Interview Skyrim: Making Fantasy a Reality

[poetic codex]

Here's something to keep in mind when it comes to interviews with game developers:

When they answer a question, they're not answering based on what was actually implemented in the game, they are answering based on what they would like to implement. BIG DIFFERENCE.

This explains why Ray Muzyka would talk about being risky and innoovative in an interview, then release games like DA 2.This goes all the way back to the days of Romero and the Daikatana debacle.

 

[Angthoron]

History repeats itself.

"You're walking through a seedy part of a town in Western Cyrodiil. People mill about, some engaged in conversation, others minding their own business, out on their own errands. Suddenly, an ugly man decides he doesn't like you. Maybe he's drunk, maybe he's just a bully, maybe he's just showing off in front of his friends -- but for whatever reason, he has taken your measure and decided he can best you.

He comes charging at you, with a nasty looking mace in his hand and a look of hatred on his face. Onlookers move back to make room for what should be an entertaining fight.

Quickly drawing your sword and shield, you wheel around to face him. He's upon you pretty quickly though, and you barely have time to raise your shield (hold right mouse button) before his first blow thunders down upon you.

But you block well, and as he recoils from the collision, you quickly perform left & right slashes with your sword (left click, pause, left click). The bully realizes this isn't going to be easy.

He backs off a bit, and starts dodging around you. First to the left, then to the right. You maneuver to keep him in view, looking for an opening. Suddenly he steps back, raises his mace in both hands, and steps forward, bringing the mace towards your head in a crushing blow!

But you're quick -- you step to the side as he attacks. As he passes by, you execute a spinning maneuver and slash him in the side (hold left mouse button and left maneuver key). The hit is solid, and your foe staggers from the blow.

But it's not over yet. The bully swings his mace wildly -- his first swing misses, but the next one connects for a blow that sends you staggering. Pressing his advantage, the bully bears down on you with a power attack of his own. OUCH. This isn't going well. You take a glance at your health meter, it's getting a bit low. You quickly back up out of the bully's reach and raise your shield (hold right mouse button).

He's hurting, too. You circle each other for a time, looking for an opening, trying to recover some fatigue. Finally the bully charges forward with a devastating overhead blow, perhaps hoping to break your shield. But the shield holds and the recoil send him staggering back. This is your chance! You perform a mighty forward power attack (hold the left mouse button, press forward) and connect solidly. The blow staggers your foe once again, and you perform 3 slashing attacks in rapid succession (left mouse button, pause, left mouse button, pause, left mouse button), and finally the bully collapses to the ground, defeated.

The crowd disperses, going back to their own business."

Production of Skyrim will be moved near Fukushima for a real radiant experience. Other news at 11.

Trannies and gentlemen - a complex combat that is yet to meet its match!* Radiant Combat - Left Click Pause Left Click Pause Left Click! Mighty Power Attacks with just a click!




*LARP or mod in the rest for optimal results.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

What's the use of only the people and quests reacting to the player's actions? What about the cities themselves? Why not Radiant cities? If a player spends most of his time melee fighting and drinking, cities should have only inns and weapon stores. If he only rides horses and kills things, cities should only have fighter's guilds and stables.

 

[G.O.D]

Trannies and gentlemen - a complex combat that is yet to meet its match!* Radiant Combat - Left Click Pause Left Click Pause Left Click! Mighty Power Attacks with just a click!

*LARP or mod in the rest for optimal results.

Sounds like TW to me..

 

[JarlFrank]

Look at how amazing our Radiant AI is! It's doing lots of awesome things, everything is so dynamic, look at that woman practicing her archery skills and haha she killed her dog because the barking annoyed her. Our AI fucks up sometimes but look how cool the results of that are. This AI is FUCKING AWESOME!!!!11one

We had to remove most of the AI features because it was too advanced for today's tech and therefore caused a lot of lag. Also it fucked up a lot of quests, so we had to tone it down for gameplay reasons. Yeah, we just axed the one feature we've hyped all year long one month before release, but it totally existed in the game before we decided to remove it for various reasons so we never lied during out marketing campaigns!

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjbx6-KQoRg

Because some may have forgotten.

 

[Mastermind]

http://www.gamebandits.com/news/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim-bethesda-follows-biowares-lead-in-rpg-romance-07211/

Here's a reason for you "ass effect 2 was an enjoyable shooter" fuckers to play skyrim. I'm sure it'll be an "enjoyable, good for what it is, walking simulator".

Sounds like bullshit. They claim there was an announcement but they don't provide a link to it. Maybe it's just one of those retarded "I want romances so I'm gonna pretend they announced them to get hype going and pressuring them into actually doing it" type of schemes only a gaming journalist would be stupid enough to think would work.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Yeah about that Radiant mission or whatever thing. It ended up giving people missions that were too hard and complex that just lead to even more harder and complex missions being given because they affected so much of the world so we had to make them simpler. We had to tone it down a bit but the skyrim experience is more stable and smooth now and none of the depth was lost. Now the game has designated a 'radiant quest' area where all the radiant quests happen. There will be a radiant dungeon, a radiant cave, and a radiant tower, with different objectives each time you get a quest to enter them. Rad-iant!

 

[Clockwork Knight]

-Wouldn't it be righteous if we could have a way of making characters do some really bodacious stuff on their own?

- Not only righteous, dude...it would be totally rad! But it would be too complex for our technology, maybe in 20 years or so when computers will be most excellent.

-Totally rad, you say? Hmmm...

 

[circ]

Radiant 2: Return of the AI

 

[Regdar]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjbx6-KQoRg

Because some may have forgotten.

Wow, even their jargon is rehashed. That's pretty lame.

 

[wwsd]

Ehh? NPCs have picked up stuff from the ground for as long as I can remember. Jagged Alliance 2 had that over a decade ago: militia guy has a pistol, sees a rifle lying around and picks it up to shoot some fucking redshirts.

They refer to this as an example of "Radiant Story", but I don't see what it has to do with the story at all when two people fight over something you dropped or try to hunt you down. That has nothing to do with the story, it's just another fucking annoying fight for you. I'm actually struggling to understand what this guy is trying to say.

It just seems to me that it's going further into the Grand Theft Auto direction: you hardly ever get around to playing the fucking game because you're constantly getting nudged because you haven't visited your girlfriend during the last hour, you have to go to the gym, you have to go drinking with your buddies. That kind of stuff, basically, except with annoying fights. But maybe there is some brilliant explanation of "Radiant Story" that I'm missing out on and it's not all a bunch of hot air to impress people with more fucking "immersion".

 

[Mastermind]

Ehh? NPCs have picked up stuff from the ground for as long as I can remember. Jagged Alliance 2 had that over a decade ago: militia guy has a pistol, sees a rifle lying around and picks it up to shoot some fucking redshirts.

They refer to this as an example of "Radiant Story", but I don't see what it has to do with the story at all when two people fight over something you dropped or try to hunt you down. That has nothing to do with the story, it's just another fucking annoying fight for you. I'm actually struggling to understand what this guy is trying to say.

It just seems to me that it's going further into the Grand Theft Auto direction: you hardly ever get around to playing the fucking game because you're constantly getting nudged because you haven't visited your girlfriend during the last hour, you have to go to the gym, you have to go drinking with your buddies. That kind of stuff, basically, except with annoying fights. But maybe there is some brilliant explanation of "Radiant Story" that I'm missing out on and it's not all a bunch of hot air to impress people with more fucking "immersion".

On the bright side, if this happens playing a genocidal maniac would be considerably more entertaining this time around. Not "LARP a necromancer and invade Ald Ruhn with a massive undead army you glitched into permanence" entertainment like in Morrowind, but I'll take what I can get.

 

[wwsd]

Absolutely, but then it would still basically just be GTA-style mayhem: shoot a bunch of people in the face, fight ever increasing amounts of cops, then go down in a blaze of glory, taking on the US Army. I actually think that it would be fun to get hunted down for being a genocidal maniac, and having that kind of thing in a game is better than running out of NPCs and guards within minutes. It's valid in that it's similar to other "open world" games with a "realistic" response to almost everything that you can do.

It just has fuck all to do with RPGs, nothing to do with the "Story", Radiant or otherwise, unless we're LARPing "Elder Scrolls V: Mad Wanker With Fire Magic" and that's basically the story. What I don't get is why they don't just say that in passing: "The world will respond realistically to even your silliest actions", and then go back to talking about stuff that actually matters. It sure isn't a unique selling point.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

They refer to this as an example of "Radiant Story", but I don't see what it has to do with the story at all when two people fight over something you dropped or try to hunt you down. That has nothing to do with the story, it's just another fucking annoying fight for you. I'm actually struggling to understand what this guy is trying to say.

It's that "MAKE YOUR OWN STORY" thing they use to advertise rpgs (and MMOs), meaning you're supposed to pretend thse NPCs are fighting for a real reason, instead of just being programmed to collect items laying around.

 

[someone else]

NPCs picking up things isn't that good, in Fallout 3, the AI keeps looting better guns off their comrades in battle which results in a pile of bodies at the same spot because I just shoot them while they are picking things off each other.

Bet the designers didn't think of that.

 

[wwsd]

They refer to this as an example of "Radiant Story", but I don't see what it has to do with the story at all when two people fight over something you dropped or try to hunt you down. That has nothing to do with the story, it's just another fucking annoying fight for you. I'm actually struggling to understand what this guy is trying to say.

It's that "MAKE YOUR OWN STORY" thing they use to advertise rpgs (and MMOs), meaning you're supposed to pretend thse NPCs are fighting for a real reason, instead of just being programmed to collect items laying around.

Yeah fair enough. But it would really take some kind of massive spin-doctoring to convince people that this is in any way fun. But maybe I'm too optimistic about the judgement of gamers and press. I suppose in the end they could just have a weekly press release that only says: "IT'S ELDER SCROLLS AND IT'S GOT FUCKING DRAGONS. HOLY SHIT!!!!11" and it would be a best-seller.

 

[CraigCWB]

Sounds like they learned how to use a few more event triggers. It'd be nice if i was able to believe that what he describes is actually NPCs reacting to their environment in a dynamic manner, but I'm just about 100% positive that what he's describing is an EVENT being generated when the player does something, followed by a simple table look-up using a random to determine which script should run in response. High end programming... in the 1980s...

Anyway, it's all good as long as it makes the game more fun.

 

[Angthoron]

Radiant 2: Return of the AI

Radiant Story, bro.

 

[Havoc]

Radiant 2: Return of the AI

Radiant Story, bro.

And we have a winner... now only a picture of a NPC from Obliblox with a smile and it's good to go.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

a picture of a NPC from Obliblox with a smile

 

[Clockwork Knight]

First, I thought "Well, that's not so bad...at least it's not gay"

Then, I realized the one in the middle is a guy.

Then, I realized the other two are also guys.

 

[Angthoron]

The middle one looks like this one dude I know. That dude is gay. What a strange coincidence.

 

[Exmit]

True meaning of Radiant AI


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-zk0eodQHI

 

[MicoSelva]

NPCs stealing dropped items was already present in Arcanum, but they did not fight over them or ask if You want them back or other stuff (they however started using them, if the item was good weapon, for example), so there could be some potential here.

It was already present in ultima VII. And probably some roguelikes.

I clearly need to catch up and play Ultima games.