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Bethesda’s Nesmith reflects on the difficult birth of Skyrim’s ‘Radian


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Story from Venture Beat

 

http://venturebeat.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/bruce-nesmith-lecture.jpg?w=640&h=375

When the development team of Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls role-playing game series began to work on Skyrim, the need to make the game world understand itself in relationship to the player was identified. But that was easier said than done, as Bethesda’s director of design Bruce Nesmith recalled from a conversation he had with executive producer Todd Howard:

 

Todd: “I like that responsive thing. Give me some examples.”

Bruce: “So when I kill a guy, his family will come after me.”

Todd: “Give me some examples that aren’t about killing someone.”

Bruce: “…uh…”

 

Nesmith gave a lecture on the development of Skyrim’s new “Radiant Story” system during the 2012 Game Design Expo hosted by the Vancouver Film School. His team’s goal was for the player to “feel like he’s part of the world and not just moving through a still life painting”. Skyrim’s genesis is interesting because it was one of the best-selling games of the holiday season and it took more than five years to develop.

 

In order to achieve that the developers started by defining 30 player actions and ways the rest of the game world might react to them. These included small things like having bystanders gawk at a slain dragon, tussle over an item that was dropped to the ground, asking the player for a potion after witnessing her alchemy skills, or even just having an item topple over when the player brushes past them.

 

Nesmith pointed out that “just because a response was reasonable in the real world, it doesn’t mean it’s good in a game”. For example, originally an NPC [non-player character] could claim that an item bought from a vendor was stolen and demand it back, but it was scrapped for story reasons because “it didn’t feel good; you ended up always killing the guy”.

 

The player is the centre of the game world

Skyrim’s “Radiant Story” system tailors quests to the player, their progress and relationships in the game world. As a result, a never-ending stream of generated quests can be placed specifically in locations the player hasn’t visited yet and be related to earlier adventures. Nesmith called it a “pretty Herculean task” to create the necessary new data types and add these to objects in the game.

 

But during development the Bethesda team realized that it was “really easy going too far with that kind of thing.” For example, they discussed the idea of using the Radiant Story system for the main quest. “Sounds great, would play horribly”, quipped Nesmith, because a hand-crafted storyline is always more intriguing than quest objectives cranked out by an automated system.

 

Still he encouraged the audience of aspiring game designers to push the boundaries, as long as they realize when it’s time to dial back: “If you don’t end up going too far, you’re not stretching yourself as a game developer. It’s like in football: if the team isn’t taking any penalties, it’s probably not playing hard enough.”

 

Several course corrections were required during development of Skyrim’s Radiant Story system. Job quests were limited to certain NPCs that felt right for them, like innkeepers, to avoid Radiant quests feeling mechanical. To reduce repetition, custom dialog lines were written for different NPC voice types. Conditioning limits had to be expanded so that certain events wouldn’t happen too often: “When every time I drop something on the ground, half the town comes over, it is starting to get really silly”, Nesmith recalled.

 

The Skyrim team also realized that players only want so many of the “job quests” that are not advancing the main story. “We ended up doing many more custom pieces. It felt better.”, concluded Nesmith, “Players expect from game developers that we use our creativity to create content they want to experience. If we pass the buck to a system, it’s not the same.” He doesn’t expect that a procedural story system will be able to deliver results of a similar quality level to hand-crafted content anytime soon.

 

The inner workings of the Radiant Story system are exposed in the Skyrim Creation Kit Bethesda is about to release for the PC version, enabling players to come up with their own modifications, which can then be loaded into the game.

 

The Vancouver Game Design Expo is an annual event organized by the Vancouver Film School (VSF) to raise the profile of its game design program. Bethesda’s Bruce Nesmith was one of the lecturers during the VentureBeat-attended Industry Speaker’s Day that took place at the VanCity Theatre on January 21, 2012.

http://venturebeat.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/skyrim-radiant-story-scribb1.jpg

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Can't help but feel like this idea failed terribly. These radiant quests are still boring "go kill this guy and bring back this thing" generic quests. Just because it's in a different place with different names from a different guy doesn't matter. Bethsoft had a good idea here but it wasn't implimented very well.
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I wouldnt mind more radiant quests... added on top of what we have now that is. For example, the only repeating radiant quest in Whiterun is the "go kill bandit" ones from the Inn. And thats it.

 

There is like one, at most two repeatable radiant quests per city (not to be confused with one time only quests that have some part "randomized" ) if im not mistaken.

 

If you take out the "kill bandit leader" ones, you end up with no radiant quests at all lol

 

There could be works like, get message to another hold, lead some city guards and protect some place of bandits/dragons/falmer/etc, search for randomly generated suspicious NPC in the city, or, less "lawful" stuff like help some randomized NPC (or randomly generated NPC) in the city with some bad deed (frame somebody, steal particular object, intimidate someone, etc).

 

Any city would feel way more alive if you had, instead of one single bounty dispenser NPC, like 5 to 10 NPCs around that need their stuff done. Even if those NPCs arent named at all, much like the Nervous Patron's from the Radiant assassination quests of the Dark Brotherhood.

 

That said, if such Radiant quests actually helped the player in some way besides the usual "Thanks, 200 septims for you", it would make them worthwhile...

Edited by eltucu
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Yeah, one of the biggest things I'm looking forward to from modders after the CK comes out, is someone actually making full use of the Radiant Quest system. As it is right now, it seems like it has a lot of potential... but it's just that, potential.
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There's more than just the sloppy engine mechanics and the uncreative design that's to blame for the Radiant quest system being as nauseating as it is. There's also the reality of production to think of. Imagine you have twenty different variables in each quest. You'd have to have twenty times as many lines for the voice actors to give that make reference to that variable. That's twenty times as much studio time, voice acting, etc. It's a big headache for a VA director, as well.
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we're giving the guys at bethesda waaayyy too much crap for this radiant storyline quest idea.

 

tell me how you're going to entertain video gamers with quests like:

 

-retrieve Jarl Siddgeir a bottle of black briar mead

-wear some fancy clothes in front of Lady Elisif

-cut wood

-mine ore

-convince that one trader in the college of winterhold to sell back a guy's little heirloom

 

you can't build a game around boring quests like these. these are for when you're feeling the role-playing style. you have to keep the majority entertained. why did you buy skyrim? to chop some guy's wood or help pick potatoes for a farmer? no! you bought it to slay some fckn dragons! :D

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The thing is, dragon slaying gets boring after a while. Those quests are there for a reason, to make the world feel more alive, the thing is that they dont help too much.

 

For example, it seems that chopping wood or harvesting does nothing to make you an appreciated citizen of a hold.

 

I've been trying to get the Jarl of Riften offer me the Thane title without doing any "direct" helping to Riften's ppl (helping the market vendors, the guy that owes money to sapphire, etc) to no avail, though some ppl around the hold do call me friend cuz i do other more common tasks for them (mine, chop wood, harvest), but it doesnt seems to improve my standing to the Jarl : /

 

I mean, you could build a game with such quests IF you got something nice besides gold, you only get something good out of the "bigger" dungeon crawling quests. Wich is fine i guess since 80% of the game revolves around dungeons, but it doesnt helps at all the atmosphere of the "living world" out there. I'd be nice of more NPCs acted like the first family you visit on Riverwood. "Hey, my home is your home friend, have some mead" or something like that, something convinces you that you're doing something besides getting gold.

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