Idea to improve NPC interaction

[Vexviron]

I wanted to throw this out there, even though it would be a daunting task to accomplish. Now non-player characters are great, like Minsc and Boo. They have personality, advice and opinions, but what about ulterior motives?

 

For example: Say I am Neutral Evil character and I recruit a Chaotic Evil companion to travel with. We come across a bridge where an old lady is hanging around. She says that she will give you this shiny magic ring if you help her across the bridge. Instead of helping her you ask your Chaotic Evil companion to do it. Half way down the bridge he gets this brilliant idea to steal the ring and toss the old lady over the bridge. Your companion puts the ring on shortly after he tosses her over and quickly finds out the ring is cursed. Due to the ulterior motives of your companion, he now has a curse ring stuck on his finger. Alternatively, if the player chose to walk the old woman across, she would still be alive and would probably hand you the originally promised gift, an un-cursed magic ring, which she was hiding in her waist band.

 

What do you think? Could this idea be fathomed to the extent of actual implementation?

[JayDGee]

didn't something like this happen to Edwin in Baldurs gate where he gets turned into a woman?

 

or did I dream that?

[Krios]

I tend to agree it will likely be a lot of added work. I would imagine they will achieve that level of 'natural instinctive response' with the use of scripting. Unless the writers put in more of such interactions to help flesh out the NPCs, I do not see it being worth much of the developers' time to have them at all.

[UncleBourbon]

didn't something like this happen to Edwin in Baldurs gate where he gets turned into a woman?

 

or did I dream that?

 

As far as I recall, yes. And I think it is a nice touch, but hard to implement. I'm not opposed to every once in a while having a short text adventure, with the opportunity to delegate tasks to varying effect. It would take a good bit of time, I imagine, to code in as compared to the scripting of dungeons and such (especially as so many of the options would probably NOT be seen until another play through). I imagine, however, that a text-adventure format might make it a bit less time consuming.