Game Informer is
spilling the beans on the demo they saw of
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. With Skyrim, Bethesda is coming out with a brand new engine that Game Informer gives some good details to.
The engine is now called Creation Engine and Kit. It features some in house built tools such as a tree creation module. Before, Bethesda used a third party tool to do foliage, but this time around they have their own set of tools they made to do this. Dynamic lighting is everywhere now and there's even some programming to determine how much snow accumulates on an object.
AI has been boosted so now everyone goes about with tasks instead of some wandering around aimlessly. They've had this in previous games, but it's much more sophisticated with the new system. AI will also be more respondent to you if you do things to harass or help them.
Bethesda is now using Havok's new Behavior technology to help blend animations a lot better. One of the results coming from using this is that you will no longer zoom into the person when you communicate with them. Now, the characters can still go about their daily tasks and talk to you without looking awkward. You're not forced to focus on the person in your conversation, freeing yourself to do a few things while in conversation. Let's be honest, the animations in
Fallout 3 can be pretty wooden and very distracting sometimes depending on what the characters were trying to do. I'm happy to hear that the new system should make animations a lot more natural and a lot better quality.
The one thing I'm glad to hear about the new engine is that the Radiant Story system will dynamically tailor your experience so that it will "randomize" your quests based on various factors. I don't know how many times I've wandered around in previous Bethesda games only to encounter the location of a quest objective. With the new Radiant Story system, the game can move the the objective to some place you haven't visited, thus reducing the amount of instances where you repeat a visit to a location or finish a quest prematurely.
Skyrim's due in about 10 months, but I'm counting the days to E3 where that will be the first time I get a look at the game in person.
