NPC's: How detailed should they be?

How detailed do you like your npc's? Now note by npc's I do not mean the characters that JOIN your party (Jaheira, Iolo, Bastila, Sulik, etc) but the 'mundane' npc's populating the world. Most rpg's get away with npc's only having a single line or so of repetitive dialogue. Others have more detailed npc's. (Divine Divinity, Gothic, etc) Which do you prefer?

Now obivously its a matter of resources and cost. While mhaving lots of npc's walking around makes for more 'realism' sad fact is that its very costly to write individual stuff for each. IMO the best way to do it is try to have a large number of nbpc's wandering about towns (but not overly large) and set aside individual dialogue/quests/background for each. No need to go all out or give them all speech (if you can afford it thats great though) but at least give them all unique text and background and stuff to add to the game.

*Really* detailed, as in, give them a nice deep personality, make them interesting, give them little quirks and make them just as detailed as possible. Not all, though, only those with whom you talk more often.

I hated how in Oblivion, every NPC you met would start right off the bat and say "Hello, my name is [PC NAME] and I am a [JOB]. I [SOMETHING ABOUT JOB] all day. What can I do for you?". I mean really, who talks like that? It wouldn't be so bad if one or two did it but quite literally, EVERY NPC IN THE GAME does it.

I prefer a bit of a mix. Throw in some people who are straight to the point "What do you want?" or "Stop bothering me.", rather than the "here's my background in 2 sentences" crap. Some NPCs should have their life story ready to be told to you, others should have very little to say. Mix it up.

JarlFrank said:

*Really* detailed, as in, give them a nice deep personality, make them interesting, give them little quirks and make them just as detailed as possible. Not all, though, only those with whom you talk more often.

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First of all, I don't think creating a character with a deep personality is a necessity if you want to have deep characters. It's possible I'm misusing the term "deep character" here, but for me it describes a character that appears to be realistic. We have a lot of people with shallow personalities around and still, most of them are as real as you can get.

Secondly, I don't necessarily see a strong correlation between "detailed" and "deep". It totally depends on the quality of the writing and what additional characterization methods are used. One NPC can have just a couple of minutes of "screen time" and come across as deep while another can have a whole novel dedicated to him and still be shallow and uninteresting. I think the crucial factor here is, again, realism. If an NPC acts realistically in a given context (and telling a totally stranger his life story without any apparent reason isn't realistic) he tends to appear to be deeper than an NPC acting to the contrary.

Thirdly, while I can easily enjoy well written dialogue for the sake of it, I prefer to have characters where indulging in dialogue results in actual game play. Interesting consequences, useful information, interactivity, quests, whatever. If that requires more detail then give me more detail.

So, how much detail does it have to be? As much as is needed to make the character come across as an actual person and give me enough purpose to talk to him. I'm not the type of guy that enjoys detail for the sake of it.

Anyway, I feel so bad posting in an Andhaira thread and supporting his dumbfuckery. I won't do it, but can anybody else post a new thread with the same topic, starting it with a well though out post instead that "Hey, here I am, I, Idiot!"?

I want Ultima 7 to be rediscovered amongst the rpg crowd - designers and players. Now, I'm not saying U7 is perfect, I mean I hate the pseudo-medieval speech myself, but when it comes to the social aspect of it U7's world is the most realistic game world out there. It isn't realistic because it's lore is so complicated (Morrowind) nor is it realistic because you have npc's bumping around (Gothic, Oblivion). It is realistic because every npc is given life through combining writing and scheduling (that puts Gothic series and Oblivion to shame). They were written into human beings. And they were written so that they all would affect the persons around them. And thus you see things like conservative rich family making life difficult for the single mom and his son, two beggars spending their days around in bitterness and world-hating, a father killing his daughter's best friend because it was not human, social tensions between the rich and poor, tensions between the poor and poor, outcasts of the society trying to fit into this cruel world, a man cheating his wife with a young religious girl and so on. Ultima isn't realistic because of it's game mechanics or lore or graphics. It's realistic because it's human value, because it's world is filled with humans. They lie, they hurt, they laugh, they do random acts of kindness, they fuck around like animals, they live, they enjoy simple things, etc - Ultima 7 knew the importance of human heart and used it. It's not perfect, but there's no reason to leave this thing in the 90's and never perfect it. Bottom Line: there's a lot to learn from Ultima 7 and much of it could improve current games.

Also, I'm not a nostalgic idiot, since I played U7 around 2004 the first time.