One of the things that didn’t make it into version 3 was the re-write of Ignar the Lucky‘s mage story. In retrospect, I felt it showed way too much concern for his fellow sellswords, and Ignar only cares about himself. So, here it is redone and ready for the next update, with Serithi providing the voice.

As I mentioned before, Ignar was somewhat influenced by Jade, in that I didn’t want another character who felt cursed or encumbered by his odd circumstances. Ignar is someone who embraces his situation, and thinks himself the luckiest man alive, even if the people who work with him feel the opposite.

One thing that has bothered me for a while now has been Tikrid‘s AI. Her character is supposed to be physically awkward but effective, but the standardized animations belie that. She fights normally, she moves normally, as does every NPC in the game. So for the most part, for narrative purposes, I’ve resorted to breaking the cardinal sin, telling you why she’s awkward instead of showing you said awkwardness.

Without being able to alter her fighting style, the best I could do was make her gangly by dropping the weight slider down. There’s also the tan lines I’ve placed on her face – a story I will elaborate on further in v3.01 since most people seem to assume it’s dirt (Basically, when I constructed her face, I thought it’d be typical of her to try on war paint on the hottest and brightest day of the year, and come home with a tan line that stayed on her face for months).

In Darkened Steel, I was able to direct her a little more and have her commit faux pas – knocking urns over, crossing sacred boundaries, and stepping on traps – but she still does them with the same grace that is intrinsic in all NPCs. In other words, she feels a little more clumsy than awkward. After all, she’s bound to the matrix of the game, and the people who designed its animations wanted them to look impressive. For the most part, they succeeded.

However, while explaining this on the Nexus forums, I realized I’ve come across animations that aren’t really utilized in the vanilla game, mostly because they are patently ridiculous. For example, in the video below are the IdleLaugh and IdleGetAtttention – idles that for whatever reason do a head-first dive straight into the uncanny valley.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTGHchsjlNE

There are some animations though, that fall in the tenuous space between the impressive and the absurd. Animations that are just realistic enough to simply be, well, awkward. While it’s impossible to change Tikrid’s fighting style, in the next version I hope to add little touches here and there that unintentionally match her character. Given her background as a guardsmen, the IdleSalute and IdleSnaptoAttention actually fit perfectly, and having her stand at attention whenever you speak to her is one way to show her awkwardness instead of telling it.

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.