Keep everything aside- the things Bethesda is focusing the most on in Skyrim are the NPCs, the interaction, and how they act. They want to keep the NPCs’ reactions to your actions realistic, and not scripted. Not being scripted, according to Bethesda, could lead to some weirdness and quirkiness.
“The big things for us are still – and we still struggle with – the NPCs, the interaction, and how they act,” Design director Todd Howard told Gamasutra.
“That’s because the game is so dynamic, we don’t want to script them, so weirdness can ensue sometimes. So we came out of Oblivion thinking, hey, how do we get more believable characters on the screen who are reacting to you?
“I always thought we did environments well, and we want to keep doing it well. But I’d say the characters and how they perform on the screen was probably our number one [focus].”
“There’s going to be some [weirdness], like the player did X, Y and Z that we didn’t expect, and now he’s attacking the town, sleeping in this guy’s bed, he killed his wife,’ he continued.
“We sort of learn each time how people play these games and experience them. So we get better each time, but we do at the end of the day sacrifice, say, a well-paced story. It’s almost impossible for us to do. We’d rather let you go do whatever you want. So that’s a sacrifice that we’re willing to make.”
About the bugs that Elder Scrolls IV was so notoriously known for, Howard says: “You know what though? Those things are there, and it’s fair that people call us out for them, we’ve got no problem with that.”
Stay tuned to GB for more info.
