Oblivion Quests and Radiant AI grrrrrrrr
 

On my first play through years back I must not have done much questing outside of the main quest, because this Radiant Ai is driving me nuts. I had one quest that required me to "stake out" an area and after 2 hours of waiting and running around I found out that the person I was staking out was in Corrol while I was in Skingrad! The Radiant Ai had her visiting the other city??? On day 6 she came back and I finished the quest. Sort of begs 2 questions:
1. Why on earth did Bethesda set a quest to this person and set her behavior to roam like that? Ridiculous
2. I'm sort of impressed, but while realistic at the same time it seems like a design choice to frustrate the player.

Generically speaking, I'm getting tired of trying to hunt down quests givers on checking as they roam all over, up and down stair cases and even leaving the building. Again its neat, but frustrating!

I forgot that aspect. I had one quest become uncompletable because a roaming PC got killed in between towns.

FWIW, there is a little (very little) of that in Skyrim. NPCs don't sem to roam much between town except for the traveling merchants and farmers who trek daily between farm and town. But random dragon attacks on the smaller towns can kill quest related NPCs and break those quests.

True enough. I'm level 35 in Skyrim, I just took a loooong hiatus to gather all my lore from the previous titles. I wanted to refresh daedra lore and I've gotten it in spades. I'm not learning much from Oblivion really, but Morrowind was another matter. What really compelled me to go back was the Dumner patrolling Skyrim persecuting Talos worshipers. It made me realize I couldn't remember jack sh*t about the series overall, the Tribunal, daedra gods etc.. Not to mention the history of the empire and Tiber Septim(s).

Pretty sure you mean the Altmer. The Aldmeri Dominion is from Summerset Isles, the land of the High Elves. I need to replay Morrowind someday, as it's the only Elder Scrolls game I've never finished.

I think you are right. I'm a bit confused because their skin is dark in Skyrim isn't it? That was a curse for the Resdayn (Vvardenfell) Aldmer by Azura after Red Mountain. If they are from Summerset Isles then they should not have dark skin….
Unless I'm not remembering the patrols in Skyrim correctly, they seemed pretty dark in complexion…

362 hours! Now we are talking :)

The Aldmer usually have a golden or olive tan (sometimes rather dark, true) and fair-to-whiskey-colored hair while Dunmer usually have grey skin with a bluish tinge (which may be dark as well) and dark hair. There are exceptions, but these combos seem to be the rule.

I had a very strange experience with Radiant AI today. Having completed the Arena the "adoring fan" started following me. As I was leaving the Imperial City I ran by an NPC and the fan stopped to have a dialog. When they finished their conversation he resumed following me. That was neat but not the weird part. We were waylaid by a Troll near the Empire Fort and the fan ran not only into the fort courtyard but through the the door to the fort, and then the troll followed him inside. It was a death sentence move because there were more trolls in the fort, but the AI flee and pursue behavior really surprised me.

The Adoring Fan respawns?!? Hilarious. The dude shows up in some pretty remote locations too.

I must admit I like the Radiant AI in Oblivion. While it's not perfect, it does introduce an element of unpredictability not seen in many other games. Things happen even if the player character is not there to cause it or even observe it.
To me the utter staticness of Morrowind, and the fact that everything revolves around the player character, was what I disliked most about that game.

I like the radiant AI in Oblivion too. For the most part I find it interesting due to the little touches of realness it adds.

I remember trying to find an NPC and I was looking all around town and couldn't find him. Turns out it was Sundas (Sunday) and he was at the chapel :).

I don't mind the staticness of Morrowind though either. 2 different games. Even after playing Oblivion and Skyrim I can still go back to Morrowind and enjoy how that game was created.

It's pretty safe to say we will never see a static world like Morrowind ever again in an Elder Scrolls game. I personallly would like to see more Radiant AI in Elder Scrolls games though, only expanded upon.

Quest critical NPCs can get killed travelling between towns. I think there is a mod that fixes that.

That is true, and a major annoyance. I can't complete a quest for a Daedric god because the NPC died walking between towns. Keeps the quest in limbo since I can never finish it and I can't get the Daedric item reward obviously. Playing on console there is no fix for it. Sucks but I just try not to think about it and move on :)

The completionist in me makes it reallly bug me. I think you can use the console to ressurect them.

Yeah.. TES games can be frustrating to those of us who are a little OCD. :)

You can say that again. I eventually just had to get over it and move on. It still irks me though. I just hate knowing I can't get a Daedric item that I want and can't finish a quest.

My favorite quest in that game was the one where a Bosmer hires you to investigate some NPCs he thinks are involved in a conspiracy. His paranoia was infectious, never experienced anything like that in a video game before, I became convinced those NPCs were up to something shady. Followed each one around for several hours in-game watching them plow their crops, etc. It was brilliant!

Yeah, that quest was really cool and the moment when I realized that Radiant A.I. was pretty neat stuff. Just watching the daily routines of the NPCs absolutely fascinated me. Sometimes now I just follow people around and watch where they go and what they do.

I feel that type of system could be absolutely crazy if they just expanded on it more.

They did expand on this system a lot for Skyrim. There are so many interesting things you can do with NPC behavior and radiant story events making your own mod in the Creation Kit.

I have only played 200 hours of Skyrim, and during my time with it I must have missed a lot of the finer details. I don't remember the Radiant A.I. in Skyrim very much, but then again I never really followed anyone or anything.

During my next play-through I will pay more attention to that stuff.

It's very easy to mod yourself. All you have to do is set the NPC to "essential".

Or you can ressurect them.