Procedural Quest Generation - Improving Skyrim’s Radiant Story

Year:

2019

Phase:

Finished

Authors:

Rui Miguel Moraes de Abreu Quartilho Dias

Advisors:

Abstract

To explore the potential ability of games creating more dynamic, living worlds and stories, we took the existing Radiant Story and AI system created by Bethesda Softworks for Skyrim, which is capable of generating quests at run-time, and sought to understand what were its limitations or what caused it to not be enjoyed, in most parts, by the community and players. The basis for this project is the research and work done in the areas of procedural generation and interactive storytelling as a way to better dynamically create quests. As such, we had proposed to improve Skyrim's Radiant system by making this system create chained, that is, interconnected and sequential, events and quests, while attempting to maintain narrative coherence and characters' personalities consistent. The limitations of the base system however, did not allow for the complete development of the suggested structure, but still allowed the analysis of the potential of this type of work, and whether there is worth in continuing to follow it.