V The Elder Scrolls

[Erkki]

Perhaps the fundamental boringness of this sort of thing comes from the fact that it so clearly is 'meaningless'? In the lightest sense, we might crave direction, an authorial hand guiding the world?

I don't agree with that at all. Have you played Gothic? At the time at least and possibly still, it had characters behaving much more believably than in other games and that impressed me a lot. And it was really in small things, they probably didn't even have to make a lot of effort to make it better than other games.

[Roderick]

One of the very few games with true AI was Lionhead's Black & White, and that just became a confused mess in gameplay terms. That wasn't due only to the AI of course, but I do think if you have actual AI you need to set really clear perimeters and boundaries to harness it into anything useful.

[DanJW]

I would love to see games that have vastly better NPC AI than normal, but spend less polygons and stuff for graphics.

Given dedicated graphics cards now, I don't think it would be the polygons that would suffer. More likely the number of entities.

Rodi, I think that it is possible to have procedural and emergent stories that are meaningful (it's how they occur in real life afterall); I just don't think we have figured out how to produce them reliably or with any great frequency. Rarely if ever do designer-programmers attempt new paradigms in game AI.

[Erkki]

Rodi, I think that it is possible to have procedural and emergent stories that are meaningful (it's how they occur in real life afterall); I just don't think we have figured out how to produce them reliably or with any great frequency. Rarely if ever do designer-programmers attempt new paradigms in game AI.

I have a game idea I'm currently thinking about that would try to do that. I just wish I was a millionaire so I could work on this without salary

[DanJW]

Yeah I have thought about this sort of thing from time to time. My idea was to have a kind of AI relationships "physics engine". In the way that systems like Havok can simulate the interaction of solid objects with weight and inertia, I would like to attempt to model metaphysics in the same vein.

Edited January 25, 2011 by DanJW

[brkl]

Problem is, you can't measure social situations and feed the data into your engine :/

[Erkki]

Problem is, you can't measure social situations and feed the data into your engine :/

My idea is to simulate Ta'veren (in Wheel of Time, Ta'veren is someone who is somewhat controlled by fate and around whom other threads in the "Pattern" are woven). So you could look at what characters the player interacts with most and assign fates to them. A fate can be like a story thread template or something, and may or may not be completely fulfilled. That's part of it, but the rest would require a fairly complex simulation of a world and then putting ta'verenness into formulas, which would automatically make more interesting stuff happen to the characters the player interacts with -- not just the story template stuff, but also other game systems (even physics) could take ta'verenness into account.

[Wubbles]

With the addition of random social occurences, that's probably how Bethesda's system works.

[Wubbles]

In other news, the Construction Set returns in the shape of the Creation Kit.

[Wubbles]

COMBAT

[Roderick]

Nais!

[baconian]

My idea is to simulate Ta'veren (in Wheel of Time, Ta'veren is someone who is somewhat controlled by fate and around whom other threads in the "Pattern" are woven). So you could look at what characters the player interacts with most and assign fates to them. A fate can be like a story thread template or something, and may or may not be completely fulfilled. That's part of it, but the rest would require a fairly complex simulation of a world and then putting ta'verenness into formulas, which would automatically make more interesting stuff happen to the characters the player interacts with -- not just the story template stuff, but also other game systems (even physics) could take ta'verenness into account.

I think there's still a certain resistance to this sort of idea in the industry. I worked on something like this a while ago for my thesis in college, and it's fascinating. You see elements of it slowly creeping into games though like in L4D's AI director and dare I say it - spore.

It does sound like Bethesda will be more ambitious with their storytelling mechanics with Skyrim than with Oblivion. I'm optimistic.

[DanJW]

The combat sounds fine I guess. But I would love it if just once a fantasy game could have magic that wasn't based on the classical elements. The Elemenstor Saga is satire for a reason.

[MrHoatzin]

Are these articles or is this PR? They are stupily loose with their superlatives.

[Wubbles]

I'm pretty sure journalists from GameInformer are writing the articles, but since I take all of the links to them from Bethesda's blog, there's probably some corporate meddling going on.

[Squid Division]

If there will be spears/pikes/polearms in the game I'll get it. Not near enough games have those.

[mikemariano]

Are these articles or is this PR?

The answer, of course, is "yes".

Come to think of it, I really would like a mainstream publication to publish a preview that shows nothing but dread and contempt for an upcoming game.

We're good at that on message boards! Just look at the skepticism we've thrown at Th435f, Bioshock Infinite, etc. And mainstream publications have reported minor controversies like Diablo III artwork. But we can do better.

Start simply; have Joystiq do a pre-hate preview of something like an upcoming Farmville clone, something no one anticipates loving. Then move on to the big guns!

Most previews bring developers and journalists together, sharing their dreams for gaming---and dreaming big. It's better to crush those dreams sooner rather than later!

[Roderick]

Let's herald the return of I already hate your game!

Skyrim deserves a certain level of positive reporting, since it does genuinely look like an interesting thing and it has a pedigree of some renown. The GameInformer articles I see as one big corporate cross-over though. They had the exclusive in print, now they have a somewhat official portal... I don't consider it journalism: it's a written out fact sheet, and that's fine.

I did go 'really?' when in the article about the combat the people speaking seemed pretty excited about the special kill animations. Rrrrrreally?

[juv3nal]

(apologies if this has been posted before and I missed it)

Mr. Breckon, I think you know what you need to do:

[Orv]

Mr. Breckon, I think you know what you need to do:

KILL YOU.

[Wubbles]

Today, we have an article about the menu system. See also: Bethesda amusingly disowning Oblivion at every opportunity.

[Erkki]

Today, we have an article about the menu system.

Wow, this is getting quite ridiculous.

[Orv]

Mildly unrelated: Unmodified, Morrowind via Steam is about 1.2GB. My folder currently sits at 7.3GB.

There might be something wrong with me.

[Orv]

Hehe.

c9eGtyqz4gY

His voice at "I'm no longer your fool" reminds me heavily of Jeremy Irons circa Scar.

[Roderick]

I want Skyrim noooooowwwwww /whine

And play it for a whole year.