Elite Bastards: Can you give us an overview of the main features used by the games graphics engine (i.e. Shader Models, texture sizes, HDR etc)?

Gavin Carter: Oblivion's renderer is a mix of the Gamebryo renderer with a healthy dose of our own internally developed technology. The engine fully supports shader models up to and including 3.0. We employ a full HDR lighting solution throughout the game. Textures utilize all the latest shader technology including normal maps, specular maps, and parallax maps. We're hammering away on our soft-shadow model. There shouldn't be any technological buzzword out there that current games are using that we don't have built into our renderer.
 

Elite Bastards: What were the most challenging elements of your design to actually implement in the game? What's been the most frustrating element to implement and how did you finally overcome it?

Gavin Carter: The AI has certainly been the most challenging element to implement. It turns out that giving any sense of autonomy to a world with 1500 NPCs that are running 24 hours a day (no matter where you are) can be a dangerous proposition. We've had to deal with everything from NPCs killing plot-essential characters off-screen to them breaking the economy by purchasing everything in a town. However, our programmers have done a tremendous job plugging the holes that form and it's grown into a very tight system that is fascinating to observe and interact with in the game.