You Can't Learn a Lot From Lydia (But You'd Likely Like To)

I'm still immersed in the world of Skyrim, but so far, I do have a complaint: The high quality of the immersiveness leaves you wanting more interaction with some of the non-player characters you encounter. Specifically Lydia, the fine-boned warrior who becomes your loyal servant and badass bodyguard early in the game. She goes where you go, joins a fight when you're in trouble, and continually makes eye contact with you in a quite unnerving way. She'll even let an ice troll punch her in the face multiple times so you can axe it from behind. All this creates an emotional investment that the game doesn't really capitalize on. After many hours of this gameplay, you start wondering about her. How does she feel about guarding some dude she don't know with her life? What did she do when you crashed in the inn for 9 hours, sleep on the floor outside? Got a boyfriend? Girlfriend? But there are no dialog options to explore any of this. (At least for quite awhile; maybe they show up later in the game.) In any case, as with Malick, your loyal friend in Deus Ex: Human Revolution who ultimately needs your help, she's another instance of NPCs this year that create an emotional, even moral investment in the world of the game.

Oh, in case you're wondering (and I bet you were), the title of this post was inspired by this song:

Kinda hoping someone makes a Skyrim machinima using this tune! After someone makes a mod to make Lydia a tattooed lady.

Comments

[Nyoko Salome]

:0 i've been thinking the past few years that while videogame productions have made great strides, they seem to have 'lost the art' of the old text adventures - infocom's zork, etc... or a lot of advancements made in 'eliza/artificial intelligence' kind of stuff. heck, look at the impact of siri... maybe some future game will take it for granted that they've pushed the visual envelopes pretty well as far as they can go, and maybe go back to re-emphasize player-to-character interaction (heck, a really adventurous production would have maybe some random character-to-character actions, changing the story/gameplay as they go).

[Iris Ophelia]

A Bioware game it ain't, that's for sure. ^^;

[foneco zuzu]

As in all previous titles of Bethesda, some modder, will release for free a mod that will fill the lacks you spoke off.
You should make a search on Bethesda mod forums for companions to see the hundreds of diff ones dome already to Oblivion, morrowind and so on!
Bethesda knows that it can give space to modders to do better, looks a bit like LL and tpv's, lol!

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I don't think we're that far removed from having smart NPCs with their own detailed histories, memories of events, and evolving perceptions of the player characters.

Most of the technology is already out there. It's just waiting for somebody to put it all together and make it work in the context of an MMO or single-player adventure.

[Extropia DaSilva]

If you want to experience a growing bond between your ingame character and an NPC, I recommend 'Ico' for the PlayStation3. This game is an absolute masterpiece when it comes to telling a narrative with hardly any dialogue at all, relying instead on ambient sounds, animation and setting to convey its story and the trials and travails of the characters in it.

[Dale Innis]

In indoor environments, she is also constantly standing wherever you want to go, so you have to rudely shove her out of the way. That'd be another nice touch of AI...