The creator of TES IV: Oblivion, 20 years later, recalled a quest that the game "completed itself" - developers did not foresee such a scenario
The combination of game systems opened a new path to completing one of the quests.
On August 11, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered will be released on Nintendo Switch 2 consoles. Developers are promoting the release and giving interviews.
During a recent conversation with Nintendo Life, Bethesda's Junior Art Director Dan Lee shared a story from the development of the original game. In those years, he held the position of a tester – he was engaged in playtesting.
Among other things, he studied the behavior mechanics of NPC (non-player character) artificial intelligence. They experience hunger and independently look for food when needed. Then Dan Lee decided to use this feature against one of the NPCs.
For the quest, he needed to infiltrate a ship to eliminate the captain. According to the plot, his assistant and another enemy were supposed to appear from an ambush. However, instead of a direct confrontation, Dan acted cunningly – he turned hunger into a trap for the captain:
And I thought: "Can I abuse this [use the hunger mechanic]?" Hearing about the hunger mechanic, I snuck through the ship into the captain's cabin, took all the food, put a poisoned apple in his pocket, and left. I waited – and suddenly a notification appeared "Quest completed": he's dead.
After that, Dan Lee says, he ran to developer Emil Pagliarulo and said: "I can't believe you foresaw this. This is great!" And he then replied that he "didn't foresee it" – the game systems just worked.
Dan said that this quest remains in his memory for more than 20 years to this day: "All [game systems] interact with each other. And finding such an unexpected but exciting interaction mechanic is truly captivating."
Комментарии