Comments on: The Old Argument

By: Terry

Terry — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 17:59:36 +0000

The AI in Oblivion does make lower end processors squeal and I think the original build did produce numerous anomalies and weird behavior.

There are mods that radically alter Oblivion’s AI especially in the wilderness. The best are Obscuro’s Oblivion Overhaul, Martigen’s Monster Mod, and War Cry. You can use them together by using FCOM Convergence and Wrybash. There’s plenty of info around if anyone’s interested.

The mods mentioned above make the AI do amazing things and create some interesting spectacles. I watched powerlessly as a gang of Goblins slaughtered a group of Imperial guards and the stable hands outside the town of Chorrol! All the different species now fight and hunt one another now. The world feels far more alive, although it can create problems when fulfilling quests.

After experiencing super-modded-oblivion, I’m surprised Bethesda didn’t include such depth in the original build.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:56:37 +0000

The other possibility is that they scaled down the sophistication of the AI in order to more densely populate the towns. In the linked video the guy suggests there are “over 1000 NPCs” but the final game had close to 2000 from what Mr Hines last told me.

Either way, I think Fallout 3 will improve on Oblivion’s system by a fair margin.

By: John P

John P — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:59:32 +0000

Personally I love the IW/TDS engine! Massive amounts of bloom ftw! But I understand why most people didn’t.

By: Bob Arctor

Bob Arctor — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:46:25 +0000

Agreed, the DXIW/TDS engine is horrible.

I thought the caption “Sim city 4 on DS or PC?” won the missing the point award though.

By: Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:00:25 +0000

Yeah, I’m not convinced by this either. The Deus Ex kids did something similar with Invisible War, arguing that the graphics were brought down hugely in terms of detail in textures and lights due to being a co-release with the XBox. They put in a load of high detail textures post release, and the whole thing run at a crawl on anything but a tiny-tiny-tiny-percentage top line machine. Primarily, the Invisible War engine was just monstrous and the early images they did just something they couldn’t replicate.

By: Turin Turambar

Turin Turambar — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:32:43 +0000

Dynamic and complex AI is a nightmare to code, debug and test in both PC and console development. It’s not an issue in the PC vs console everlasting battle.

By: icabod

icabod — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:25:32 +0000

Regarding cross-platform development not necessarily resulting in a “reduced” PC experience, I was interested to see in the latest PCG that the upcoming PC port of Gears Of War actually has a fair bit more than the console original… not just extra multi-player maps, but stuff that was hinted at in adverts and then cut from the game.

By: Grill

Grill — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 09:46:41 +0000

I remember reading somewhere (in fact, it might have been in an interview I did with Pete Hines) that the reason they dumped the original Radiant AI wasn’t to do with power of the machines, just that it simply didn’t work – the AI did far too many insane things and they had to cut it back to make the game playable. Looking at that demo video, the NPC didn’t do much that the scripted current characters don’t do – but I agree the few things she did made the world more realistic.

By: John P

John P — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 09:17:52 +0000

I wish I could edit my comments, or bother to read them first – i CLEARLY meant that games cost half as much as they do on the 360 and there are more of them in general on the PC. Yes.

By: John P

John P — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 09:16:18 +0000

I briefly went into console town this summer, but it broke after 5 days. Yes, a 360. I’ve decided that, in combination with the fact games cost half as much, and also the variety of games, it was a foolish idea anyway, so am going to be getting a new PC at christmas instead. Hurrah. Esp as processors are now cheap as chips, I notice. Well, about 100 packets of chips. Still, good value.