot more quests in the factions quest lines. In Daggerfall yes some of quests were boring but it was nice to have a a lot of quests to do for a faction and some of them were really fleshed out. Obviously there needs to be a balance but it does sound like Bethesda is moving in the right direction. Todd even said that we would struggle to see Radiant Story in action which suggests that it works really well behind the scenes. Now i'm not a fan of Random generated landscapes and it seems like Beth has learned their lesson after Oblivion. Tools like Radiant Story will give them more time to work on making a cool world.

Bethesda are a very smart company and it's these kind of tools that will hopefully one day allow them to make even larger worlds for us to enjoy.

Thoughts?

The radiant story will eventually be adopted and franchized. Bethesda will make millions.

I completely agree. From what I got, it's not randomly generated quests as some people seemed to think, but written and scripted quests where only minor things vary, i.e. the location, the reward, etc. The actual goal of the quest and the major parts of it that make the quest unique will remain that way.

If (And this is a big if) it works exactly as described and intented, then yeah, this could be huge. If it works just like they want it to, it would reviolutionize the way quests are handled in games to give each player a tailor made experience.
Then again, it might not work that well, it might fall flat on it's ass and just be a bother. But that seems rather unlikely, if I understand what I've heard about it correctly then it's a dream come true for any modder who wants to do quests, but can't quite get it worked out (Namely myself ).

Only time will tell. It could svck, it could be awesome. We don't know yet.

True yes i suppose i should drop the random part. However it seems to function a lot like a Quest Generator/Maker tool that will speed up the quest making process ten fold. Like Todd said, no individual scripting needed.

This is a huge addition to me, especially if it continues to generate quests unendingly.

I actually liked having the never-ending-pile of random quests in Daggerfall.

yes, so the number of quests is limited and the objective stays the same, however by changing locations the quest will be different on each play trough.
As this look pretty easy to make I guess it's many of them so we get a mix of Oblivions story based quests like "rat problem" and this semi random ones.
Sounds like a good deal for me.

I'm very excited about this feature. I think it'll be great.

Yeah well it certainly gave you something to do. It also made your rise through the ranks of the guilds feel a lot more realistic. They way it is handled now is quite funny, you can rise to the top of a guild in a week. :spotted owl:

Hopefully Radiant Story will solve this problem

As long as the kid in the Podcast always gets kidnapped by something appropriate like Humans/Bandits and not Zombies or Bears I'll be happy.

I like proceedurally-generated terrain... it looks more natural than hand-crafted terrain when done right, as well as able to generate truly unique, breathtaking, and massive worlds, when the parameters are properly defined.

I'm actually a big fan of proceedural generation in almost all aspects of a game...

Have you got any examples of this in action?

Dwarf Fortress has some amazing geography, with chasms, deep caverns, waterfalls, rivers, volcanoes, swamps, forests, deserts, and all sorts of stuff... too bad the graphics are more than 30 years out of date.

And I remember finding a proof-of-concept FPS that's only 95 KB in size due to procedural generation of textures and meshes. I'd like to see that sort of tech involved in generating Khajiit fur patterns.

What wait...radiant AI.

as for you Average Lord here is procuderal beauty in action go sirs

EVERYONE LOOK HERE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7eREddMjt4&feature=related

" It's even more 'gameplay footage' than one might think... I don't know if you know that the starfield? background isn't actually background; it's a quasi-realtime render of the actual in-game galaxy. Every nebula is really there, and every dot is a star you can travel to, with its own planetary system "

^this; procedural planets, nebula, solar systems ect and so on a total procuderal galaxy; now let you brain comprehend that for a moment O YEAH to scale (1:1) procedural galaxy

EDIT: o yeah procuderaly (randomly) generated cities http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsVzwX-t63U&feature=related

Impressive stuff for sure. Hope they finish it.
I'm not sure however that this type of method would suit a FPRPG. The landscape would be too basic to hold interest. In the future however...

The landscape wouldn't be too basic to hold interest if it used Dwarf Fortress-style landscaping, mixed with kkrieger-style mesh and texturing. The seeds can be modified to make it as compressed as needed to remain playable.

radiant story isn't random. at all.

The fact that Todd said we won't even realize that a quest has dynamic elements and that it will still feel scripted makes me think that this won't be the huge, impactful feature we suspected. At least not until subsequent playthroughs, when we discover that the quests are different. That's still a really interesting feature, though, and should add at least a little bit of intrigue and replayability.

Of course with infinity they us a separate engine for planetary generation which by looking at the technical details can easily be used for something like dwarf fortress (2), but with oblivion in mind of course it wouldn't work i was just showing that such a game is possible.

Of course when (if) infinity comes out expect minds to be blown more so than any other game in the history of games.

Your right... it sounds like it's superior cousin: Procedural generation.

Instead of mad lib type random stuff, we get somthing much better, and it seems to me it is a random quest generator, it just that for many quests(if not all) some part are hand crafted.

Radiant story seems more like a way to have bigger control over the level scaling in sidequests, which would depend too much on random player actions otherwise (the places you've been to are locked to the level you were at the time you first visited, so the quest would have a chance to have seriously weak enemies, but now the game will search for a dungeon you haven't been in, so the quest will have level appropriate enemies).
Also, it's there to create a more specific experience despite the lack of classes. So a quest that in another game would be available only for a specific class, here it will be available if the game sees your stats/skills etc are a certain way. So it seems to me that it's not really a random generator as much as a tool for Bethesda to keep some control over the quests/storytelling, while giving the player freedom to do whatever they want.

I do think it is a step closer to the roots, but for totally different reasons than past games did it. I don't think it will have as much randomness or will be as obvious.

I also believe that generated worlds in the future will provide for amazing experience, and Bethesda, having history in this, is one of the companies I expect to do it. Not yet though. That infinity thing does look badass.

I really hope that there are a lot of handmade core quests that are essential to the faction's storyline, which are then complemented by an endless stream of randomly generated quests that fit the purpose and style of each faction. Say, after you complete the Mage's Guild storyline, then you can keep doing quests based on your abilities, your faction rank, and your progress with the other factions. Like, go find some lich who is terrorizing a settlement and kill him. Or recover some arcane Dwemer artifact before some bandits do. It would be awesome! :rock:

No I mean it doesn't randomly fill a quest template, it looks at your character. His level, friends, allies, skills, etc.

It doesn't randomize a number and say if it's 7 then james the nord gives you the quest.
It says "oh I see your friends with james the nord! well he'll give you the quest then"

Holy.... ****

All I know is that games are gonna be sweat when I become an old man...