Oblivion:Gripes/NPCs

The UESPWiki – Your source for The Elder Scrolls since 1995

This article provides NPCs gripes, as part of the Game Content section of the Gripes article.

It bothers me that I can't become part of a citizen faction. My character is a Nord who loves Bruma. He has a house in Bruma. He likes to buy and sell stuff in Bruma. He pretty much lives in Bruma. Unfortunately, he is not part of the Bruma Citizens faction. Therefore, I believe that you should automatically join a citizen faction when you buy a house in the city. This should get you a fair increase in disposition for all fellow citizens and maybe access to additional quests in that city. (Except maybe the Waterfront shack. That should be narrowed down to people who live on the Waterfront.)

Why are there no children in the game. I didn't notice it until hours of gameplay in and then it hit me that there are no kids anywhere in the game. How can you have an entire world with no kids. Adding kids could add lots of new quest ideas like maybe kidnapping for the Dark Brotherhood or anything you could think of.

Adding kids to the game for realism will mean allowing to kill them. Since that will mean child violence/murder, the company that gives the ratings will probably ban Oblivion. Ever notice how no FPS has kids in it either? A possible fix could be to make the kids essential, but that would ruin the realism. In fact, there is one "kid" in the game: The Adoring Fan. He is like a hyper teenager. But generally, in games that have violence do not have kids in them as a trade-off. But having a Dark Brotherhood mission about killing a six-year old girl at her birthday party is strange. Just implying a mission like that is enough.

Of course adding children will allow the PC to kill them and such. But in movies this is a commonplace phenomena: I never watch violent movies, but even some mainstream, relatively unviolent movies such as Enemy at the Gates portray children dying (one child is actually hung by the antagonist). Why can movies portray violence against children and not games? To imply that one medium should be allowed to do so and another not is pure hypocrisy. The First Amendment protects all mediums, not just the mediums Jack Thompson or the average Republican wants it to protect. I can understand why children would add little benefit for the large amount of work they would require to implement, but it would be a worthwhile addition to a future game.

The difference between having children in a movie and having children in a game is that the watcher/player has no control over whether the child dies in the movie while as they do in the game. If a child dies in the movie that you enjoy watching watching but the baddie is defeated, then there isn't anything wrong with that because you're not rooting for the child to die. In a game if you go around murdering children or hire yourself out to kill one because you ENJOY it then something is distinctly wrong with you.

Adoring isn't a kid, he's just a wood elf. Wood elves are short, but I don't think they're all kids.

And why should killing a child be any different to mercilessly hacking apart a village as you do in the Infiltration Quest with the Fighter's Guild (or, indeed, in any part of the game)? What exactly makes a child's life more valuable than anyone else's?

The murder of children is not the reason the game lacks children. If there was a concern about murdering children the game could simply add all children to the 'essential' list. The real reason there are no children is that they would be a waste of space in the game. Aside from a handful of plot additions, most children would not add much to the game except as something else in the background. Any improvements to the game added by putting in children would be a waste of the time and effort to add the children. Not to mention the fact that you'd have to pay voice actors to provide the voice to children who would do nothing in the game but run around and play. In the end, you would spend more money to add children for no reason. There isn't a single person who would be uninterested in buying an elder scroll game that lacks children would would buy the game if children were added. The end result is that you would have to subtract other NPCs, plots, and quests in order to add in more background. The trade off would simply weaken the game.

Sometimes voice of an actor suddenly changes (play persuasion minigame with an old beggar), some voice acting is really horrible (Methredreal, the thief wannabe). Some of the rumors are really forced and sound unnatural. Generally voice acting is a serious obstacle for modding community too. Some feel it would be best left out, or applied only to essential characters. The shaky-old-woman voice changes to a normal-woman-voice halfway through regular dialogue, which is even more egregious than when it switches during the minigame.

I found a particularly good article on Oblivions voice acting here: http://www.thegamechair.com/2006/09/17/bethesda-i-write-cheap/

That's on purpose. The beggars don't actually talk like that, that's just the voice they use to get money/food.

I would agree, but that doesn't jibe with the fact that any male Imperial beggar goes from the sad and pathetic "I'm only askin' for enough to feed me kids", to the nasal "Thank you kind sir", to the booming, narratorial "Blessings of Stendarr upon ye". Something doesn't line up here...

I disagree, i LOVE the full voice acting principle. even though is it not perfect all the time, it makes dialogues and the likes much more interesting.

For the ultimate grating example of this, if you have Knights of the Nine, ask Martin about The Prophet. You'll see what I mean.

Being a player whose native language is not english, I like it that the names are pronounced by the actors. In Morrowind I used to look over the name of a Daedric shrine for minutes to finally see that it was 'Ashurnibibbi'. If that was pronounced instead of written, it would take me as long as it takes the actor to say it, to be able to remember it. On the other hand, I did (only once) talk to an Argonian whose voice suddenly changed into that of an Imperial, so a few 'bugs' are present.

The voice acting for female Orcs feels dramatically mismatched to their physical appearance. It's so bad that it deserves special mention. The voice actor has a strong accent which is much more intrusive than with any of the other voices.

What accent? That's Linda Carter. No Merryl Streep, but hardly an unaccomplished actor. If we're going to grump about voice acting, let's talk about the Argonians and Khajiit having the exact same voice treatment.

If you're going to have voice acting, hire more actors! The same voices over and over take so much out of the experience.

If Bethesda were to hire more than 2 actors per race, the game's file size would be ridiculously huge.

An alternative is using EAX and various pitch and sound manipulating controls. And have it be set when the NPC is made. You would be able to alter the pitch just a tiny bit to change voices. Or have it randomise (controlled randomisation, not to far in +/-) so guards when spawned will have a random pitch for their gender/race. When you hear two guards or two same gender/race npc's talking you would be able to tell the two apart. It's a cheap and easy alternative than hiring more voice actors, and creating more audio files.

Sorry, but no. That's what they do and it still sounds horrible. But the game size limit argument is wrong here - there are many unique characters with unique dialogues, and it sounds really stupid when a ghost of a Blade, before departing to the underworld, with a ghastly echo bids you farewell in the voice of the drunkard from the Grey Mare. Additionally lots of texts repeat word-to-word in different voices. How much work would it be to give different scripts to each of the "generic voice" actors?

I don't think this is so easily solved. Patrick Stewart with a high pitched voice still sounds like Patrick Stewart.

That is so easily solved. Try changing pitch, speed and volume. Not perfect, but gets the job done.

I'm sorry, but all voice recognition research shows that none of those three actually affect the individuality of a person's speech. Sure, those three things determine one individual sine wave. But if voices were individual sine waves, we'd be speaking using tuning forks.

They could have layered that with other filters, such as Graphic EQs, and light reverb for resonance. Also, slowing down a voice recording does make it sound like a different enough person, because of the natural pitch drop. I've done it myself in a professional recording studio, and if done properly it doesn't sound awkward.

It will sound different...on its own. If you're playing Oblivion and hearing these same six or so people constantly for hours on end, you'll have their rhythms, oddities, and favorite tones of voice memorized in no time. Playing with the speed, pitch, and some filters would be an improvement, don't get me wrong, but it isn't going to make it less obvious that nords and orcs are now the same thing and all elves are minor variations on the same race. All imperial men and Sheogorath will still have a tendency to start a line loud and enthusiastically and then end it in a lower, sinister tone. All male elves will still sound like they're rushing through dialog without reading it in advance to decide how to emphasize it. All female orcs and nords will still be automatically extroverted. A change in pitch or speed isn't going to hide that for long.

Alternatively, using a Sims or Zelda style of speech with full text would solve this problem. It also doesn't limit the amount of dialog the game can have, where time/money restraints prevent you from adding as much quest/story content because you have to record everything multiple different times.

I’m sorry but no, they should never remove voice acting. The ability to turn off text is one of the nicest features about Oblivion, you actually feel like your having a real conversation versus being reminded constantly that you’re playing a video game by having to read text every time you speak to some one. While yes it does hinder adding more content, it’s something that will be improved in future TES games. Also if you look at the all gripes here a lot of them are about removing things from the previous Elder Scroll game Morrowind, quite a lot of them are legit complaints not being able to delete spells, no gloves, no crossbows etc. Bethesda needs to make things better instead of just giving it the axe.

The small amount of voice actors don't really bother me. In fact, it actually makes it easier for me to distinguish between races that look similar to each other. Before I noticed that Nords had larger lips than Imperials, I could always tell a Nord by the hearty male voice, and the Imperial by the soft British accent, both of which I like equally. Besides, all I really ask of the voice acting is to be more consistent, especially when it comes to beggars. Perhaps arranging them first by actor might help.

The random comments made by NPCs in dungeons can seem very out of place - NPCs often ask "What was that??" in a frightened manner before charging you in a murderous rage. Powerful ancient Vampires have been known to complain of being frightened by rats, as one may expect of a timid peasant.

This is also true for any other NPC chatter, I've seen NPCs that share rumors, and the rumor is about one of the participants of the conversation, yet they are using third person. Also it really bothers me when Mage Scholars tell you that they are not interested in whatever you were going to say when you are archmage, but you cannot even demote them.

I know what you mean. For example, Blades and such will scream "For the Empire!" or some such when they attack a rat or a mud crab. It's a little odd.

Personally I find the bizzare utterances funny, like when a guard fureously attacks you whilst squealing for help.

I love when I shoot an NPC in the face, and he simply says something like, "Must have been the wind."

Rumors sometimes break realism quite strongly. After staging the death of 'Mister X' and then saving him and escorting him to a tavern, he then takes to talk a patron about 'Did you hear that Mister X was assassinated?', even though the patron lives in the same city and has surely met the X before. Hannibal Traven is also known to talk about himself in the third person, musing on the controversial new Archmage... which is of course, himself.

The line about the Arch Mage appears to be a running joke in the Mages Guild.

If I were running for my life because assassins were chasing me, I would be spreading the rumor of my death as hard as I could, too. However, the rest of the time, characters referencing themselves in the third person is almost as bad for immersion as NPCs asking the player to download the new patch.

Rumors are sometimes just plain wrong: after the diary quest, I was told that Alectus was killed when it was taken. I actually walked into his house and talked to him to confirm that I hadn't done any such thing. Needless to say, he had no news on his untimely death to report.

If rumors were always true they wouldn't need a word that separated them from "fact."

Exactly. Too often in videogames, rumor = fact. People often get information wrong, and they may even make up information, so why should every rumor you hear be true? Sure, I'd get really annoyed if I go off to find a piece of treasure townsfolk are gossiping about, only to find that it doesn't exist, but that's life for you.

Not everyone is up to date on the latest news, and most of the news goes from city to city and gets changed along the way. It just adds to the realism.

You two might have a point if that's how all the other rumors worked in Oblivion, but they don't. 99% of the time, if a character tells you a "rumor", that rumor is absolutely true and reliable (many RPGs have this) and players come to expect this. If they were going for realism, you'd expect a lot more false and misleading rumors, but the few there are stand out as glitches.

As I recall, there were plenty of false rumors in Arena... Wonder why they stopped.

These are only people! People frequently get details wrong, or even change stories because they found the original version boring. (Play a game of telephone with a large group of friends, and you'll see what I mean.) That happens in real life, so why can't it happen in Cyrodiil? The idea of a man's diary being stolen is a rather exciting story for gossipers. Through the excitement, the story can get warped and confused, resulting in a completely different (and often ridiculous) tale.

Rumors almost exclusively center around what happens in the life of the main character, and they're not rumors anyway.

Many NPCs, such as inn-keepers and shop owners have rumors based on things other then the main character, such as where a good place to sleep, or buy armor is located.

On the other hand, those aren't "rumors" at all, just walking advertisements. People must get paid a lot to advertise in Cyrodiil.

People say things like that all the time in real life, For example: "I hate wal-mart, there are too many idiots there." "EB is probably the best place to buy games" "Nah I prefer gamestop." Of course, this might make it a good idea to change the "rumors" dialogue option to "small talk".

On the other hand, Allectus will occasionally walk up to other NPCs and say "did you know that Amantius Allectus was killed in a botched robbery?" There is absolutely no self reflection.

Apart from scripting the whole game, do you have the first clue how hard it would be to make an AI NPC self aware? Thats not artificial intelligence, thats actual intelligence; which, again, apart from scripting, which takes the fun out of it being open-ended, is blatantly impossible to recreate.

That's not what's being asked for at all. It would be absolutely trivial to augment the rumor system with a "don't talk about yourself in the third person" feature, just by tagging rumors by topic. An NPC script could easily skip a rumor if it was about themselves, or any other topic they shouldn't talk about.

Indeed, it's not hard at all to do this. All that would have to happen is for you to find the rumor topic in the InfoGeneral section of the Construction set, and say IsID != AmantiusAllectus. Of course, this particular issue is a glitch and is, in fact, fixed by the Unofficial Oblivion Patch. Which I highly recommend.

It's a great idea, but it would be a lot of work in the way that even if Amantius wouldn't talk about himself, we'd need a way to keep Mr.randomNPC from walking up to Amantius and telling him about his own death. On the other hand this might make things funny if Amantius would react appropriately.

Vampires and undead spirits would have discussions such as "did you hear about what happened to Kvatch?" As if they'd be keeping up with current events after being trapped in a cave for several centuries.

Maybe they're just regular people, who have been ostracized from the rest of society because of their condition.

I did not find that as a gripe, I mean how do you know, some poor guy could of happened into the cave, plus sometimes it does not state that they have been trapped.

In total: the game world seems made for your character, not the other way around. I'm not narcissistic, I want to be part of a world, not overlord of it!

Play a MMOG. Some of us want to be overlord.

Better yet, talk to the Imperial Guard every once in a while. Thought you were pretty cool because you saved the empire from complete doom at the hands of Daedric Prince Mehrunes Dagon and are the Hero of Kvatch and Champion of Cyrodiil, wearing Imperial Dragon Armor? Yeah, the Guards don't even notice; they still treat you like a beggar. Move along, citizen.

Worse, actually. Even if you're really famous (Archmage, Champion of Cyrodiil, Divine Crusader, Fighter's Guild leader, Grand Champion of Arena, etc, etc with fame in the 100s) they'll still say "Go away, pondscum" if you're infamy is over 30ish.

Several times the guards have said "It's the hero of Kvatch! This is truly an honor" or "All hail the Champion of Cyrodiil". Happens most of the time after said achievements.

NPCs are too generic&similar both as appearance and as character, with a few notable exceptions (generally in Shivering Isles). If not for the tooltip and dressing, you'd confuse Count Corvus with a beggar and Arch-Mage Traven with a thief. And only few beards for NPCs as well. Not to mention that they behave quite similarly - most are jerks of some kind of another. No differences between human&mer races. My character is, also, incidentally, the only blueish-black Imperial with blue hair in Cyrodiil.

Gosh, I wonder why, too... Oh wait. It's because Oblivion is not an Anime game. People don't have psycho hair colors like that.

I do. Anyway it was a side note. I'm pretty sure the main point was just that they're too much alike in general, not that the game is sadly lacking in interesting hairstyles.

This mod fixes that; Django's Unique Features. Can't tell Bob from Bill in Vanilla? Well, now Bob has a [goshdarn] scar running along his [also goshdarn] face.

Ha! Think about it this way. There are about 500 named Npc's (estimate) if you were to take away the copies, you would have a Ghost Region. Cyrodil is the middle of the empire and home to the Capital the Imperial City. There are 9 cities. If you're complaining about character amounts, complain for more, each character has a different personality, routine, and life they were made so you don't know everyone,like a real country.

Such a system would be, with current constraints, impossible. Not only would the dev team be forced to spend countless hours scripting each character, but they would have to fit all that scripting into a game. Too little space, too little time.

But, thats exactly what they did. Ever character has his or her own Radiant AI script for where to go at what time. It probably wouldn't have been terribly hard to open a face editor and use the random face tool thats already in the game.

I think, believe it or not, that the Gray Fox with his 'CAPITOL!' is even more annoying than the Adoring Fan. There, that felt good.

I personally found Sheogorath to be the most annoying NPC in the game not the Gray Fox, but this really is just opinionated with a no right or wrong answer for who is the most annoying NPC in the game. If the Gray Fox annoys you that bad you can always just not play through the Thieves Guild quest line, or you can play through it turn the volume all the way down when dealing with the Gray Fox and just keep clicking through the dialogue so you don’t have to hear him say “Capitol”.

I dont see how Sheo was so annoying. I really havent found an annoying NPC yet, with the exception of Mazoga (Screw you, SIR Mazoga). If you dont like hearing him say "Capital", just click through the text. If you cant, volume off, subs on.

Well, I don't have Shivering, so I wouldn't know about Sheogorath. Problem with the Gray Fox is that he says 'Capitol' at the very beginning of the sentence, and my game goes so slow that I can't click it away soon enough. I completed the questline now, so I ain't bothered anymore. Doesn't change the fact that it is still anoying.

It is just something I had to say, and I'm glad I did ;)

Truthfully, I found the exclamation of "capital" to be endearing. Believe it or not, it was a common habit to say that on hearing good news throughout the latter half of the eighteenth century. It helped set a great personality for the Gray Fox and offset his intimidating visage with an air of friendliness, in my opinion. But then again, I think that the Adoring Fan is hilarious rather than annoying and have him follow my character everywhere.

Prev:  Game Content - Oblivion Gates

Up: Game Content

Next: Game Content - Miscellaneous