Sandbox game developers work hard to make their titles feel like living, breathing worlds inhabited by real people. The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion attempted to create this impression by fully embracing emergent NPC interactions.

However, as many fans likely remember, it was far from a perfect system. YouTuber Klognar reminds everyone with a hilarious video showcasing a flurry of Oblivion NPC dialogue.

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The clip is only about a minute long, but no fewer than three conversations occupy every second. The moment Klognar enters the room, NPCs begin pairing off into separate conversations. That wouldn’t be so bad if the whole room weren’t speaking at once. Then, just as things seem to be tapering off, each character finds a new partner and starts again.

Klognar’s clip shows an extreme example, but Oblivion’s chatty NPCs were something players often had to suffer through. The limited voice cast makes it even worse, as the game’s nine races only had about ten voices between them. The Orcs, Nords, and Elves suffered from a particular lack of variety. As seen in the video, the result is multiple NPCs with the same voice carrying on separate conversations at once. That makes the dialogue even harder to follow than it already is, reducing the voice work to meaningless noise.

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion is notable for being the first Bethesda game to fully embrace what would become the studio’s signature approach to emergent gameplay and storytelling. Bethesda gave each NPC a unique schedule, which they would carry out regardless of if the player was there to see it. And when two friendly NPCs met, they had a chance to strike up dynamic conversations. These interactions were significant enough to feature prominently in Oblivion’s E3 2005 demo.

Unfortunately, while Oblivion did a lot of things right, this system was far from perfect. As the video shows, the exchanges can happen ridiculously often whenever many NPCs share a confined space. Also, Bethesda could only record so many lines of dialogue. NPC conversations had to simultaneously point players to new quests, reference quests they already completed, and hint at events in the broader world of Tamriel. However, as the clip shows, Oblivion NPCs love to talk, quickly running out of new topics. The problem became especially pronounced for players who first rushed through the main story before doing the side quests.

Still, Oblivion’s NPCs were far from the most annoying ever coded. And after fifteen years, their antics are funny rather than frustrating. That said, it’s hard for players not to at least roll their eyes when they walk into a room with half a dozen characters all talking at once.

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion is available on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 and backward compatible on PS4, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

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