Over the past year and a half I’ve learned a lot of tricks. It’s safe to say if I had to start all over again, Interesting NPCs would look nothing like it does now. While I don’t know if that’s a good thing, a bad thing, or no thing at all, what I do know is that with Dragonborn, I essentially have a clean slate and plenty of toys.
With version 3 released, and version 3.01 cleaning up the last of the bugs, I decided to dust off my old follower Alphena Dren and tinker around a bit. I wanted to design her in a way that allows her to interact with everyone in town, and even partake in quest conversations, especially since so many of the vanilla player choices are limited to a single response. So instead of mindlessly clicking on a sentence, why not let Alphena ask those questions? The following is a concept video of how this would work.
In the first scene, Milore and Alphena chat for a bit while the player stands off to the side and picks his nose. In scene two, we have a quest starting conversation with Glover Mallory that turns into a three-way conversation instead.
It doesn’t have to be limited to a single person either. Using the same techniques I use for the bards, I can take any NPCs in the room and make them have a conversation with Alphena. The one caveat is I have to play Dragonborn first, and frankly I don’t know if I’ll ever find the time.
You sound just like me…have all the expansions, but hardly get into them even. Well, I promised someone I would get to at least 25th level for my illusionist, so I could try out his new illusion spell mod. Let’s see if I can live up to my word.
Sounds like an excellent idea. Games should be story telliing vehicles first, Your concept would be another step in the right direction.
If the Super Followers end up getting this same level of treatment in a future Dragonborn Expansion of the mod, I will be enthusiastically happy.
Please tell me you’re making some sort of scholarly reikling follower.
oh man this looks awesome! But you would need to find a pretty dedicated voice actor to do this.
I didn’t even know this was possible.
I actually tacked on an additional scene to the end as well, so he says
Glover: “You tell Crescius to get me my pickaxe, or else.”
Alphena(to player): Well, you heard the man. While I don’t think anyone takes Glover’s threats seriously, he’s still the town blacksmith. And it never hurts to curry the favor of the man who makes your weapons.
Just ways to sort of create a companion that’s dynamically involved in all your conversations.
Again I say, if all the previously-added Super Followers somehow manage to get this same level of treatment (would require the VAs to be willing and dedicated and such) I will be enthusiastically happy.
*crosses fingers and hopes for Rumarin sarcasm magnificence in Solstheim*
This is amazing. Please take off a week and play Dragonborn because the pay-off is going to be soo incredible!