Such a shame the Radiant AI stuff never got fully developed in Oblivion or Skyrim.
It was the biggest step forward since like Ultima VII. And it worked great in Oblivion like with the Ahdarji’s Heirloom quest where you have to steal the ring off the noblewoman and can do it either waiting until night and sneaking into the castle, or during the day by pickpocketing her in the market, etc.
Imagine a quest like that but with no loading screens or separation between areas, so you could levitate into the castle, or climb up the walls, or shoot a rope up, or use an invisibility potion for easy pickpocketing, or use a powerful Charm spell to make her hand it to you, etc.
And that’s just one quest, with no dungeon-diving or combat!
The promise of Radiant AI is still there. I know it has the potential to be something special. I just think it’s really difficult to actually capture the realistic behavior people are looking for without building every NPC’s routines down to a granular level, which is an incredible amount of work to build/test.
Advancements in AI could really help push that in new directions, with context-aware routines capable of building themselves through improvisation, but I’m not even sure we’ll get to that point by TES6.
Such a shame the Radiant AI stuff never got fully developed in Oblivion or Skyrim.
It was the biggest step forward since like Ultima VII. And it worked great in Oblivion like with the Ahdarji’s Heirloom quest where you have to steal the ring off the noblewoman and can do it either waiting until night and sneaking into the castle, or during the day by pickpocketing her in the market, etc.
Imagine a quest like that but with no loading screens or separation between areas, so you could levitate into the castle, or climb up the walls, or shoot a rope up, or use an invisibility potion for easy pickpocketing, or use a powerful Charm spell to make her hand it to you, etc.
And that’s just one quest, with no dungeon-diving or combat!
this gave me a mess in my pants. It’s all I’ve ever wanted since Daggerfall
The promise of Radiant AI is still there. I know it has the potential to be something special. I just think it’s really difficult to actually capture the realistic behavior people are looking for without building every NPC’s routines down to a granular level, which is an incredible amount of work to build/test.
Advancements in AI could really help push that in new directions, with context-aware routines capable of building themselves through improvisation, but I’m not even sure we’ll get to that point by TES6.