Xbox.com: Here's a silly question: Why is it called Radiant A.I.? What does that mean?

Gavin Carter: The "Radiant" part of the title refers to the way a character's awareness isn't strictly limited to a few hard-scripted objects or activities. It radiates out into the surrounding environment and beyond. They can choose to interact with anything they come into contact with based on parameters we set up when we create them. This includes having conversations with one another, sitting down and reading books, buying food and supplies from shops, farming, exploring, engaging in combat with creatures or one another, and a wide range of other activities.

Xbox.com: We've heard a lot about the Radiant A.I. system your team has been working on, that each of Oblivion's 1,000 NPCs is controlled by its own agenda, schedule, and motivation. Why go this route? How will it impact the gamer's experience?

Gavin Carter: The lack of interesting A.I. for NPCs was probably the top complaint people had with Morrowind, so we took that to task from the very first days of Oblivion's development. The intent was to develop a system that could give NPCs a wide variety of interesting behaviors, as well as be extensible enough to apply quickly and easily to all 1500+ people who inhabit our game world. The impact on the gamer should greatly alleviate the feeling of a static world like Morrowind.