THE MOST RANDOM SH*T I'VE EVER SEEN HAPPEN IN A GAME.

The Lonious Monk wrote: »

Cracked had this article where they talked about some game where it was basically coded into the game that all the NPCs have lives even when you're not interacting with them. And basically as a result, random ? like the incident in the OP would happen all the time.

The Lonious Monk wrote: »

Yep, it is Oblivion. Here's the Cracked write-up.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was the first open-world role-playing game to harness the unlimited might of a next generation gaming system to transport players into a gorgeously rendered fantasy world beyond their wildest imaginations. This is another way of saying the game is full of cockeyed plebeians with smashed-in faces and terrible skin.




"The shrieks of children forever echo in my malformed ears."

But don't laugh -- every single one of those ancillary background characters with the ? features of sharpened turds leads an entire life completely separate from the player. Every guard, baker, blacksmith, and highwayman wakes up, eats breakfast, goes to work, ? with their friends, then goes home and goes to bed, whether you are there to see them do it or not.

See, instead of just following a script like non-player characters in most video games, every NPC in Oblivion has a built-in list of needs he or she has to fulfill -- food, sleep, ? -nabbing, etc. If you and your Level 14 Orc Shaman happen to interrupt any one of those needs, say by breaking into an NPC's house and stealing all of his food, the NPC will venture out into the world to find more food for himself. He may get killed by a monster, robbed by a thief, or killed and robbed by a monster thief, or simply return home with a loaf of bread. And in all likelihood, you will never see any of it happen.




"I just stabbed four peasants with a sharpened loaf of bread."

Check out this video -- a lizard woman creeps through the street and picks some lady's pocket, then gets chased by the city guard for like 20 minutes until he finally corners her in her own house and slashes her to death with the king's justice. The player does absolutely nothing to influence any of this; he's just running around like the COPS cameraman trying to keep all the action in frame.

Then there's Roderic Pierrane, an NPC who, if you follow him around (like any heroic adventurer would), you will see sneak out of the house he shares with his wife once a week to go sleep in the bed of another woman.




"Player's gotta play."

Roderic is utterly inconsequential to the game in every way -- you can't buy anything from him, he doesn't play a part in any quest, and he doesn't tell you a single worthwhile piece of information. Yet the programmers of Oblivion decided to give him (and literally hundreds of others) a unique "life" that will carry itself out regardless of whether or not you ever interact with him. This must be similar to the way Brad Pitt feels when he goes to film a movie in Muncie, Indiana, and discovers that there are entire cities that exist outside of his influence.



Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_20538_6-games-that-put-insane-detail-into-stuff-you-didnt-notice_p2.html#ixzz2fJafuzj5

That ? is pretty crazy when you really think about it.