Skyrim #2, I robbed him blind

More on the topic of odd and unearthly NPC behavior (see last post).

So I was seeking the help of a venerable sorcerer to find some secret and hallowed tomes, to aid me in my quest to end the powerful Miraak and his cult of servitude. Went to his house, entered without knocking, and found him standing around in silence, not even looking at me until I addressed him. He indeed knew of these books, and I was told there was a specific book I needed. He hadn’t been able to retrieve it by himself, but knew where it was located. Together we’d stand a good chance of retrieving it, he thought.

Sure, why not, lead the way, sorcerer.

And he did. He told me to follow, and he left the house. His house. I didn’t. You see, I had noticed that he had a lot of potions and other valuables. Venerable or not, with his prying eyes out of the way I robbed him blind, stuffed my bags to the brim with his stuff. For the Cause and the common good of course, Dragonborn’s privilege.

Met up with him later, what were you doing staying at my place he didn’t ask.

Imagine having a dinner with your friends at your place, and then when you’re all supposed to leave, they just… stay. You ask what they’re doing, they stay silent, just standing there in your kitchen eyeballing your valuables. Your beloved childhood friends, a real kodac moment.

Not that this is a particularly egregious example of weird behavior in a video game. Anecdotes like these abound and we hardly react to them, but it gets kind of funny when you take it seriously and think about it.

I keep wondering how hard it would be to patch some these behaviors. Not by hardcoding each instance one by one, that’d be a fools game for a huge game like this, but more like adding flexible AI routines that make the NPCs more concerned with things like watching over their property, but also relating that concern to other concerns and values, so as to make the actual outcome depend on the circumstances, more unpredictable and interesting, emergent. That’s a journey and a frontier in game development that‘s barely begun, but it will be glorious.