The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Retrospective

It’s a good thing Total Video Games created a retrospective article for Oblivion, as it’s been so long that this game has almost fallen out of public consciousness.

Key to Oblivion, particularly in terms of the pre-release hype, RadiantAI promised the most authentic NPC behaviour to feature in an RPG. Unfortunately the hype appeared to have been just that as the final outcome found it’s fair share of criticism with largely static routines that failed to deliver. It’s a feature that Hines and Bethesda consider as an area to improve upon, “We feel like we’re only scratching the surface of what we can do with AI for our NPCs,” before adding, “I think we can make a lot of improvements and enhancements to that system. For other areas, we may blow something up altogether and start over if that’s what we need to do.”

Ultimately whether or not technology will empower developers such as Bethesda to continue pushing the gameplay boundaries with further Elder Scrolls titles remains unclear, “at this point, it’s hard to say,” says Hines, “the most important thing for us to stick with is that we don’t rest on anything we’ve done in the past.”