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[GaelicVigil]

http://www.gameinformer.com/games/the_elder_scrolls_v_skyrim/b/xbox360/archive/2011/01/17/the-technology-behind-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim.aspx

Woo!

I have faith that the Radiant AI system will be pretty good this time around.  They've had years to perfect it and it should actually perform like it was originally touted for Oblivion.

The Radiant Story thing makes me a little nervous as to how exactly they're going to pull it off.  The idea that their giving the game the power to decide how I would like to play is a little scary.  On the other hand, this reminds me a little of Daggerfall's quest system which is definitely good.  I just hope that the number of variations of quests is high enough so it doesn't feel like they're simply throwing Dungeon X with Monsters Y with Objective Z at me all the time.

I'm really interested in seeing how varied the dungeons and landscapes will be.  Even though there was little variation in the textures used, I liked how Daggerfall's dungeons felt completely different from the next.  In Oblivion, it seemed that all dungeons were comprised of large pre-designed "chunks" put together like a puzzle.  You'd see the same 10 puzzle pieces in every single dungeon arranged in a different order.  It got boring really fast.

[TwilightWalker]

Bethesda has worked meticulously to make sure the beasts look powerful and menacing when banking, flapping their wings, gaining altitude before making another strafing run, and breathing fire on their hapless victims.

I do hope this means flying will be back in, if dragons can do it, hopefully we can too.

[Omegastick]

In Oblivion, it seemed that all dungeons were comprised of large pre-designed "chunks" put together like a puzzle.

That's exactly how it works.

[Javarock]

Bethesda has worked meticulously to make sure the beasts look powerful and menacing when banking, flapping their wings, gaining altitude before making another strafing run, and breathing fire on their hapless victims.

I do hope this means flying will be back in, if dragons can do it, hopefully we can too.

Did anyone else noticed they mention dragons TALKING

[Omegastick]

Bethesda has worked meticulously to make sure the beasts look powerful and menacing when banking, flapping their wings, gaining altitude before making another strafing run, and breathing fire on their hapless victims.

I do hope this means flying will be back in, if dragons can do it, hopefully we can too.

Did anyone else noticed they mention dragons TALKING

According to TES lore dragons are fully sapient creatures that can talk and everything.

[nenjin]

The randomized missions does really sound interesting. Finally, someone is thinking procedurally about quest handling. It's been a long time in coming. It's cool that game will tailor the random quests you're offered according to what you've been doing. I just hope they don't do it in a ham fisted manner that they've done other mechanics.....like if you do 2 assassination quests, suddenly that's ALL you're doing and you're locked into part of the game now.

The Radiant AI bit though....meh. I read no difference between what's been promised before and what was actually presented. NPCs have routines. They'll do these routines in believable places. They'll have good animations. I can't help but compare that design philosophy to the same one that put 14,000,000 containers in Bethesda game worlds. Sweet, we are faced with realistic amounts of containers. It still gets boring after 10 hours though, and you get sick of going through everyone's house, checking every container. Will populating a world with fields and mines expressly for NPCs to work in really be all that interesting? Or is it more the obsession with having a filled out world that still results in something uninspired? Will you even notice or care about the highly realistic NPC routines after a few hours?

NPCs tracking your behavior isn't new, it's scripting 4 modes of NPC attitudes and using a flag system to track how they should change. I'm not saying it's not an improvement....it just sounds like Bethesda may finally be catching up to do something other than a cookie cutter design. Maybe.

The screens are looking quite nice. Like Oblivion, they seem hung up on visuals again though. Ditching Speed Tree was probably a good thing but....at the cost of writing a system to do their own trees? All that...for trees?

Like the last few Bethesda games, I'm just gonna have to wait to see if they actually put their money where their mouth is. Because they never really have since Morrowind, in my book.

[Duke 2.0]

In Oblivion, it seemed that all dungeons were comprised of large pre-designed "chunks" put together like a puzzle.

That's exactly how it works.

Which is strange, because it was how Morrowind was made too. And yet I loved those dungeons. Possibly because while they reused a lot of chunks they still had a ton of them and they used them in interesting ways. Like flooding some with water, or bisecting caves with tombs or Daedric ruins with Dwemmer tunnels. The Oblivion caves and ruins reused perhaps too many set pieces, the caves being halls and rooms and the forts being the most dull layouts ever.

 So using a cookie-cutter design recycling areas isn't bad, it's how you use it. And keeping in mind to have enough set pieces that they won't get dull.

[MasterFancyPants]

Is anyone else starting to hope for destroyable environments. Oh, and rebuildable to, at least by the NPCs with the radiant AI and all... Maybe that's a little too high hoped...

Edit:
I hope they make it easy to mod. 'Cause I want to be the guy who sleeps with his best friend's wife 
Has anyone found any demo videos?

[nenjin]

You be dreamin' if you expect destructible environments. No fantasy game has really ever delivered on that. It's hard to make mind-bending outside set pieces when they're also destructible. Red Faction does it pretty well, because the whole game is devoted to that concept.

A 1st/3rd person fantasy game that actually let the wizard blow up whole buildings with their awesome spells.....would probably be an instant best seller.

[Soadreqm]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Many quests are still completely governed by Bethesda, but the Radiant Story system helps randomize and relate the side quests to players to make the experience as dynamic and reactive as possible. Rather than inundate you with a string of unrelated and mundane tasks, it tailors missions based on who your character is, where you're at, what you've done in the past, and what you're currently doing.

This thing sounds like it has the potential to be either awesome or absolutely terrible. Only time will tell how the system will actually play. I'm definitely interested.

As for terrain recycling, yeah, you CAN do it well. Like, Morrowind had that one Telvanni tower that had grown through an imperial fortress. Tel Aruhn? I think it was Aruhn. You could almost see the seams where they'd copypasted it together. It was totally awesome. If you have enough building blocks, you can make virtually anything with them. This is also one of the problems that mods aren't going to fix, so I kind of hope they get it right.

[GaelicVigil]

In Oblivion, it seemed that all dungeons were comprised of large pre-designed "chunks" put together like a puzzle.

That's exactly how it works.

Which is strange, because it was how Morrowind was made too. And yet I loved those dungeons. Possibly because while they reused a lot of chunks they still had a ton of them and they used them in interesting ways. Like flooding some with water, or bisecting caves with tombs or Daedric ruins with Dwemmer tunnels. The Oblivion caves and ruins reused perhaps too many set pieces, the caves being halls and rooms and the forts being the most dull layouts ever.

 So using a cookie-cutter design recycling areas isn't bad, it's how you use it. And keeping in mind to have enough set pieces that they won't get dull.

Along with using the pieces in creative ways, I think another huge factor was the size of the pieces.  If Oblivion's dungeons were akin to a 15 piece Fisherprice pre-school puzzle, Morrowind and Daggerfall's dungeons were like 300 piece jigsaw puzzles.  The smaller your pieces, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish between the end of one "chunk" and the beginning of the next one.

I'm hoping the Skyrim dungeons have a lot more "verticalness" to them.  The world screenshots of Skyrim already look like they are going this direction which is a good sign.  Spelunking a cave really should feel more realistic with deep crevasses and irregular walls.  This is a stretch, but I would love for a game like this to actually require you to use real caving equipment, like ropes, and other climbing gear.

[Sordid]

In Oblivion, it seemed that all dungeons were comprised of large pre-designed "chunks" put together like a puzzle.

That's exactly how it works.

Which is strange, because it was how Morrowind was made too.

That's how it's been ever since Daggerfall. At least these days the chunks are properly aligned so you don't fall into nothingness through a gap between polygons.

As for terrain recycling, yeah, you CAN do it well. Like, Morrowind had that one Telvanni tower that had grown through an imperial fortress. Tel Aruhn? I think it was Aruhn.

Why does everyone think it was Tel Aruhn? You're like the third person I've seen make that mistake. It was Tel Vos. Get your fictional geography straight, whippersnappers.

Edit:

characters struggle to move when trapped in environmental hazards like spider webs

OHSHI-
GCS!

[Cheese]

Sounds like sexy cavern systems .

[Soadreqm]

Why does everyone think it was Tel Aruhn? You're like the third person I've seen make that mistake. It was Tel Vos. Get your fictional geography straight, whippersnappers.

Dangit! Well, I think the guy who lived there was Master Aryon, and many of those towers are named after the resident mage-lord.

[Farseer]

Now I'm getting excited about Skyrim. It sounds like they're implementing actual half-decent ideas.

DAMN YOU BETHESDA

When's it coming out again?