For duplicate visual in TW1 your conclusion is a bit superficial, if it's just about making different visual it's easy but cost more. Conclude from that it was badly done is very very short, it's just an element, and there was good points you won't find in Ultima 7 nor G2+NOTR, like influence of weather.
Calm down Dasale. I didn't say it was done badly. I understand why they did it. There's always trade offs that have to be made in terms of time and effort when making a game and I still think TW1 is one of the best RPGs in recent memory. I just prefer that games do no generic npcs if possible.
As for the Radiant AI in Oblivion, yes they had a working form of this. However, in testing they found out that their radiant AI behaved like -ahem- real people, meaning that people would steal things from their -cough- neighbour. Or just borrow them, and when people came back for their things, say a rake, or a thingie, when the other people wouldn't give it back, an argument, and then a fight, and I do mean a real physical fight
would start. An npcs would kill each other, the guards would react, and suddenly entire cities would not be -ahem- alive another.
I remember reading that and it was definitely part of the reason for the Radiant Lobotomy, however the E3 video mock up they made prior to the game's release was obviously scripted. It had one npc referring to another specifically by name, another refers to her dog by name. The two men on the street talk in a conversation that makes sense and was clearly meant specifically for the two of them (not just any random npc that walks by). The woman in the house also interacts with the PC and her dog to a greater degree than interactions occur in the final game. Lastly, they used voice actors who don't exist in the final game, like the male dark elf voice from Morrowind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjbx6-KQoRg
If you watch that video and have played the release version of Oblivion I'm afraid the only conclusion that can be reached is that it was a scripted mock up. Now maybe they genuinely intended to have that degree of interaction in the final game, but somewhere along the way a decision was made to scale it way, way, WAY back. It's not just the 'town at war' reason either because the conversions themselves were far more generic and random than what was portrayed in that video.
As far as TW2 and their video is concerned, I'm not worried that it is a similar case as the Oblivion video since in this case the game is so close to release I don't think they could get away with something like that. Bethesda's video was early on and they have the 'Well we tried but we couldn't make it work excuse'.
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