Interview met Bethesda over Oblivion

Een kleine greep uit het interview:

"[...]
Will Oblivion retain Morrowind's linear quest concept for the main quest, or will it be possible to approach this from many different angles, changing the final outcome in the process?

Overall, the main quest is more linear than it is wide-open, but it does have sections where the actual goals for you become more open. As much as possible, we try to allow you to finish each quest in as many ways as possible. The actual very end is the same no matter what you did to get there. There are little things we can do well with our kind of game, like “get this item from this character” – especially now with our new AI system – where even something that simple opens itself up for tons of different gameplay options.
[...]"

"[...]
In regards to the new Radiant AI system, it has been stated that NPCs will be able to think and react independently of scripts. Does this mean that a player could order an NPC to do something (if in the position of a guild head, etc.), or perhaps find a random unscripted quest due to independent NPC actions?

Yes, we can do those things. I’m not saying they are in there, and we’re toying now with watching NPCs do things and how we can really get the player to affect that or have more fun with it, or even see it. So I won’t give specific examples right now, but we’ll be trying some similar things in places. I can tell you that our goal for the Radiant AI was the “Fargoth” quest in the beginning of Morrowind, which took some heavy scripting to get Fargoth to behave well, sneak around, steal the ring, put it in the stump, and such. Our early goal for the Radiant AI was that kind of thing just “happening”, without any scripting. And it works - which is great. But if we didn’t tell you what Fargoth was up to, you would have never noticed, or it would have looked really odd. Anyway, that’s the stage we’re at, we have the behaviors, and we’re trying to maximize the player’s perception of what’s happening.
[...]"

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion zal verschijnen op de PC en wellicht ook op de Xbox 2. Een releasedate is nog onbekend.