Completing Skyrim's Complex NPC Behavior: Todd Howard's Napkin Idea

Select Language:

Bethesda is recognized for creating ‘Radiant’ NPCs. These characters interact with the game world independently of players. Skyrim, Starfield, and Fallout 4 showcase this NPC behavior.

Bruce Nesmith, a former design director at Bethesda, shared insights about NPC behavior in Skyrim with PC Gamer. Surprisingly, radiant AI started from a concept sketched on a napkin. While these ‘napkin stories’ are often seen in media, they are rare in real life.

A Living World

“The Radiant AI system was inspired by a drawing that Todd [Howard] gave us,” Nesmith said.

Nesmith has worked at Bethesda for over twenty years, contributing to games like Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout 76, and Fallout 4.

“It really is a napkin story,” he added. “You don’t find many of those in real life, but this one is real.” He explained that Howard sketched the game’s hero on the napkin and drew arrows linking the hero to elements like monsters and buildings.

Howard said, “The player interacts with these things, but they don’t interact back. That was Morrowind. For Oblivion, we tried having them respond a little. But now, for Skyrim, we want the world to react to the player and to itself. So how can we do that?”

“We went off and came back with ideas,” Nesmith recalled. “Those were some of the most creative moments in my gaming career. We aimed to create events and objects in the world that the player interacts with, while the system monitors those interactions.”

This meant that in Skyrim, every item would have a wealth of data, allowing for various actions. Everything was aware of everything else; locations knew about the objects inside them, and objects recognized their locations.

The result is a world that acknowledges the player, making them feel like they are part of a living, breathing environment where their actions matter. “You feel like you’re actually part of something,” Nesmith noted.

Even fourteen years later, the unique and sometimes odd behaviors of NPCs make revisiting the game a pleasure. While Oblivion also had interesting NPCs, Skyrim offered more spontaneous interactions.