Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Radient Story details

[Dark Drakan]

Bethesda have today revealed some more details about their highly anticipated new title in the Elder Scrolls series Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. This time they have been talking about a sophisticated system which creates the in-game narrative. Known as Radient Story it allows the game to confront you with random encounters leading to quests that are tailored to where you're at in the game and what you've done in the past. Yet again its Bethesda's creative director Todd Howard that explains it:​

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Traditionally in an assassination quest, we would pick someone of interest and have you assassinate them. Now there is a template for an assassination mission and the game can conditionalize all the roles - where it happens, under what conditions does it take place, who wants someone assassinated, and who they want assassinated. All this can be generated based on where the character is, who he's met. They can conditionalize that someone who you've done a quest for before wants someone assassinated, and the target could be someone with whom you've spent a lot of time before.

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Design director Bruce Nesmith also added:​

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There are a wide variety of these random encounters, Many of them are things the player can interact with, some are not. You might save a priest who then tells you about a dungeon where there are people trapped that need saving. You might run across mammoth beset by a pack of wolves.

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[cheezMcNASTY]

it sounds like it has potential. my biggest worry is that with the game generating quests, they might lose some elements of significance. switching to engines for this sort of thing has been tried and failed before in terms of weapons (i.e. borderlands, fable 3).

i hope they pull it off alright. this is bethesda we're talking about, but then again we're also talking about the game generating quests for you that (hopefully) don't get repetitive. it's probably been done right in some game that i haven't played before, but from what i've experienced it's a cause for concern.

fingers crossed.