This is a great thread. I definitely know the feeling that Skyrim's responsiveness could be improved, but I think that people are firstly ignoring how much Skyrim has done towards better responsiveness, and secondly that it's hard to script EVERYTHING. Firstly, maybe I'm naive, but I was kind of in awe when I first walked around Skyrim, and saw the way NPCs reacted to me, like the way guards talked to me based on what kind of weapon I had, and the way NPCs talked to me if I was doing magic within a town, the way they behave if I were to walk around naked, or even the fact that NPCs looked at me when I went near them. Not to mention there are specific scripted behaviours after interactions with some of them.... for example, someone already mentioned talon-jei's responsiveness. Secondly, I think we have to recognize that each of these behaviours have to be coded into the game individually, one by one... and we as players won't ever be satisfied by any amount of scripted behaviour short of infinite. It's EASY for us to come up with specific behaviours that we find ridiculous or that we want to see like, for example, memlapse's joke about the way nobody would react if you drew a greatsword in a classroom full of children, or bpestilence's suggestion that bandits could try to reason with rather than fight high-level players, .... coming up with those specific behaviours is easy, but there are infinitely many of these situations, and Bethesda can only code a certain number of them. So how much more could they have done, short of coding in an infinite number of responses to match the infinite number of behaviours we would like to see? NPCs can't know what they're saying, or arbitrarily generate new conversation, so it's always going to get old after a certain point even if you record and script hundreds of hours of responsive dialogue .. especially in a game that doesn't end. I think they've coded a sufficient number so that we feel immersed, and I don't think we can ask for more than that because anything more wouldn't give them any more bang for their buck, and we'd still be dissatisfied anyway.