I agree with the last part. Randomly-generated quests can be great for faction quests, such as a mercenary-type organization. It reflects on the fact that the PC is really just a regular member of the faction and would be subject to the same mundane quests as anyone else.

That's not to say handcrafted mundane quests can't be used effectively. Morrowind's guild quests weren't the same scripted "spectacles" like the Companions in Skyrim, but they gradually built up to a larger narrative that is revealed as you progress through the faction.

I mean, sure, they can return. I'll just continue to not give a [censored] about them. However, as long as they don't take away from other elements of the game, I'll just ignore them and explore the world on my own.

Radiant Story, like Radiant AI before it, has two faces.

To the developer and modder, it is a great boon that formalizes and streamlines a game functionality that was a monotonous scripting hassle in previous BGS games, a welcome expansion and optimization of design.

To the average gamer, it is a catchy marketing gimmick that doesn't live up to its potential because the ones pushing it are dumbing down the explanation of what it really does.

Quest aliases modifying other form objects on a temporary basis, modular scripting enabling generic scripts to have per-case targets loaded into the property list, an event manager triggering quests on the without a script triggering them, formalized NPC dialog scenes... Radiant Story is awesome. If you're a serious modder, you know what all those boons are about.

If we're just talking about how quest locations and items were changed for subsequent playthroughs, I didn't mind that in Skyrim. It added variety and replay-ability. What I'm more looking forward to seeing is where they take radiant story and random encounters. I did feel that some random encounters in Skyrim could have been expanded upon, which is what I'm hoping for in FO4. Imagine randomly encountering a caravan under attack by raiders, you save them, and later on the same caravan shows up at one of your settlements to trade. Something along those lines. I'd like anything radiant to still have some effect in the world, whether positive or negative, and not just be in the game as filler.

Radiant anything is good.

If I walk into diamond city, and some npc asks me to go rescue his daughter, or get revenge on raiders who sacked his caravan I now have a spot on the map I wasn't aware of to go and explore.

There's no downside to this and I don't see how you wouldn't want such a system. It makes the world feel more organic; instead of always going to this location for this quest, I have numerous potential locations, making each play through unique.

People point to the thieves guild, but the problem there wasn't radiant quests. It was just a poorly handled way to do guild progression.

The infinite supply of robberies and such was a very good thing. Having to do x amount in each city was not.

Normally I'm fine with them, as long as it's not like Dragon Age: Inquisition where menial fetch tasks are the majority of the game then I don't mind.

Shre, why not. I liked em in Skyrim

What the hell are radiant quests?

Yes but not like Skyrim. Only have a few Radiant Stuff and have the rest be handcrafted.

Speaking *very* generally, any scenario in Skyrim that could happen multiple times, or with different NPCs, or in different locations, was "Radiant". For example, the repeatable Thieves Guild quests that spawned loot in random houses for you to steal. Or when you steal from someone, and they send hired thugs after you. Or when randoms encounters like the Old Orc or the Afflicted Refugee spawn in the game world. Hell, it's even used for little things like tavern wenches taking your order when you sit down, or selling ore/crops/firewood to the appropriate NPCs.

The system is named Radiant Story, it's an extension of the Radiant AI they made for Oblivion that defines how NPCs interact with the world around them, based on goals and schedules.

It gets a bad rep because Bethesda used it to add a lot of simplistic busywork quests to the game. But my thing is, they only need to make a radiant quest once; if an NPC asks you to find an item lost in a dungeon, chances are they're using the same Dungeon Delving quest and just changing the variables. So it's not really squandering their dev time to take full advantage of repeatable quests.

Yes.