In Oblivion Remastered you can make groups of goblins fight each other – that’s where this system comes from

Oblivion’s Radiant AI system was mostly remembered by players for its impeccable, if entirely unintentional, comedic timing, creating awkward dialogue and odd NPC interactions across Cyrodiil. Players are now rediscovering these quirks in Bethesda’s wildly popular Oblivion Remastered . However, one of the system’s lesser-known effects is its impact on goblin behavior.

Contrary to the image of mindless green-skinned creatures, goblins in Oblivion exist in their own tribal ecosystem. The seven goblin tribes in the game carefully guard their sacred totem staves, and if one is stolen, they send out a war party to retrieve it. This can potentially cause chaos in the settlements the party passes through, but the real fireworks begin when the stolen totem is placed in the lair of another goblin tribe. In this case, the two tribes engage in full-scale war, with the tribe without the staff unleashing endless hordes of goblins on the would-be thieves.

This odd quirk of Oblivion’s AI system was originally designed for just one side quest. It was created by Bethesda’s Kurt Kuhlmann, who had recently served as lead systems designer on Starfield. The goblin wars mechanic was inspired by the side quest “Goblin Trouble,” which saw two goblin tribes at war with each other, with a human settlement caught in the middle.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Kuhlman explained how this idea for a specific quest evolved into a game-wide system:

Since I had to set up a scripting system to have goblins in one dungeon periodically attack goblins in another, I figured it wouldn’t take much more work to make it systemic so it would work with any goblin tribe if the player stole their totem. I’m not sure the “not much more work” part actually turned out to be true, but it certainly created opportunities for some interesting emergent gameplay.

Kuhlman also revealed that the Goblin War uses elements of Radiant AI that are rarely used elsewhere in Oblivion:

The system also made use of some rarely used but powerful AI features, such as “Find”, which allowed goblins to navigate to a totem no matter where it was.

It also seems like the Goblin Wars were introduced quite late in Oblivion.

I would have loved to do more stuff like this, but we didn’t have the extra time. Plus, the tools for doing stuff like this in Oblivion were very primitive.

And, in case you were wondering, yes, the goblin wars are present in Oblivion Remastered as well . The new and improved game engine is built on top of the original game logic, so all the weird behavioral quirks are preserved.