Skyrim - Translated Interview Snippets, Preview

Count Chocula sends in some Skyrim translated interview snippets from Norwegian magazine Gamer.no on the Bethsoft forums. I haven't had the chance to read it in detail but word is Todd Howard does reveal a couple of new things.
While we're on Skyrim, Zohaib sends in this preview at Gamepad Dojo that looks based on existing information:

have been seeping out since the December release of the teaser trailer, from Game Informer’s solid month of coverage to podcast interviews and multiple accounts of a recent demo. However, the scale ofthe game means information is still, relatively speaking, pretty thin on the ground. Various gameplay elements are still being adjusted, and it seems that for every other question about the game, director Todd Howard gives one of two answers: “We’d like to have that. We’re playing around and seeing if it works. If it does, we’ll put in in,” or the old classic: “We’re not talking about that yet.”
Perhaps what makes every snippet so enthralling is merely the five years of anticipation for a sequel to one of the industry’s most immersive and time-consuming single player experiences. Compelling though the retro-futurist dystopia of Fallout 3 was, the lack of beautiful vistas and vibrant cultures made it difficult to remain immersed for the same duration. I must have cleared 1000 hours on Oblivion across numerous save games, but only a quarter of that time traipsing through the Capitol Wasteland. Personally, I simply found it a lot harder to engage with a dead world.

More information.

We developed a system for Fallout 3, which generated random encounters with different beings. And we thought, "what if we put this in the system? ". Therefore, we chose to integrate it in all missions in Skyrim.
And it turned out that it sucked, because it is too flat and transparent. So we went back to writing all missions and stories by hand.

Phew, sounds like radiant storytelling is gone.

How do you handle the difficulty of the game?
- We haven't actually thought about it much.

One of our designers actually put in a random event I encountered, where I ended up being chased by three dragons and I thought "who the hell did this?" I felt like Frodo in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and was really frightened. So I asked him to remove it.

Worrying.

Be aware that this was cut and paste into Google Translate and that output is what the OP used to summarize the information they provide (as they state in the disclaimer they have included in both topics). Take specific details or interviewee sentiment with a grain of salt - while Google Translate is remarkably good for what it is I would not invest emotional energy in self-righteous indignation over a particular detail in those posts.

But yeah - the magazine source was in German. I presume (maybe I'm wrong) that Todd Howard's answers were given by him in English first. So we have information that was translated from English to German then auto-translated by Google Language Tools into English.

Some interesting information in there though - but the crazies on the Bethesda forums freaking out or arguing over bits as small as individual words seem like they've lost it.

Originally Posted by jhwisner
But yeah - the magazine source was in German.

If you point me to it, then I could take a look at it.

Originally Posted by KapitanUnterhosen
Phew, sounds like radiant storytelling is gone.

No, it isn't gone. The Random Encounter system of Fallout 3 is gone, but that was never called Radiant Story.

The story itself is still handwritten but parts of it will be dynamic.

Like having dynamic quest givers, locations and/or rewards.

Radiant Story in particular helps if they allow killable questgivers. If the number 1 candidate questgiver gets killed they can use Radiant Story to arrange his succesor (by having it go down a priority list or randomly from the list).

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
If you point me to it, then I could take a look at it.

The original article was norwegian, not german: http://www.gamer.no/artikler/83828/i…-skyrim-del-1/

As a Dane I can read Norwegian, and I can't see any info on the random account that Howard was being chased around by 3 dragons. What I do, however is this:

"In Oblivion, we had a slider, and in Fallour 3, we went for buttons. I think people are more accustomed to 'easy, medium, hard,' but it is difficult to say which systemwhat we'll end up with at this time."

http://www.gamer.no/artikler/84242/i…-skyrim-del-2/ is the article with the 3 dragon encounter reference. —Edit— Seems to be debate as to whether the original article has a typo since its not "Drage/Dragon" but "Dager/days"… so todd was either chased for 3 days by a dragon, or by 3 dragons —End Edit—- From the article is seems radiant storytelling is still there but just scaled back to general repeatable quests.

Pure Speculation: probably mainly for faction specific (e.g. fighters guild, assassins guild, mages guild) repeatable quests for gaining reputation, money, or items, which change as you progress though the ranks. Would have been cool in oblivion had the dark brotherhood provided randomly generated assassinate quests.

Reading between the lines it seems they are making the important faction-story quests hand-written (I'd imagine it like this: do 3+ randomly generated quests which brings your current rank "Outsider" from 0% to 100%, and then you can do a hand-written quest which will allow the transition from "100% Outsider" to "0% Inductee". Long story short: doing random quests unlocks faction plotline quests.

Then again I could be completely wrong and there could be some NPC in each town that offers the randomly generated quests with no deeper reason other than to get you exploring… almost time for Witcher 2.. wooo!

Wow, he can spend 1,000 hours in the typical cliche fantasy world but something unique and different is off-putting.

Blah.