The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Q&A
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Q: How has the research of geological and meteorological events changed the scope of Oblivion from its original inception; specifically, has the system used to generate the landscape affected the outcome of the story or the inclusion of quests in some way?
A: Our research into procedural generation systems was primarily something we did for efficiency purposes. The time required to generate the landscape for Oblivion was significantly lower than for Morrowind. And whereas Morrowind featured primarily smoothed over hills due to being done by hand, our programmers incorporated erosion algorithms into our landscape generation, giving us awesome craggy mountain vistas that would take us forever to do by hand. Of course, the visuals influence the design to an extent. With so many great sights to see in our huge exterior world, we had to come up with a lot of content to fill it up. So you'll find a few wilderness quests, lots of ruins and random dungeons, and lots and lots of flavor touches, like ambient wildlife and hunter NPCs.
