They don't need new assets for night at all. It's just a matter of changing the atmosphere to make it dark and get rid of shadows, which is easily done already. That's not the problem (and in fact, they are adding a TON of new assets, hundreds if not thousands of new models and animations and textures, not just reusing stuff from D:OS1). The problem is giving a sufficient number of NPCs reactive behavior to the day night cycle to make it actually immersive, instead of just pretty. You seriously underestimate the amount of work it takes to give lots of NPCs schedules, new quests, etc. They could do a minimal amount of scheduling, making vendors go inside, 3-5 night-specific quests, etc. but I think Swen would much prefer to go all the way. It's just like with the origins, which aren't going to be little gimmicks but have a massive effect on the game. Trying to throw a well-developed day/night cycle on top of that is asking too much.
Games have had day/night schedules in the past, but very few have been all that good at changing the world with the scheduling. And the ones that did weren't as graphically or mechanically as complex as D:OS, so they had more time to spend on that reactivity. Making 6-8 highly reactive origin stories and well-developed quests and competitive elements is already a lot for an RPG, and a day/night cycle with scheduling would definitely make the origins suffer. As much as I'd like a day night cycle, I understand why it can't be done. If they had millions more to spend, they could spend months working on the day/night stuff, but we don't know how much the publishers are funding them.
And really, you can't just add the scheduling on top of the game - it has to be there from the start or you're not going design things to account for it. So even if someone were to give them two million dollars 3/4 through development to spend on the day night cycle, it'd be questionable whether they would want to accept it because that would involve reworking a lot of quests and dialogs.
Last edited by Baardvark; 13/10/15 10:04 PM.
