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Comment by Agentlien | Hacker News Reader

In what regard is Morrowind more emergent than Skyrim?

It definitely felt magical when it was new, but I think that's just a feeling. Skyrim has Radiant AI and things like NPCs taking over establishments when the owner dies. A number of dynamic behaviors which help things feel a bit more alive.

I can't remember Morrowind having any kind of dynamic behavior or emergent gameplay. Unless you count being able to lock yourself out of quests by killing important characters (including as part of other quest lines!) which is something I do miss.

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In what regard is Skyrim's gameplay emergent, aside from the OP link's fox example?

As I understand it, Radiant AI is a framework for fixed and relatively simple finite state machines, with states like "use the anvil at the blacksmith's shop during working hours" or "drink in the tavern at 9 PM." Don't get me wrong, it's leaps and bounds beyond the NPC AI found in earlier games, but it's far from the emergent craziness you'll see in a sandbox game like Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress. Dynamic behaviors like the one you mentioned are still all essentially scripted interactions. Dialogue, the core interaction between the player and most NPCs, is still 100% scripted conversation trees. The most interesting emergent events I remember from Skyrim (or Oblivion) were funny glitches like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvuW2Jl5ZyY

I'd also like to hear the GP commentor's reply re: emergent gameplay in Morrowind. I haven't played that game as much as the others, and don't have enough in-game experience to comment.

I would not call any behavior in Skyrim emergent either, hence my use of the word "dynamic". I am a big fan of Dwarf Fortress, in fact I spent most of today so far playing it with my son, so I know the difference.

But when most people say emergent it is often simply dynamic systems or context sensitive scripts they mean, so I assumed that was likely what they meant.

Skyrim has a number of these: NPCs you've charmed can leave you inheritance if they die, inns and shops can change owners in similar fashion, some scripted events like towns being captured in the civil war cause officials to be killed or exiled and replaced, ...

I wanted to know if there was more of that type of dynamic world behaviour to Morrowind than I could remember.

No I really did mean emergent! And I'm also a huge fan of DF :)

Npcs taking over shops isn't really emergent because that behaviour is programmed intentionally. Neither is breaking the quest chains in morrowind unless it's done by an AI (which can happen sparingly but the later games had much more active Npcs). Its more about how different rules and systems can interact with each other to create unexpected and novel results, and morrowind simply had more emergence-friendly mechanics like spell building, levitate, jump, and chameleon, more alchemical potions, double edged items like boots of blinding speed and icarian flight. Probably more things I can't remember but I was distinctly disappointed with the lack of exploitable mechanics in skyrim.

I agree none of the behavior in any Elder Scrolls game really qualify as emergent. Hence why I used the word dynamic as I thought what you were referring to was a feeling of the game world being alive.

If you're referring to magic items having both positive and negative effects and having to find workarounds then it sounds like you're talking about basic synergy rather than emergent properties.

I do agree that it's a shame they've removed spell crafting and made some things more clearly positive or negative. But I must say I don't mind how ridiculously unbalanced magic was in Morrowind.

The interactions between the magic design and alchemical systems can be emergent, but you're right that the cancelling of the negative effects of the OP items could be called synergistic instead - I think it depends on whether the effects were intended to be cancelled or not, which I don't think they necessarily were given the ones I mentioned were both introduced as jokes and items that are OP with a significant negative effect are usually coded as cursed or xeno-objects, and afforded a high status rather than being granted by random passers-by.

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