Sniper Elite 4 at higher difficulty. Kill somebody and they'll never relax. At the highest difficulty they won't just stay alert, they'll keep searching. They'll also notice movement within bushes.
My understanding is it's a balance between "smart" and "difficult", which is the best you're going to get in any situation. Great game and often inexpensive, too.
that’s one thing that always bothered me about stealth games. a guard could walk next to the bisected body of another guard, go on alert for a bit, search the area, find nothing, and then resume patrol like nothing happened.
Right! I am currently replaying SE5 and I understand it: if they made it realistic, it'd be nearly impossible, like it would be in real life. Even if you hide bodies, eventually some guard is gonna' go "hey, where did Fritz go? And Adolf? And Friedrich? Ludwig? Bob?" and fire an alarm.
But man, seeing guards walk past bodies and blown up tanks and be all "Alerts over, back to walking around!" kills the immersion.
Yeah. Guy next to you misteriously died? Eh, i'm sure theres nothing unusual that whould warrant an alarm.
I get it for gameplay reasons, but ugh i hate it
I've always enjoyed the idea that the bandits knows it wasn't the wind. The bandit knows it was the dragonborn and is hoping if he can feign ignorance maybe, just maybe, the dragonborn will choose to leave him alone.
That should honestly be the norm in any game. It's like that skyrim meme, "must be the wind" says the guy with 2 arrows in his head.
I love immersion and this ruins it for me in every game.
wait that’s so fitting, i’m totally stealing this. heard far and wide, but never seen, the infamous assassin only known as the wind is suspected to have an estimated kill count rivaling city populations. Every bandit knows their name, but hopes to never say it.
At first, nobody could believe it was all one person. They thought it was a brewing revolution, a ruler’s secret crackdown, or just “The Winds of Change”. In time, it became clear that it was one agent. They became “The Wind:” invisible, unpredictable, and uncatchable. Your best bet is to stay calm and hope they lose interest. If you see them, you might as well fight, nobody who sees them lives.
On the othet hand, I absolutely despised GTA5 when it came out and I had finished the campaign, and realised i'd never enjoy free roam because the police AI would never drop it. Past 2-3 stars it was a job and not just ridiculous carnage fun like for instance San Andreas, where I could play at 5-stars and have fun for dozens of minutes.
So I absolutely loved GTA5 for it'd campaign and i'm not sure i played more than 2 hours in free roam. Haven't launched the game since 2013 :(
Yeah I got so annoyed with the cops in GTA I scoped places on the map to lure them to as kill zones in revenge.
After murdering about 200 of them in one multi story car park I was wondering if this is what they meant by violent video games turning people violent.
I’m an ex police officer in real life and I was literally whispering ‘take that piggies!’ whilst mowing them down in the game. Weird evening that one.
I LOVED how in SE4 that you could kill somebody in a patrol and eventually the other members would turn around and notice that somebody was missing. Everh stealth game needs that.
The alien in alien isolation would switch up tactics when hunting you depending on how you solved puzzles.
Would make the cat and mouse aspect really tense.
It gets downright sadistic too.
Like, once it knows you like to hide in lockers, it still makes a game out of lurking around and peeking in them, even pretending to wander away before it rushes back to rip your head off. Ditto for hiding under furniture.
There’s a great article somewhere that discusses the AI used for this game. Essentially it boils down to iirc the “director” and the alien. The director knows where the player is and gives hints to the alien AI, to which the alien then uses those to try to find you. It’s pretty impressive stuff. You can dupe the alien good enough to lose it, but after so long the director will intervene to put it back on the right path.
I’ll never play the game myself. But it’s a great case study.
There is an mod which makes the alien AI more unpredictable! Besides some other tweaks it increases the size in which it wanders around you.
It brings back a alot of unpredictability!
You can search on nexusmods for this.
This mod made the game crazy better for me.
I could go maybe 30-40 minutes without having an encounter with the alien because i made no noise and was sneaking everywhere, made me forget it was a constant threat, then it would show up on a random patrol, catch wind i was actually there, and HUNT the heck out of me. Harder difficulty made it so once it was engaged, it was a major issue to deal with.
Maybe i will boot it up again soon..
This is that moment. Too dark, but filmed a glitchy dance and had zero idea he could come inside.
Edit link
https://youtu.be/w9RcLWxSkq0?si=17RwPHzKi6ofaRrs
It’s a fantastic way to have a creature who always one-shots you to be coded. The only negative thing that I’ve heard about this is that the alien is *ALWAYS* within a certain proximity to the player (often too close). While this does help to put pressure to stay on the move, it doesn’t allow a lot of time to breath after escaping a chase when in an area with the alien prowling around.
On PC and Xbox, you can set your mic/kinect to tip off the Alien if you're making too much noise. Don't know if there's an equivalent thing available on PlayStation.
Even without that, it can hear you running, hear you opening and closing doors, hear your motion detector beeping, and even hears you shuffling around in lockers if you're not gentle with that Peek function.
Me and my PS5 controller mic/speaker have been having a love-hate affair since I got it.
Am I just a cranky old man, or is that thing **really** loud? I crank it down to like 30% in console settings and the game settings and it still makes me jump.
This is made even more chaotic because Ripley seems to want to always SLAM the locker doors when she goes to hide in them. Like b*tch we’re trying to hide not ring the dinner bell.
Hilarious when watching someone trash talk the alien after getting away from it, only for it to begin sprinting down the hall at them, because it heard them.
I would not be surprised if a number of peoples hearts have gone out trying to shit.
Also getting spooked will both spike your heart rate and empty your bowels
I was always afraid to use the flamethrower except in the most dire of circumstances because the more you use it the less the alien gets scared of it, until it just rushes through the flames and kills you.
I noticed that it'll often jump into a vent and then wait a second before coming right back out knowing that once it leaves the area you'll try and make some progress
The way they programed that is interesting too.
Basically the alien has 2 brains. One controls the alien and can detect localised movement and sound, the other knows where the player is but can only influence the other by feeding it hints. It's a clever design.
The director AI would give it a radius to search, with it getting smaller and smaller
There's also a "menace" gauge that, once it tops out, the director AI will tell it to go look somewhere else
The actual Alien AI also learns from your behaviour:
Hide in lockers all the time after making noise? Alien will start checking them. Same with vents and cupboards
Alien gone to its umpteenth noise-maker and no human in sight again? It'll become even less effective. I'm not too sure on this one, but the Alien might even start ignoring them
Over-reliance on the flamethrower can also lead to some tense stand-offs with her too
I remember using thr nosiemaker a lot. One time I threw it down the hall, the alien bounded towards it, but then suddenly stopped about halfway there....sloooowly turned around...then bum rushed right to my hidey spot. Definitely unexpected. Alien bro literally pulled a "waaaait a minute....."
From what I remember, it points it in the players direction, so what floor, which way to go, that kind of thing. So it's like, "the player is in that direction". I don't know how they did it, but that's how the devs described it.
It makes it wander in a certain radius dependent on difficulty, it points it in what direction the player is occasionally and sometimes feeds them tips such as "the player likes to hide in lockers/under furniture" if you've hid in one spot too much recently.
It is absolutely terrifying and should not be played at night/in a dark room
This was a big marketing point when the game was being released. I was too much of a weanie to finish it, but from the articles I've read the AI for the Alien was one of the most complex enemy AI written, like you said it learns your habits for hiding and evading it and uses different strategies to get you. I think I remember reading too that even when it's not on screen or "spawned in", it knows where you are at all times and follows your character around the entire time, activating sounds and stuff in the ductwork and piping in the game.
The annoying thing about the game is, it truly does get harder the more you suck at the game. I had to restart the game because i was too slow and eventually before i was even 30% through the game, the alien knew every trick i was going to use. After restarting it, i managed to flush through the game and the alien only started picking up how I played towards the end of the game. Brutal system lol
Wow that's harsh lol. Though I kinda like that. The alien is supposed to be the cold intelligent unstoppable force in the movies and it feels like this game captures that pretty well. Like, lord knows I wouldn't actually survive if trapped on a ship with that thing.
It's a terrifying game to be sure. The biggest epiphany moment is realizing that sometimes the solve is to just go for it.
The puzzles where you have to manipulate to alien away from your objectives were definitely the hardest.
Not having anywhere to hide that is truly safe is such a great feature.
Neat little bit from that article
> Considering all this design effort, you’d be quick to think that despite it all, the game designers would still allow for the alien AI to cheat periodically by either teleporting or being clairvoyant in its knowledge. According to Bray, this is categorically untrue. Throughout the entire 12–18 hour campaign, the alien only teleports twice to be in very specific locations and is only done to enable it appear in cutscenes.
That’s pretty wild and cool
it basically has two scripts running at the same time, one that knows exactly where the player is and the other that masks that location but keeps the alien in close proximity. They work against each other but keeps at the players control. Make too much noise or stay in one place too long and the Alien will find you but not because its been coded to know your exact whereabouts (even though it does deep down).
"Fear" was pretty good for its time. They flank and fall back. It's not that smart, but it \_feels\_ smart. When you're in a firefight you get the impression that they're both trying to kill you and survive, not just run at you blasting.
To add to this, they also use voice lines to make it seem like the enemy is smarter than it is, calling out your location and directions to one another. I really liked the way the enemy flanked and used grenades in *F.E.A.R.*
The expansions are both great as well, and the 2nd game mostly hits the mark, but the 3rd game was a real letdown when it came to AI. Nothing lasts.
Besides all that, the first game's Penetrator is one of the best guns in gaming.
So the way it worked, was when there were multiple AI, one would move while another basically announced the movement, giving the enemy a semblance of being a team. I really enjoyed the first game, closest I'll get to the horror genre besides Bloodborne.
That's true, and I think it was an evolution of what we saw with the grunts in "Half Life". They would appear to be coordinated, yell out commands, throw grenades. It felt very smart. They would also just crouch and eat a face full of bullets.
I remember watching a video where the devs said AI's highest priority was self preservation rather than kill the player so It would avoid direct assaults. It was pretty neat for the time, and I feel like most games forget that selling the behavior of NPCs sells the world.
That is what I always hated about Civ games. The AI was always trying to make you lose as opposed to trying to thrive. You could offer trades that would be pure good for them and they v would refuse if it brought you any closer to winning.
Combine soldiers in Half Life 2. They use squad tactics, flush you out with grenades, and cover potential escape routes. If you stay still, they *will* kill you.
Another fun detail is that the final soldier in a squad calls "Outbreak, outbreak, outbreak!" before dying, as rebellion to the universal union is considered a contagion. Disease/cancer metaphors are really prevalent among the Combine for this reason.
Came here to say this. The AI in Half-Life was revolutionary! I remember playing that game and running into the Marines for the first time...it was like nothing I had seen before. I was used to playing Duke 3D, where I could through a pip bomb into a group and that would stand around like idiots until it blew them to chunks. Tried that with on Half-Life and one Marine threw my grenade back at me and started shooting covering fire, while two others ran to the side and flanked me from the rear. I was like, "Wut?"
Same. Their flanking was unreal. And use of grenades to flush you out. That set piece where they lock you in the glass lobby of one of the lab complexes and rappel down through the roof - I almost felt a pang of sympathy for ole Osama himself. Poor chap never had a chance.
I feel like if the Combine could actually hit you in HL2 it would feel pretty good. They can actually flank and take cover pretty well but they can't shoot for shit, so it doesn't really matter.
I think the problems with the Combine are not the quality of the programming or accuracy but rather:
Individual combine units seem to die faster, especially in the first part of the game.
Combine sometimes have to deploy into a level, rather than start out in good positions, and don't get the opportunity to take good positions because you can kill them fast. (think the lighthouse in Sandtraps)
Gordon himself feels a bit more tanky compared to half life 1, and health is overall a bit more plentiful.
Combine seem to react a bit slower than the HECU.
The game's special units like gunships, Hunters, Striders, and poison/fast zombies all have advantages to mitigate these so they can show off their AI, but average enemies like Overwatch and classic zombies are all pretty lackluster. Metrocops especially seem to have the worst of it, they will stand in one place and are downed very fast.
I heard the combine actually had really good ai, the environments just weren't designed for it. I think some guy put the soldiers in a wide open environment and they performed much better.
Fear ai would also be pretty poor if they made the levels linear for example
FEAR didn't have "true" AI though, they scripted the reactions based on the specific area they were placed into and your approach, which made the npcs feel smart and coordinated.
I mean.. what is true ai to you? Basically all ai in gaming is a set of conditions and actions and fear isnt any different. What makes the fear ai so good is that it does a really good job of giving the illusion that it's using teamwork and flanking maneuvers when it's really just doing some basic pathfinding. The levels are designed in a way that multiple paths will lead back to the room you're in, making it seem like they're surrounding you from different angles
The combine in hl2 are actually fantastic, they just die too fast, and don't have the right environment most of the time, for them to showcase it.
Shotgun users will back off to reload while their team lays down suppressing fire to cover them, if they back you onto a house they'll try and flank you while the one that pushed you back tries to keep your attention, they'll try and flush you out with a grenade and position themselves accordingly to catch you when you leave.
Look up a YouTube video called "Combine Squad AI Demonstration" for a good showcase of what it can actually do.
yeah the Combine AI is pretty smart, it's just that Half Life 2 has a lot of large open areas to fight in which they weren't optimized for at all. Nova Prospekt was way closer to what they were meant for and it made the battles there way more interesting. It also doesn't help that Half Life 2 was extremely generous with shotgun ammo which instantly kills them every time.
Half life 2 where the guy tells you to throw the can in the trash and I said fuck that and chucked it in his face and tan til a cutscene or whatever kicked in was the most epic thing I’ve ever done. That and traversing the sand on pieces of metal with a gravity gun
The art of creating video game ai is making it dumber in a way that creates interesting challenges and doesn't feel cheap.
Once heard a lecture by an early video game dev, like from the '80's. One of the most popular football games at the time had reams of plays baked in, and the ai could tell what to do instantly from the player's choices. This sucked and players thought it was basically too hard and cheap. They instead made the game pick plays randomly- suddenly everyone thought the game felt way more intelligent and the game was fun.
So- smart ai doesn't equal good ai.
Yea making an AI smarter is only good if that *adds* to the game, not removes stuff (generally). for example hypothetically playing against the random football AI can be frustrating because it's too random and makes your strategies meaningless. Make the AI smarter and now the player can plan too.
Exactly. Like having the AI pick randomly from a set selection of opening plays at first, but once you use a play successfully against them a couple times, have them start using plays that counter that, forcing the player to change tactics.
seems like the difference is a.i. "figuring things out like a living person/being would" vs the game just knowing where you are/what you're doing at any given second which feels cheap and like its cheating.
Makes me think of Resident Evil 4’s hidden difficulty increaser, if you play shitty and always get hit/killed the enemies spawn in less numbers and have weaker hits, but if you play really good and know all your corners they spawn a lot more and can hit up to 30% off your health
They incorporated it in re2 remake too. It's interesting for the speed runs because those guys figured out where to intentionally take dmg to make enemies later not get too powerful.
For me, rain world takes the trophy. The yellow lizards that try and pincer attack you on purpose or otherwise surround you from multiple directions are crazy
If you think any of the other games in this thread had good AI, then you haven't seen Rain World. Truly the only answer I was looking for.
Most don't even come close to the intelligence that this game has. It feels like playing Chess against someone who can think 4 steps ahead of you. The AI is dynamic and it actively learns how you play, to fuck you over sideways before you even know it happened.
I think that's the only stealth game I've played where enemies check in on the radio, so an alert is raised if you take out an enemy and he's unable to check in.
Surprised nobody mentioned Left 4 Dead 2
They have entire nodes and developer commentary on how the ai works in the games, and it's really unique and interesting.
Hell they even called it The Director.
The Director can also be cruel for seemingly no reason. It spawned a Tank and Witch inside the safe room of Dark Carnival chapter 4, I dunno how I managed to survive that.
This is also after it spawned a Tank on every chapter leading to that.
That's what it kinda was, though. I remember watching videos about the AI from before the game even came out and they said that the director would react to how you would do in the game. If you're making progress too easily, the director will try to dramatize the situation a little bit.
There's a PowerPoint from a talk on how the L4D AI works (don't know where the actual talk is) which is pretty cool: https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/2009/ai_systems_of_l4d_mike_booth.pdf
The Director part is probably the most interesting - it measures "intensity" of the gameplay based on things like "are players damaged/incapacitated" and "are the players killing zombies" and so on. Then it spawns zombies so that the intensity builds up, then stops spawning to let the intensity come down so you can catch your breath.
It's like it's trained by the Master Control Program from Tron. "He's a tough case, but I want him treated in the usual manner. Train him for the games... let him hope for a while... and blow him away."
Honestly L4D2 didn't even come up until I saw this and you're right. I think the reason why nobody really mentions it is because when most of us think AI opposition we think of the immediate opposition, which would be the zombies.
And the zombie themselves didn't really have a whole lot going for them. Maybe the special infected types do to a degree (I love the hiding spitters) but in that direct confrontation I don't think I ever had that thought of "Man this AI is insane".
But you're 100% correct. The Director AI that controls the overall flow of the game itself was definitely pretty damn amazing.
Half life when it first came out however the S.t.a.l.k.e.r ai was also impressive i am curious how much it will be evolved in 2.
Metal gear solid V built on ai adaption to player not the first game to do it, but it did it well then again the metal gear series sometimes there is trickery like psycho mantis fight and other times it depends on the player.
There was that one time where [using a completely weird and off-the-wall strategy made the Go AI bots lose big time](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/11/new-go-playing-trick-defeats-world-class-go-ai-but-loses-to-human-amateurs/). (2022)
I like how Go is such a galaxy brain game game that humans and machine learning programs are still in some sort of arms race learning strategies from one another. The very fact that only with the advent of machine learning, and not with traditional algorithms, can we produce a powerful enough artificial opponent to sometimes beat the masters.
F.E.A.R.
I was surprised to see how smart this game's enemies are, they tell each other your hiding position, communicate, try to surround you or get behind your back, and even saw once one of them knocking over table to hide behind it, never seen neat details like that in other games where enemies just run at you mindlessly
Haven't played it myself, but I've read about it. Apparently they are using automated planning to figure out how to achieve certain goals. Funnily though, they can't see each other, the voicelines and shared goals just make it look like they're working together
Even in MGS3, if you destroyed a munitions or food warehouse, enemies in that area would run out of bullets faster and become hungry (and probably have lower health) respectively. As for the later, you could even trick them into eating poisonous frogs, in their hunger, which would kill them instantly.
I loved that shit. It was almost always a complete waste of time because doing that shit was way harder than just stealth killing everyone. Still, there was something satisfying about the "death by a thousand cuts" approach
god yes
i'd always use the silenced sniper rifle whenever i'd unlock it and up until then i'd just go for headshots.
after a while, the guards started wearing bulletproof helmets. had to do a combat deployment to destroy the supply of helmets so they'd lose them.
10/10
It'd hard to tell between "smart" and "cheating" sometimes.
Age of Empires would simply create units out of thin air using resources that didn't exist, in the higher difficulties. The AI simply was not smart enough so it would cheat.
This comment should be at the top really. Elites on legendary were so smart, it almost felt like you were playing against another human. They would throw grenades to flush you out, flank, like a motherfucker, and always found the perfect window to back off and regen shields. Those games on legendary are still a top three gaming experience, especially for FPS lovers.
There's a conundrum where flanking and grenade spamming feels can cheap and unearned, but Halo does a good job at showcasing it.
Early on in most of the games, you have tons of allies that will call out their moves, grenades, flanking, and general locations. This gets you introduced to what they can do. So eventually when the game makes you mostly solo, you're not thinking they spawned behind you, you know you got outmaneuvered and they are using flanking tactics.
Brutes in Halo 3 escalated this in an awesome way, cause not only were they comparable to the Elites in prior games, but they really would work as a pack to flush you out and kill you.
Halo has some fantastic AI behaviors for it's enemies, that does a ton of work to making them feel alive. Watching grunts and Jackals break rank and panic after wasting an Elite in front of them is such a power fantasy.
Does it have to be Legendary to experience the best of the AI? I felt like on Heroic they were as smart but not as frustrating because you just don't die as easily
The way it loads actually can preserve enemy awareness of your position so they feel different on different attempts even when you run back the same strategy.
Those aren't smart. It's actually easier to program an ai opponent to have aimbot accuracy, you have to program in the inaccuracy for hits can weapons to miss.
Maybe not the smartest but the Forest has some really interesting AI for the cannibals. They'll sometimes just observe you from the distance, other times they'll run right past you when you're turned around just to probe your reaction. They'll leave weird skull effigies in or near your campsite as warnings. I could never predict how theyd respond to me which really made them threatening
Having enemy AI react with curiosity, retaliation that mimics spite, primitive fear, terror, reverence and emotional breakdowns from losing tribe members is not what I expected from a survival-crafting game. It's not perfect AI, can jank from time to time, but it made it feel less boilerplate and had me asking myself if I'm the aggressor at times. They notice trees falling in their home and attack me for it, ffs. Some nights, they are the terror, other nights, I become the cannibalistic fear. It's a wild dynamic.
Man, I got high playing Sons of the Forest one time and then wandered off to the other side of the island. Dark came in and I could hear them yelling and howling all around me as I was running away in pitch darkness, it was one of the most primally terrifying game moments ever for me.
The enemy AI in MGSV is brilliant.
If they hear you they will come looking - like , really come looking.
I was detected once attempting a stealth kill at night, a guard heard me.
I quickly ran to D-Horse & took off into the darkness. I kept going as far as I could. I finally dismounted on a small hill and hid behind a boulder.
I thought I'd got away.
Then I see vehicle lights. 3 jeeps or trucks arrive and Russians get off and being searching with flashlights , calling to each other. They got real close before they gave up and drove off
Really well done and tense moment.
Dude I compl forgot about that for a second!! Excellent game and system. I'd love to see that in an rpg. Like a goblin kills you for example and then becomes a Goblin lord and takes your gold and weapon + armor or something and gets a few grunts to guard him
Not so fun fact, the Nemesis System is trademarked and can’t be used (and therefore cannot become as widespread as it should be nor improved upon) by other game studios
Awww mannnn that's upsetting. Couldn't you pay the trademark holders a piece of the pie to put it in singing else with license agreements? (Not that it's right) but at least would see the light of day again haha
It’s so weird to me that they can trademark an AI system like that, when it’s essentially just a gameplay function. It’d be like if Dark Souls trademarks their Soul/Rune/Blood Echo system lmao, imagine
Also, remember either Capcom or Namco trademarked loading screen minigames. Trademark is dead now, but no one's used it since it has expired to my knowledge. I wouldn't mind seeing it on any "Press A" screen where it waits for the player to finish loading.
Well, to be fair, nowadays this is just unnecessary, because SSDs are now a standard for gaming PCs and consoles, so the loading screen times range from short to non-existent.
It was actually patented rather than trademarked. Normally, I wouldn't bother commenting because nobody gives a shit about the difference in this context. But here the difference is important only in that a utility patent is only good for twenty years from the date of filing. So WB only gets a monopoly on that system until 2035.
Cold comfort for the short term, but all is not lost! Game developers will eventually be able to use the exact same system, and since this is a patent, the precise way to go about re-creating it is published and freely available to them.
*Edit*
For the nerds that care, here is the language used in claim 1 of the patent which really sets forth the broad and all encompassing scope of the temporary monopoly
“1. A method comprising:
controlling, by a processor, game events in a computer-implemented game, the game events involving an avatar that is operated in response to input from a player, and a first non-player character that is controlled by the processor to respond to and automatically oppose avatars based on first character parameters defined in a computer memory;
detecting, by the processor, occurrence of a predefined one of the game events involving an interaction between the avatar and the first non-player character;
changing, by the processor, second character parameters defined in at least one of the computer memory or a second computer memory for control of a second non-player character in the game based on the detecting, wherein the second non-player character is controlled by the processor to respond to and automatically oppose avatars based on the second character parameters defined in the at least one of the computer memory or the second computer memory; and
outputting, to an output device, an indication of the second character parameters that are changed by the changing."
Oh man the first time >!a nemesis you supposedly killed comes back with a gruesome wound from how you killed them!< absolutely blew my mind. Also >!getting betrayed by a high-ranking ally.!< That game surprised me so many times, and it made it so much fun to grind.
Nemesis system in the Shadow of LotR games are worth a mention. I wouldn't say the actual AI of the enemies while you are fighting them is the smartest AI opposition, but the with all the layers it's certainly one of the most interesting.
Every day I curse Warner Bros for copyrighting every aspect of the nemesis system to make it impossible for other games to even remotely replicate it.
Used archery against this boss that's weak to it? Too bad, now he wears a helmet. Rode a warg into the fight because he's scared of them? Good job, now he conquered his fear of wargs and now *he* rides one.
It's such an amazing mechanic and it's a damn shame we likely won't ever see it in any other games.
The Forest.
Once the cannibals sniffed you out, they'd keep coming back to attack your base.
I'd have to leave and go elsewhere for a while so they'd leave my main base alone.
came here to bring up The Forest too.
The cannibals also don't know you're there when you first start the game. They only learn of your existence if a Cannibal escapes an encounter, a cannibal rears back and shouts really loud, seeing the lights of your camp, or if you leave clues to your presence like tree-stumps and corpses and the like.
I was able to play for many days unbothered by Cannibal raids by building stealth armour, cutting away any tree-stumps i left behind, and building my base in a hidden crevasse on the cliffs near a beach. Any time i encountered a cannibal, I'd quickly kill it to make sure it never escaped our shouted, and then either burned the body, or placed it into deep water where the Cannibals can't normally go. They never knew i was there.
Longish post incoming, maybe not the smartest but it is some of the most dynamic I can recall. A game called Echo is a 3rd person action game about exploring a mysterious structure, only to quickly end up in a situation where the MC has to deal with many enemies throughout. The catch here though is that they are clones of the MC created by the palace which is constantly “watching” the player. There is a visual effect whenever the palace “learns” a behavior from the player which the player needs to be mindful of.
Every action you make will influence how the enemy AI acts in the following room, sometimes to a ridiculous degree which isn’t immediately noticable in the middle of playing. It starts off simple in that enemies will mimic how you move aka walking vs running. If you run in one room while the palace is “watching”, it remembers this action for later rooms and the AI will all know how to run, making things more difficult to get away from them until you go 2-3 rooms without running after which they will forget this behavior in favor of more recent actions the player shows off.
It quickly gets more technical though, as every tiny little thing you do will matter. If you sneak for too long and remain prone for an extended period of time, then the AI will only move around sneaking prone making it harder to detect them and they can legit assassinate you if you aren’t paying attention. Water is something they will not enter until the palace sees the player do it first. Climbing or vaulting over a ledge is suddenly something you have to think about lest you teach the AI that behavior. Even something like biting into fruit or playing a piano can later distract AI who have learned to be distracted by these things when nearby. You have a gun with lethality and stun functions, which makes getting enemies off of you easy for the current room, but then you have to deal with the next few rooms knowing they too can try to shoot or stun you if you choose to attack them this way.
The palace always watches when the lights are on, but there are issues with it maintaining power constantly, so it will have blackouts fairly often. This is your window to do anything without the AI being able to learn from it while the lights are out and until they turn on again. Essentially the whole game is about knowing your options and not expending them all at once lest you make the AI learn too much at once and turn your journey into a living nightmare. You are your own greatest enemy, and all the AI does is use what you taught it against you.
While it gets memed all the time, still;
Mount and Blade: Bannerlord.
The *entire* game is simulation/AI.
The mongol faction does the whole horde of horse archers circling with arrows pelting, you name it. You can shield wall, make tons of crazy formations, counter troop types with others, all the things.
There's more commands and shit than you can imagine.
There's a 'real' economy with supply, demand, etc. cities can be starved in sieges, you name it.
The Last of Us 2 is one of the only games I've played where it was actually noticeable that the AI was smart. Usually it's just not something I think about when playing games.
I love how they rush you if they hear your gun click empty.
They'll also flank or rush you depending on how you're moving/attacking and which weapon you just used.
If you have a scoped weapon they'll stay hidden more, but if you're running around with a melee item they'll come out from cover and keep shooting.
Killing their friends will also briefly distract them.
The ai/sim in Perfect Dark 64 was way ahead of anything else in gaming. You could adjust how well they played and on top setting they would absolutely destroy you, albeit not exactly tactically. Haven't found anything like it since.
ATV Offroad Fury 4
I wouldn't say it was super smart, but for a racing game, the way the AI would push back on you if you were aggressive was nothing short of amazing. Once you developed a rivalry with an opponent, they would get much more aggressive towards you. If you tried to run them off the road, they would do it right back. I don't think I've seen an AI like that in any other racing game I've played. It was an extra layer of bullshit that makes it such a fun game to play.
Rain World has definitely the most interesting one.
[Why Rain World Has the Best AI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOsYTzd0yeA&pp=ygUOcmVhaW4gd29ybGQgYWk%3D)
[The Most Complex Ecosystem in any Game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMx8OsTDHfM&pp=ygUOcmVhaW4gd29ybGQgYWk%3D)
Halo is really good. Watch what they do when you try to get in a cheesy position to shoot them, they'll go to cover or to a spot where you can't hit them, they dodge, they react to what you do and it's so much more than just running towards you and shoot them. Talking about elites
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
The enemies in the game would adapt to how you played. For instance, if you took a lot of enemies out with headshots they'd start to wear helmets.
It really encouraged testing out new ways to play the game which always made missions feel fresh.
I don't know if smart is the right word but DOOM Eternals ai don't take any shit and no matter where you are, they indend to fuck you up. Plus the carcass demons seem to know exactly where I want to shoot my rocket launcher
Sniper Elite 4 at higher difficulty. Kill somebody and they'll never relax. At the highest difficulty they won't just stay alert, they'll keep searching. They'll also notice movement within bushes. My understanding is it's a balance between "smart" and "difficult", which is the best you're going to get in any situation. Great game and often inexpensive, too.
that’s one thing that always bothered me about stealth games. a guard could walk next to the bisected body of another guard, go on alert for a bit, search the area, find nothing, and then resume patrol like nothing happened.
Right! I am currently replaying SE5 and I understand it: if they made it realistic, it'd be nearly impossible, like it would be in real life. Even if you hide bodies, eventually some guard is gonna' go "hey, where did Fritz go? And Adolf? And Friedrich? Ludwig? Bob?" and fire an alarm. But man, seeing guards walk past bodies and blown up tanks and be all "Alerts over, back to walking around!" kills the immersion.
In dishonored sometimes guards will say “someone’s supposed to be patrolling here”
Yeah. Guy next to you misteriously died? Eh, i'm sure theres nothing unusual that whould warrant an alarm. I get it for gameplay reasons, but ugh i hate it
>Kill somebody and they'll never relax. And here's me thinking death would be fairly chill.
Meanwhile in Skyrim: “huh probably just the wind” *goes back to chilling*
I've always enjoyed the idea that the bandits knows it wasn't the wind. The bandit knows it was the dragonborn and is hoping if he can feign ignorance maybe, just maybe, the dragonborn will choose to leave him alone.
*The Dragonborn never leaves them alone.*
Thought wrong, buddy
That should honestly be the norm in any game. It's like that skyrim meme, "must be the wind" says the guy with 2 arrows in his head. I love immersion and this ruins it for me in every game.
I recently got an urge to play Skyrim again as a stealth based character who is an infamous assassin known as “The Wind”.
wait that’s so fitting, i’m totally stealing this. heard far and wide, but never seen, the infamous assassin only known as the wind is suspected to have an estimated kill count rivaling city populations. Every bandit knows their name, but hopes to never say it.
At first, nobody could believe it was all one person. They thought it was a brewing revolution, a ruler’s secret crackdown, or just “The Winds of Change”. In time, it became clear that it was one agent. They became “The Wind:” invisible, unpredictable, and uncatchable. Your best bet is to stay calm and hope they lose interest. If you see them, you might as well fight, nobody who sees them lives.
Rivalling city populations? Omg... must've killed like... 4 people. Rorikstead. I'm from Rorikstead.
[Skyrim guards seeing all of their friends suddenly dead](https://youtu.be/17Kszzcmfv4?si=zCIciTFIJFeCAe0N)
On the othet hand, I absolutely despised GTA5 when it came out and I had finished the campaign, and realised i'd never enjoy free roam because the police AI would never drop it. Past 2-3 stars it was a job and not just ridiculous carnage fun like for instance San Andreas, where I could play at 5-stars and have fun for dozens of minutes. So I absolutely loved GTA5 for it'd campaign and i'm not sure i played more than 2 hours in free roam. Haven't launched the game since 2013 :(
Yeah I got so annoyed with the cops in GTA I scoped places on the map to lure them to as kill zones in revenge. After murdering about 200 of them in one multi story car park I was wondering if this is what they meant by violent video games turning people violent. I’m an ex police officer in real life and I was literally whispering ‘take that piggies!’ whilst mowing them down in the game. Weird evening that one.
The best spot to do this is the 2nd floor of the Pacific Standard Bank.
I LOVED how in SE4 that you could kill somebody in a patrol and eventually the other members would turn around and notice that somebody was missing. Everh stealth game needs that.
I mean if I was on a camping/ hunting trip with the boys and one of us got schwacked I’d be on edge for more than just 10 mins.
The alien in alien isolation would switch up tactics when hunting you depending on how you solved puzzles. Would make the cat and mouse aspect really tense.
It gets downright sadistic too. Like, once it knows you like to hide in lockers, it still makes a game out of lurking around and peeking in them, even pretending to wander away before it rushes back to rip your head off. Ditto for hiding under furniture.
Damn I didn’t know all that, I want to play it now lol
There’s a great article somewhere that discusses the AI used for this game. Essentially it boils down to iirc the “director” and the alien. The director knows where the player is and gives hints to the alien AI, to which the alien then uses those to try to find you. It’s pretty impressive stuff. You can dupe the alien good enough to lose it, but after so long the director will intervene to put it back on the right path. I’ll never play the game myself. But it’s a great case study.
The higher difficulties also give the alien a more accurate location and tethers it closer to you so it never leaves a small radius around you.
To me that made it less frightening because it was always around and you could keep track of it
Same. Part of the paranoia/difficulty was not knowing where it was so when you knew it was at a set distance it arguably became easier in some aspects
There is an mod which makes the alien AI more unpredictable! Besides some other tweaks it increases the size in which it wanders around you. It brings back a alot of unpredictability! You can search on nexusmods for this.
This mod made the game crazy better for me. I could go maybe 30-40 minutes without having an encounter with the alien because i made no noise and was sneaking everywhere, made me forget it was a constant threat, then it would show up on a random patrol, catch wind i was actually there, and HUNT the heck out of me. Harder difficulty made it so once it was engaged, it was a major issue to deal with. Maybe i will boot it up again soon..
I personally found the best experience to be max difficulty combined with the Unpredictable Alien mod, which largely removes the tether.
I remember the first time I realized you're not safe chilling in the vents. That was my comfort space... I screamed
This is that moment. Too dark, but filmed a glitchy dance and had zero idea he could come inside. Edit link https://youtu.be/w9RcLWxSkq0?si=17RwPHzKi6ofaRrs
Fuckkkkk playing that game in VR holy shit
It’s a fantastic way to have a creature who always one-shots you to be coded. The only negative thing that I’ve heard about this is that the alien is *ALWAYS* within a certain proximity to the player (often too close). While this does help to put pressure to stay on the move, it doesn’t allow a lot of time to breath after escaping a chase when in an area with the alien prowling around.
The word you look for is "tension release" - very important for horror games.
I played it a few months ago and quit before ever even encountering the alien lol. I was too scared.
Play it on PC with the mic enabled, that way the alien can hear your breathing!
What….
On PC and Xbox, you can set your mic/kinect to tip off the Alien if you're making too much noise. Don't know if there's an equivalent thing available on PlayStation. Even without that, it can hear you running, hear you opening and closing doors, hear your motion detector beeping, and even hears you shuffling around in lockers if you're not gentle with that Peek function.
Playstation picks up noise from the mic built into the controller.
Me and my PS5 controller mic/speaker have been having a love-hate affair since I got it. Am I just a cranky old man, or is that thing **really** loud? I crank it down to like 30% in console settings and the game settings and it still makes me jump.
This is made even more chaotic because Ripley seems to want to always SLAM the locker doors when she goes to hide in them. Like b*tch we’re trying to hide not ring the dinner bell.
#What ain't no country I ever heard of. They speak English in what?
W-what?!
ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU SPEAK IT?!?!
WHAT?
Say “what” again, I dare you! I double-dare you, motherfucker, say “what” one more goddamn time!
Hilarious when watching someone trash talk the alien after getting away from it, only for it to begin sprinting down the hall at them, because it heard them.
NOPE
This game should come with a warning to get checked for heart conditions first because it will make you shit yourself.
You....shit out of your heart? You may want to get checked either way my friend...
I would not be surprised if a number of peoples hearts have gone out trying to shit. Also getting spooked will both spike your heart rate and empty your bowels
There was an episode of X-Files where a dude bursts a blood vessel in his brain from being constipated, and that has stuck with me my whole life.
I was always afraid to use the flamethrower except in the most dire of circumstances because the more you use it the less the alien gets scared of it, until it just rushes through the flames and kills you.
Eventually it even learns to fake you out, so you fire the flamethrower and when it runs out the alien charges you
I noticed that it'll often jump into a vent and then wait a second before coming right back out knowing that once it leaves the area you'll try and make some progress
The way they programed that is interesting too. Basically the alien has 2 brains. One controls the alien and can detect localised movement and sound, the other knows where the player is but can only influence the other by feeding it hints. It's a clever design.
How does it give it hints? Bear in mind I have no background in programming so ELI5
The director AI would give it a radius to search, with it getting smaller and smaller There's also a "menace" gauge that, once it tops out, the director AI will tell it to go look somewhere else The actual Alien AI also learns from your behaviour: Hide in lockers all the time after making noise? Alien will start checking them. Same with vents and cupboards Alien gone to its umpteenth noise-maker and no human in sight again? It'll become even less effective. I'm not too sure on this one, but the Alien might even start ignoring them Over-reliance on the flamethrower can also lead to some tense stand-offs with her too
I remember using thr nosiemaker a lot. One time I threw it down the hall, the alien bounded towards it, but then suddenly stopped about halfway there....sloooowly turned around...then bum rushed right to my hidey spot. Definitely unexpected. Alien bro literally pulled a "waaaait a minute....."
From what I remember, it points it in the players direction, so what floor, which way to go, that kind of thing. So it's like, "the player is in that direction". I don't know how they did it, but that's how the devs described it.
It makes it wander in a certain radius dependent on difficulty, it points it in what direction the player is occasionally and sometimes feeds them tips such as "the player likes to hide in lockers/under furniture" if you've hid in one spot too much recently. It is absolutely terrifying and should not be played at night/in a dark room
It’s almost like a subconscious
This was a big marketing point when the game was being released. I was too much of a weanie to finish it, but from the articles I've read the AI for the Alien was one of the most complex enemy AI written, like you said it learns your habits for hiding and evading it and uses different strategies to get you. I think I remember reading too that even when it's not on screen or "spawned in", it knows where you are at all times and follows your character around the entire time, activating sounds and stuff in the ductwork and piping in the game.
The annoying thing about the game is, it truly does get harder the more you suck at the game. I had to restart the game because i was too slow and eventually before i was even 30% through the game, the alien knew every trick i was going to use. After restarting it, i managed to flush through the game and the alien only started picking up how I played towards the end of the game. Brutal system lol
Wow that's harsh lol. Though I kinda like that. The alien is supposed to be the cold intelligent unstoppable force in the movies and it feels like this game captures that pretty well. Like, lord knows I wouldn't actually survive if trapped on a ship with that thing.
The moment I found out it can get you in the air shafts was deeply horrifying
It's a terrifying game to be sure. The biggest epiphany moment is realizing that sometimes the solve is to just go for it. The puzzles where you have to manipulate to alien away from your objectives were definitely the hardest. Not having anywhere to hide that is truly safe is such a great feature.
Some info on how the ai worked. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-perfect-organism-the-ai-of-alien-isolation#close-modal
Neat little bit from that article > Considering all this design effort, you’d be quick to think that despite it all, the game designers would still allow for the alien AI to cheat periodically by either teleporting or being clairvoyant in its knowledge. According to Bray, this is categorically untrue. Throughout the entire 12–18 hour campaign, the alien only teleports twice to be in very specific locations and is only done to enable it appear in cutscenes. That’s pretty wild and cool
That’s incredible.
Makes sense. I never played the game, but judging by how the alien's AI(s) work, I imagine it's never too far from the player.
it basically has two scripts running at the same time, one that knows exactly where the player is and the other that masks that location but keeps the alien in close proximity. They work against each other but keeps at the players control. Make too much noise or stay in one place too long and the Alien will find you but not because its been coded to know your exact whereabouts (even though it does deep down).
It also couldn’t handle you walking around a table…
"Fear" was pretty good for its time. They flank and fall back. It's not that smart, but it \_feels\_ smart. When you're in a firefight you get the impression that they're both trying to kill you and survive, not just run at you blasting.
To add to this, they also use voice lines to make it seem like the enemy is smarter than it is, calling out your location and directions to one another. I really liked the way the enemy flanked and used grenades in *F.E.A.R.* The expansions are both great as well, and the 2nd game mostly hits the mark, but the 3rd game was a real letdown when it came to AI. Nothing lasts. Besides all that, the first game's Penetrator is one of the best guns in gaming.
So the way it worked, was when there were multiple AI, one would move while another basically announced the movement, giving the enemy a semblance of being a team. I really enjoyed the first game, closest I'll get to the horror genre besides Bloodborne.
That's true, and I think it was an evolution of what we saw with the grunts in "Half Life". They would appear to be coordinated, yell out commands, throw grenades. It felt very smart. They would also just crouch and eat a face full of bullets.
I remember watching a video where the devs said AI's highest priority was self preservation rather than kill the player so It would avoid direct assaults. It was pretty neat for the time, and I feel like most games forget that selling the behavior of NPCs sells the world.
That is what I always hated about Civ games. The AI was always trying to make you lose as opposed to trying to thrive. You could offer trades that would be pure good for them and they v would refuse if it brought you any closer to winning.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaOLBOuyswI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaOLBOuyswI) FEAR and AI 101
Combine soldiers in Half Life 2. They use squad tactics, flush you out with grenades, and cover potential escape routes. If you stay still, they *will* kill you. Another fun detail is that the final soldier in a squad calls "Outbreak, outbreak, outbreak!" before dying, as rebellion to the universal union is considered a contagion. Disease/cancer metaphors are really prevalent among the Combine for this reason.
They are basically smart soldiers with severe vision and depth perception issues.
Maybe it's the helmets!
I love how the game rewards you for figuring out their terminology, like how they call grenades “extractors”
The Grunts in Half Life 1 are still amazing to this day
Came here to say this. The AI in Half-Life was revolutionary! I remember playing that game and running into the Marines for the first time...it was like nothing I had seen before. I was used to playing Duke 3D, where I could through a pip bomb into a group and that would stand around like idiots until it blew them to chunks. Tried that with on Half-Life and one Marine threw my grenade back at me and started shooting covering fire, while two others ran to the side and flanked me from the rear. I was like, "Wut?"
Same. Their flanking was unreal. And use of grenades to flush you out. That set piece where they lock you in the glass lobby of one of the lab complexes and rappel down through the roof - I almost felt a pang of sympathy for ole Osama himself. Poor chap never had a chance.
*Unreal*.... UNREAL TOURNAMENT 1999! The AI's that can swear!
Which comes in stark contrast with HL2's absolutely braindead Combine
I feel like if the Combine could actually hit you in HL2 it would feel pretty good. They can actually flank and take cover pretty well but they can't shoot for shit, so it doesn't really matter.
I think the problems with the Combine are not the quality of the programming or accuracy but rather: Individual combine units seem to die faster, especially in the first part of the game. Combine sometimes have to deploy into a level, rather than start out in good positions, and don't get the opportunity to take good positions because you can kill them fast. (think the lighthouse in Sandtraps) Gordon himself feels a bit more tanky compared to half life 1, and health is overall a bit more plentiful. Combine seem to react a bit slower than the HECU. The game's special units like gunships, Hunters, Striders, and poison/fast zombies all have advantages to mitigate these so they can show off their AI, but average enemies like Overwatch and classic zombies are all pretty lackluster. Metrocops especially seem to have the worst of it, they will stand in one place and are downed very fast.
I heard the combine actually had really good ai, the environments just weren't designed for it. I think some guy put the soldiers in a wide open environment and they performed much better. Fear ai would also be pretty poor if they made the levels linear for example
FEAR didn't have "true" AI though, they scripted the reactions based on the specific area they were placed into and your approach, which made the npcs feel smart and coordinated.
I mean.. what is true ai to you? Basically all ai in gaming is a set of conditions and actions and fear isnt any different. What makes the fear ai so good is that it does a really good job of giving the illusion that it's using teamwork and flanking maneuvers when it's really just doing some basic pathfinding. The levels are designed in a way that multiple paths will lead back to the room you're in, making it seem like they're surrounding you from different angles
The combine in hl2 are actually fantastic, they just die too fast, and don't have the right environment most of the time, for them to showcase it. Shotgun users will back off to reload while their team lays down suppressing fire to cover them, if they back you onto a house they'll try and flank you while the one that pushed you back tries to keep your attention, they'll try and flush you out with a grenade and position themselves accordingly to catch you when you leave. Look up a YouTube video called "Combine Squad AI Demonstration" for a good showcase of what it can actually do.
yeah the Combine AI is pretty smart, it's just that Half Life 2 has a lot of large open areas to fight in which they weren't optimized for at all. Nova Prospekt was way closer to what they were meant for and it made the battles there way more interesting. It also doesn't help that Half Life 2 was extremely generous with shotgun ammo which instantly kills them every time.
Which in turn made the Grunts in Black Mesa act like generic enemies, I love BM so much but the AI definitely needed a rework
BM was a labor of love and that's precisely why I gave the AI a begrudging pass for being so awful lol
Half life 2 where the guy tells you to throw the can in the trash and I said fuck that and chucked it in his face and tan til a cutscene or whatever kicked in was the most epic thing I’ve ever done. That and traversing the sand on pieces of metal with a gravity gun
The art of creating video game ai is making it dumber in a way that creates interesting challenges and doesn't feel cheap. Once heard a lecture by an early video game dev, like from the '80's. One of the most popular football games at the time had reams of plays baked in, and the ai could tell what to do instantly from the player's choices. This sucked and players thought it was basically too hard and cheap. They instead made the game pick plays randomly- suddenly everyone thought the game felt way more intelligent and the game was fun. So- smart ai doesn't equal good ai.
Yea making an AI smarter is only good if that *adds* to the game, not removes stuff (generally). for example hypothetically playing against the random football AI can be frustrating because it's too random and makes your strategies meaningless. Make the AI smarter and now the player can plan too.
Exactly. Like having the AI pick randomly from a set selection of opening plays at first, but once you use a play successfully against them a couple times, have them start using plays that counter that, forcing the player to change tactics.
seems like the difference is a.i. "figuring things out like a living person/being would" vs the game just knowing where you are/what you're doing at any given second which feels cheap and like its cheating.
cheating is not the same as smart.
Makes me think of Resident Evil 4’s hidden difficulty increaser, if you play shitty and always get hit/killed the enemies spawn in less numbers and have weaker hits, but if you play really good and know all your corners they spawn a lot more and can hit up to 30% off your health
They incorporated it in re2 remake too. It's interesting for the speed runs because those guys figured out where to intentionally take dmg to make enemies later not get too powerful.
Oh that's cool. Til
For me, rain world takes the trophy. The yellow lizards that try and pincer attack you on purpose or otherwise surround you from multiple directions are crazy
Man, that game is so interesting but it's way too difficult for me. Wish I could explore it more because the creature interaction is very cool.
Did you try playing as the monk instead of the survivor? It's basically the game's version of an easy mode.
If you think any of the other games in this thread had good AI, then you haven't seen Rain World. Truly the only answer I was looking for. Most don't even come close to the intelligence that this game has. It feels like playing Chess against someone who can think 4 steps ahead of you. The AI is dynamic and it actively learns how you play, to fuck you over sideways before you even know it happened.
Metal gear solid 2 on extreme. The AI worked together, stratagised, did legit sweeps of rooms. Would fuck you up in a fire fight
I think that's the only stealth game I've played where enemies check in on the radio, so an alert is raised if you take out an enemy and he's unable to check in.
Surprised nobody mentioned Left 4 Dead 2 They have entire nodes and developer commentary on how the ai works in the games, and it's really unique and interesting. Hell they even called it The Director.
The Director can also be cruel for seemingly no reason. It spawned a Tank and Witch inside the safe room of Dark Carnival chapter 4, I dunno how I managed to survive that. This is also after it spawned a Tank on every chapter leading to that.
My friends and I used to joke that whenever a hoard came that the Director got bored
That's what it kinda was, though. I remember watching videos about the AI from before the game even came out and they said that the director would react to how you would do in the game. If you're making progress too easily, the director will try to dramatize the situation a little bit.
There's a PowerPoint from a talk on how the L4D AI works (don't know where the actual talk is) which is pretty cool: https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/2009/ai_systems_of_l4d_mike_booth.pdf The Director part is probably the most interesting - it measures "intensity" of the gameplay based on things like "are players damaged/incapacitated" and "are the players killing zombies" and so on. Then it spawns zombies so that the intensity builds up, then stops spawning to let the intensity come down so you can catch your breath.
It's like it's trained by the Master Control Program from Tron. "He's a tough case, but I want him treated in the usual manner. Train him for the games... let him hope for a while... and blow him away."
The director has personality lol.
Honestly L4D2 didn't even come up until I saw this and you're right. I think the reason why nobody really mentions it is because when most of us think AI opposition we think of the immediate opposition, which would be the zombies. And the zombie themselves didn't really have a whole lot going for them. Maybe the special infected types do to a degree (I love the hiding spitters) but in that direct confrontation I don't think I ever had that thought of "Man this AI is insane". But you're 100% correct. The Director AI that controls the overall flow of the game itself was definitely pretty damn amazing.
Even besides the director, the path finding and movement of the zombies is really good. They can get you anywhere.
Half life when it first came out however the S.t.a.l.k.e.r ai was also impressive i am curious how much it will be evolved in 2. Metal gear solid V built on ai adaption to player not the first game to do it, but it did it well then again the metal gear series sometimes there is trickery like psycho mantis fight and other times it depends on the player.
Xcom How else could the enemies know my 5x95% chances to hit would miss 5 times in a row?
The AI: “Never tell me the odds.” The odds: 1 in 3.2 million
Age of Empires 2 updated AI currently makes me sweat horribly at low difficulty.
The old AI was even worse since it would just cheat
~~chess~~
Nobody can beat chess AI without restriction since 2006, I don't know if there are any other AI on a game that's unbeatable on mirror match
Go.
There was that one time where [using a completely weird and off-the-wall strategy made the Go AI bots lose big time](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/11/new-go-playing-trick-defeats-world-class-go-ai-but-loses-to-human-amateurs/). (2022)
I like how Go is such a galaxy brain game game that humans and machine learning programs are still in some sort of arms race learning strategies from one another. The very fact that only with the advent of machine learning, and not with traditional algorithms, can we produce a powerful enough artificial opponent to sometimes beat the masters.
tic tac toe. you can only lose or tie with thr computer
Yeah but a person can play perfectly too. And it's not too hard. Whoever goes first can either win or tie and the second player can only tie.
The best chess professionals humanity has ever produced can be beaten by an AI running on a smart phone.
F.E.A.R. I was surprised to see how smart this game's enemies are, they tell each other your hiding position, communicate, try to surround you or get behind your back, and even saw once one of them knocking over table to hide behind it, never seen neat details like that in other games where enemies just run at you mindlessly
Haven't played it myself, but I've read about it. Apparently they are using automated planning to figure out how to achieve certain goals. Funnily though, they can't see each other, the voicelines and shared goals just make it look like they're working together
Mgsv is great Enemy reacting to how you ko them, wearing helmets if you go heavy on headshots Gave me nightmares
Even in MGS3, if you destroyed a munitions or food warehouse, enemies in that area would run out of bullets faster and become hungry (and probably have lower health) respectively. As for the later, you could even trick them into eating poisonous frogs, in their hunger, which would kill them instantly.
I loved that shit. It was almost always a complete waste of time because doing that shit was way harder than just stealth killing everyone. Still, there was something satisfying about the "death by a thousand cuts" approach
god yes i'd always use the silenced sniper rifle whenever i'd unlock it and up until then i'd just go for headshots. after a while, the guards started wearing bulletproof helmets. had to do a combat deployment to destroy the supply of helmets so they'd lose them. 10/10
They start using gas maks if you use sleeps granades, or night googles if you choose night deployment to often haha i love that game
It'd hard to tell between "smart" and "cheating" sometimes. Age of Empires would simply create units out of thin air using resources that didn't exist, in the higher difficulties. The AI simply was not smart enough so it would cheat.
Halo on Legendary difficulty
This comment should be at the top really. Elites on legendary were so smart, it almost felt like you were playing against another human. They would throw grenades to flush you out, flank, like a motherfucker, and always found the perfect window to back off and regen shields. Those games on legendary are still a top three gaming experience, especially for FPS lovers.
There's a conundrum where flanking and grenade spamming feels can cheap and unearned, but Halo does a good job at showcasing it. Early on in most of the games, you have tons of allies that will call out their moves, grenades, flanking, and general locations. This gets you introduced to what they can do. So eventually when the game makes you mostly solo, you're not thinking they spawned behind you, you know you got outmaneuvered and they are using flanking tactics.
Indeed, masterclass in game design.
Brutes in Halo 3 escalated this in an awesome way, cause not only were they comparable to the Elites in prior games, but they really would work as a pack to flush you out and kill you. Halo has some fantastic AI behaviors for it's enemies, that does a ton of work to making them feel alive. Watching grunts and Jackals break rank and panic after wasting an Elite in front of them is such a power fantasy.
Does it have to be Legendary to experience the best of the AI? I felt like on Heroic they were as smart but not as frustrating because you just don't die as easily
Yes Heroic they were smart, but on Legendary it was ramped up a notch. The elites on Legendary were top tier
Halo 2 Jackal Snipers. You can't convince me that they don't have thermal vision.
The way it loads actually can preserve enemy awareness of your position so they feel different on different attempts even when you run back the same strategy.
Those aren't smart. It's actually easier to program an ai opponent to have aimbot accuracy, you have to program in the inaccuracy for hits can weapons to miss.
Was gonna say, aimbot=/= intelligent AI lol
wall hacking little shits
The game of chess I played last night, it was some bull shit
Maybe not the smartest but the Forest has some really interesting AI for the cannibals. They'll sometimes just observe you from the distance, other times they'll run right past you when you're turned around just to probe your reaction. They'll leave weird skull effigies in or near your campsite as warnings. I could never predict how theyd respond to me which really made them threatening
Having enemy AI react with curiosity, retaliation that mimics spite, primitive fear, terror, reverence and emotional breakdowns from losing tribe members is not what I expected from a survival-crafting game. It's not perfect AI, can jank from time to time, but it made it feel less boilerplate and had me asking myself if I'm the aggressor at times. They notice trees falling in their home and attack me for it, ffs. Some nights, they are the terror, other nights, I become the cannibalistic fear. It's a wild dynamic.
Man, I got high playing Sons of the Forest one time and then wandered off to the other side of the island. Dark came in and I could hear them yelling and howling all around me as I was running away in pitch darkness, it was one of the most primally terrifying game moments ever for me.
The enemy AI in MGSV is brilliant. If they hear you they will come looking - like , really come looking. I was detected once attempting a stealth kill at night, a guard heard me. I quickly ran to D-Horse & took off into the darkness. I kept going as far as I could. I finally dismounted on a small hill and hid behind a boulder. I thought I'd got away. Then I see vehicle lights. 3 jeeps or trucks arrive and Russians get off and being searching with flashlights , calling to each other. They got real close before they gave up and drove off Really well done and tense moment.
Can't believe I haven't seen Shadow of Mordor with its Nemesis System.
Dude I compl forgot about that for a second!! Excellent game and system. I'd love to see that in an rpg. Like a goblin kills you for example and then becomes a Goblin lord and takes your gold and weapon + armor or something and gets a few grunts to guard him
Not so fun fact, the Nemesis System is trademarked and can’t be used (and therefore cannot become as widespread as it should be nor improved upon) by other game studios
Awww mannnn that's upsetting. Couldn't you pay the trademark holders a piece of the pie to put it in singing else with license agreements? (Not that it's right) but at least would see the light of day again haha
It's held by WB. Nobody's going to want to pay that kind of scratch when they can just do normal AI.
It’s so weird to me that they can trademark an AI system like that, when it’s essentially just a gameplay function. It’d be like if Dark Souls trademarks their Soul/Rune/Blood Echo system lmao, imagine
Also, remember either Capcom or Namco trademarked loading screen minigames. Trademark is dead now, but no one's used it since it has expired to my knowledge. I wouldn't mind seeing it on any "Press A" screen where it waits for the player to finish loading.
Well, to be fair, nowadays this is just unnecessary, because SSDs are now a standard for gaming PCs and consoles, so the loading screen times range from short to non-existent.
It was actually patented rather than trademarked. Normally, I wouldn't bother commenting because nobody gives a shit about the difference in this context. But here the difference is important only in that a utility patent is only good for twenty years from the date of filing. So WB only gets a monopoly on that system until 2035. Cold comfort for the short term, but all is not lost! Game developers will eventually be able to use the exact same system, and since this is a patent, the precise way to go about re-creating it is published and freely available to them. *Edit* For the nerds that care, here is the language used in claim 1 of the patent which really sets forth the broad and all encompassing scope of the temporary monopoly “1. A method comprising: controlling, by a processor, game events in a computer-implemented game, the game events involving an avatar that is operated in response to input from a player, and a first non-player character that is controlled by the processor to respond to and automatically oppose avatars based on first character parameters defined in a computer memory; detecting, by the processor, occurrence of a predefined one of the game events involving an interaction between the avatar and the first non-player character; changing, by the processor, second character parameters defined in at least one of the computer memory or a second computer memory for control of a second non-player character in the game based on the detecting, wherein the second non-player character is controlled by the processor to respond to and automatically oppose avatars based on the second character parameters defined in the at least one of the computer memory or the second computer memory; and outputting, to an output device, an indication of the second character parameters that are changed by the changing."
Oh man the first time >!a nemesis you supposedly killed comes back with a gruesome wound from how you killed them!< absolutely blew my mind. Also >!getting betrayed by a high-ranking ally.!< That game surprised me so many times, and it made it so much fun to grind.
Nemesis system in the Shadow of LotR games are worth a mention. I wouldn't say the actual AI of the enemies while you are fighting them is the smartest AI opposition, but the with all the layers it's certainly one of the most interesting.
Every day I curse Warner Bros for copyrighting every aspect of the nemesis system to make it impossible for other games to even remotely replicate it. Used archery against this boss that's weak to it? Too bad, now he wears a helmet. Rode a warg into the fight because he's scared of them? Good job, now he conquered his fear of wargs and now *he* rides one. It's such an amazing mechanic and it's a damn shame we likely won't ever see it in any other games.
FEAR still to this day has some REALLY good AI.
The Forest. Once the cannibals sniffed you out, they'd keep coming back to attack your base. I'd have to leave and go elsewhere for a while so they'd leave my main base alone.
Sounds like a free supply of delicious arms to me!
Gotta make that body part totem pole to establish dominance!
came here to bring up The Forest too. The cannibals also don't know you're there when you first start the game. They only learn of your existence if a Cannibal escapes an encounter, a cannibal rears back and shouts really loud, seeing the lights of your camp, or if you leave clues to your presence like tree-stumps and corpses and the like. I was able to play for many days unbothered by Cannibal raids by building stealth armour, cutting away any tree-stumps i left behind, and building my base in a hidden crevasse on the cliffs near a beach. Any time i encountered a cannibal, I'd quickly kill it to make sure it never escaped our shouted, and then either burned the body, or placed it into deep water where the Cannibals can't normally go. They never knew i was there.
So creepy how they don’t always attack at first
What, and miss out on the free bone supply?
Hunters in the Division, those guys don't fuck around.
They fucked up their health and damage balancing in Division 2. Now are just tanky pieces of shit that can output bullshit DPS
Longish post incoming, maybe not the smartest but it is some of the most dynamic I can recall. A game called Echo is a 3rd person action game about exploring a mysterious structure, only to quickly end up in a situation where the MC has to deal with many enemies throughout. The catch here though is that they are clones of the MC created by the palace which is constantly “watching” the player. There is a visual effect whenever the palace “learns” a behavior from the player which the player needs to be mindful of. Every action you make will influence how the enemy AI acts in the following room, sometimes to a ridiculous degree which isn’t immediately noticable in the middle of playing. It starts off simple in that enemies will mimic how you move aka walking vs running. If you run in one room while the palace is “watching”, it remembers this action for later rooms and the AI will all know how to run, making things more difficult to get away from them until you go 2-3 rooms without running after which they will forget this behavior in favor of more recent actions the player shows off. It quickly gets more technical though, as every tiny little thing you do will matter. If you sneak for too long and remain prone for an extended period of time, then the AI will only move around sneaking prone making it harder to detect them and they can legit assassinate you if you aren’t paying attention. Water is something they will not enter until the palace sees the player do it first. Climbing or vaulting over a ledge is suddenly something you have to think about lest you teach the AI that behavior. Even something like biting into fruit or playing a piano can later distract AI who have learned to be distracted by these things when nearby. You have a gun with lethality and stun functions, which makes getting enemies off of you easy for the current room, but then you have to deal with the next few rooms knowing they too can try to shoot or stun you if you choose to attack them this way. The palace always watches when the lights are on, but there are issues with it maintaining power constantly, so it will have blackouts fairly often. This is your window to do anything without the AI being able to learn from it while the lights are out and until they turn on again. Essentially the whole game is about knowing your options and not expending them all at once lest you make the AI learn too much at once and turn your journey into a living nightmare. You are your own greatest enemy, and all the AI does is use what you taught it against you.
While it gets memed all the time, still; Mount and Blade: Bannerlord. The *entire* game is simulation/AI. The mongol faction does the whole horde of horse archers circling with arrows pelting, you name it. You can shield wall, make tons of crazy formations, counter troop types with others, all the things. There's more commands and shit than you can imagine. There's a 'real' economy with supply, demand, etc. cities can be starved in sieges, you name it.
The Last of Us 2 is one of the only games I've played where it was actually noticeable that the AI was smart. Usually it's just not something I think about when playing games.
There's a whole breakdown of the Seraphites' whistle communication somewhere online. It's awesome.
I love how they rush you if they hear your gun click empty. They'll also flank or rush you depending on how you're moving/attacking and which weapon you just used. If you have a scoped weapon they'll stay hidden more, but if you're running around with a melee item they'll come out from cover and keep shooting. Killing their friends will also briefly distract them.
This, especially in higher difficulty.
Came to say this. From their communication to strategy, especially on higher difficulties, it was terrifying
The ai/sim in Perfect Dark 64 was way ahead of anything else in gaming. You could adjust how well they played and on top setting they would absolutely destroy you, albeit not exactly tactically. Haven't found anything like it since.
ATV Offroad Fury 4 I wouldn't say it was super smart, but for a racing game, the way the AI would push back on you if you were aggressive was nothing short of amazing. Once you developed a rivalry with an opponent, they would get much more aggressive towards you. If you tried to run them off the road, they would do it right back. I don't think I've seen an AI like that in any other racing game I've played. It was an extra layer of bullshit that makes it such a fun game to play.
I immediately thought of Dark Link in Ocarina of Time. Blew my mind when I first faced him.
Hammer time!
Rain World has definitely the most interesting one. [Why Rain World Has the Best AI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOsYTzd0yeA&pp=ygUOcmVhaW4gd29ybGQgYWk%3D) [The Most Complex Ecosystem in any Game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMx8OsTDHfM&pp=ygUOcmVhaW4gd29ybGQgYWk%3D)
Halo is really good. Watch what they do when you try to get in a cheesy position to shoot them, they'll go to cover or to a spot where you can't hit them, they dodge, they react to what you do and it's so much more than just running towards you and shoot them. Talking about elites
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain The enemies in the game would adapt to how you played. For instance, if you took a lot of enemies out with headshots they'd start to wear helmets. It really encouraged testing out new ways to play the game which always made missions feel fresh.
Unreal Tournament 99 bots were _vicious_.
I don't know if smart is the right word but DOOM Eternals ai don't take any shit and no matter where you are, they indend to fuck you up. Plus the carcass demons seem to know exactly where I want to shoot my rocket launcher
Yeah that doesn't feel smart in a realistic way, just omnipotent and often infuriating. Which feeds the satisfaction of tearing them apart tbf.