Bethesda veterans tell us about the little-known feature that brought naturally-occurring battles to Cyrodiil.
But what many players never suspected is that their enemies were living their own lives too.
Why care about the geography?
If a tribe loses their holy staff, they’ll send out a war party to recover it.
They don’t happenforthe player as an audience; they simply happen, regardless of their presence.
That’s led to a number of confused Reddit threads and conflicting wiki entries over the years.
Speaking to the original developers about the goblin wars has been an equally muddy and mysterious journey.
“This wasn’t a secret feature,” he says.
“It was described in the official Oblivion strategy guide.”
That’s because areas like dungeon interiors in Oblivion aren’t usually loaded when the player isn’t nearby.
“I don’t remember how I solved that but apparently I did!
Probably with some questionable designer hackery,” Kuhlmann says.
In my own experience, the goblin wars have played out whenever I haven’t been looking.
But neither the raiders, nor the totem they came to collect, were there.
The White Skins must have already succeeded in their mission.
Maybe that’s because they simply couldn’t fight through the overworld to reach it.
“You might try short Waits of one hour,” Kuhlmann suggests.
“Or just let game time pass naturally and see if that makes a difference.”
Nevertheless, Kuhlmann continued to build on the goblin wars philosophy wherever possible.
You’ll see spiritually similar instances of AI interplay even in later Bethesda games.
As for the goblin wars he instigated?
Kuhlmann is pretty happy with how they turned out.
More primitive, it transpires, than the goblins themselves.
