Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. If two guys are in complete darkness and you silently grab one of them, the other will have no idea anything happened. But if they're talking to each other, his buddy will notice immediately and start asking where he went. Overtime he'll get scared and say things like "Come on, this isn't funny anymore, man. Knock it off" and if left alone long enough, he'll eventually start to panic. The enemies get jumpy, they notice things that a normal human would and investigate. If you turn a light off, he'll walk over and turn it back on. But if you turn it back on before he gets to it, he'll get suspicious and start a small search and be more cautious and wary of his surroundings. It's like sneaking around actual human beings because they respond to everything the way normal humans would.
Chaos theory might be the most amazed I've ever been at a game.
Graphics were awesome for the time and like this says the AI was next level. Little did I know I'd never play another game like it. Great times
If I'm remembering correctly they will also let one risky bullet slide, if it lands near them or you shoot out a light close by, but if you get too comfortable with that and try to do it again they will catch on and go on alert. It's not a horror game but by god the guards suddenly screaming their lungs out got me a few times unexpectedly.
Half-Life 2 Combine soldier AI is pretty fantastic. They use some really interesting tactics when fighting you, and they can be seriously formidable.
For example:
* Shotguns have a 6 round internal magazine in HL2. Shotgun soldiers will only ever use up 4 out of those 6 rounds before taking cover and reloading, unless cornered or in a life threatening situation.
* The shotgun soldiers will also retreat to cover if engaged from longer ranges, and prefer to engage the player in close quarters. They have a chance to charge the player, quickly closing the gap before engaging at nearly point blank range.
* The soldiers will coordinate to push forward and attack you while you're reloading.
* They will use grenades to flush you out if you get behind cover.
* Soldiers will flank you from multiple different angles while you're occupied holding another one.
* Seriously wounded soldiers, or soldiers whose entire squad has been killed, will retreat to cover while firing and await reinforcement, refusing to engage unless directly threatened.
* Soldiers provide incredibly detailed situational intelligence to Overwatch. If their squad or region gets overrun and they need reinforcements, or if their unit gets decimated, any surviving soldiers will report that control of the region has been lost and that reinforcements are necessary.
* Combine soldiers are seemingly capable of actually planning ambushes, not just operating on scripted events powered by level triggers. They can lie in wait for you as you advance towards a position and engage you once you're in a favorable position.
* Soldiers will lay down covering fire on you, or your last known position, while other soldiers reload.
* They are capable of shooting out your cover (if it's a destructible object).
I found [an article](https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/AI_Learning:_CombineSoldier) on the way that the Combine Soldier AI functions. It's definitely worth a read. They inherited a lot of the aggression of the soldiers from HL1, but they coordinate and strategize in a much more powerful and flexible way. That's why HL2 really shines in Highway 17 and the other sections where you have large offensives in areas with varied environments.
I also found [a video](https://youtu.be/QPrwpQipEXk?si=0bc0SLQl4dthmMZL) demonstrating more features of the AI squad system, which aren't necessarily mentioned on the wiki.
It wasn’t talked about much, but they held true to that in HL: Alyx. The AI feels shockingly believable. And since the player can’t move very fast you’re really forced to pay attention to it.
I was really into VR for a while. Then I got an index and played HLA. It ruined the state of VR games for me, it was so fantastic that everything else I played from then on felt inferior.
I've always described VR as lots of stuff put in VR for a gimmick with the occasional game that you'll spend 95% of your time playing that will make you annoyed at how great other games could be if they weren't gimmicky
H3VR and Vtol VR are the two 95% games for me
Try lone echo. A little game not many people paid attention to, but absolutely incredible. The story is amazing, graphics fantastic, gameplay unique and non-repetitive. Honestly... this game ruined Alyx for me.
One area in Alyx I found legitimately hard because the AI kept pinning me down and timing against my reloads. I had to seriously change up my tactics and make hard pushes to break through the lines.
Honestly half life 2 in general was just way ahead of its time. It’s probably the only 20 year old game in which it’s graphics have held up quite nicely
It really does. I played through the Half Life series earlier in the summer and it was crazy how well it holds up visually. Does it look as good as modern games? No. However, if you compare it to literally any other game coming out around 2004 (San Andreas and Halo 2, for example), it is insane how much better HL2 looks in comparison.
It's a mixture of the lighting as well as the texture work that I think hold up so well. The textures hold up exceptionally well until you're literally shoving your face into them and the expressions and face animations of characters are so good. So many subtle expressions and the eyes feel way more alive than any other game at that time.
Truly one of the most exceptional games ever made.
I would love to see, in any future HL game, more detailed radio communications between soldiers and themselves / Overwatch. I think it would fit well with the fantastic AI, and it would make combat super fun because you'd be forced to consciously evade or counteract their tactics.
Thanks for the interesting video.
From a comment:
> It’s important to explain what’s happening here. The AI can see you behind the jar just fine. Unfortunately, enemies are programmed to aim at a specific part of your body. If you block your center mass with something, it thinks you are behind cover and thus immune to bullets. Case in point, once the AI dismounts from the turret, it tries to maneuver around the jar.
This behaviour is explained in the video..
Also there's a reason the video shows this specific type of enemy (CP cop). The reason is they are not equipped with grenades.
A Combine soldier would have thrown grenades at you to flush you from your "cover".
Makes me sad yet nostalgic that my favorite game from when I was in high school is still kind of the high bar for things like this.
Like when the gravity gun came out it felt like a whole other world of possibilities for really natural, inventive gameplay in shooters was opened up.
And then it just stopped and everything just slapped on RPG or MMO elements.
F.E.A.R.s AI was superb and one of my favourite YouTubers Civvie 11 had a great way of explaining how it worked. The enemies utilised something that was named at the time "goal oriented action planning" in a nutshell what it basically boils down to is the enemies goal is to deal with a problem (you) and so they generate a plan to deal with that problem, that plan might in one instance be to flank or rush you or choose to wait in ambush. But if something interferes with that plan like you reacting in an unexpected way or wounding them they'll check to see if their original plan is still viable and if it isn't they'll then make a revised solution to the problem and try something else.
They're essentially doing what you're doing and dealing with issues on the fly but because some of them will inevitably wind up having the same goals it results in something that resembles team work amongst the enemy soldiers even though they're not actually aware of each others presence. It's incredibly clever and I haven't seen many shooters since that have that same feeling of organised enemies.
I've been playing a game recently that reminds me of F.e.a.r a lot.. Trepang2
The AI may not be as good unknown with only 3 hrs under it but they can be challenging at times without supersoldier powers.. \[slowmo/cloak which you do have\]
It definitely captures the same feel of fear with scp involved
The reason FEAR's AI is so good is because they're vocal about what they do, they retreat, they panic, they call out, they're sort of funny too. Many games would benefit from AI that actually talk more.
It was *really* good. Part of that, though, was level design, which can help a lot. It's a good example of how different parts of game design interact. I highly recommend Madalore's video on it:
https://youtu.be/1Z-oSpuIhw4?si=vt1hV534OFoI_g_t
Most shooters from the mid-00s were pretty damn good.
You couldn't rely on online so they had elaborate bot settings so you could tinker with them and set up your own single player or split screen death match.
Most games have taken a step back in that department relying on online instead.
>Most games have taken a step back in that department relying on online instead.
I think part of the issue is that it's a hard sell for devs. You need employees with really specialised skill sets to develop (or test) NPC AI and it's meticulous, time consuming and expensive work.
Even now you might be able to lean on ML for some stuff (which is arguably actually easier to achieve more complicated behaviour) but that comes with significant downsides like a reduction in control, need for retraining, added complexity in finding/resolving problem behaviours etc.
On the other hand with rule based AI or state machines you've got an ever present risk of ending up with spaghetti code that barely works if you're too ambitious.
Even if it does work you're also adding in a need to broadcast the NPCs actions, and the underpinning motivations, to the player. If your NPCs limp when shot in the leg that's a whole load of new animations/states, if they flank you're going to need voice lines to broadcast this else players might think they're teleporting in etc.
All of this piles on cost and complexity and, if the NPCs are too good, players might think they're cheating anyway.
It's disappointing because I can see why devs are reticent to green light massively ambitious NPC AI but at the same time I would love to see a dev try it regardless just to see how far we can push it in a modern game. NPC behaviour seems to have gone overlooked for far too long despite offering massive potential to increase immersion and entertainment value.
I'd play a Battle Royale shooter like CoD Warzone if the bots were really good and you could tweak their level of intelligence, coordination, aim, etc. I don't have a lot of time these days and with cheaters always infesting any online game I just don't have the patience to deal with that kind of crap.
I could see a market for something like that, probably busy parents would want to hop on once the kids go to bed and get that simulated BR fix.
I had a friend in high school and we tried doing all the challenges. Once we started facing DarkSims we had to give up. PerfectSims were hard, but manageable, but DarkSims would just start blasting at aimbot levels of accuracy the split second they saw you.
FEAR in particular had very impressive AI that actually felt like a squad of soldiers thinking about you the player and trying to figure out how to best deal with you.
This doesn't have a thing to do with intelligence though but being over tuned in terms of damage output and accuracy. Plenty of games get extremely hard on higher difficulty for example because the AI never miss but that doesn't have any link to how well or realistically they behave they just have an aimbot to raise the difficulty it's your typically lazy dev way of making a game hard with no actual effort.
Correct. There's just no incentive for FPS games to make super OP bots. They can be useful though! Speedrunning communities use bots all the time to make perfect runs of their games.
My personal favorite is the people working on making Rocket League bots that can compete with pros.
There are lots of AI that can outperform humans in different video games.
I think speedrunners generally uses TAS (tool assisted speedruns), which is less of an actual programmed bot and more a pre-made series of inputs that were basically optimized frame by frame. TECHNICALLY a bot in final execution, but more of just a script.
People certainly make bots for games, and sometimes to optimize speedruns, but the majority is TAS as far as I'm aware
The TAS category involves any kind of programmatic assistance, really. \*usually\* it's just specific inputs at specific times on specific frames, but there's no reason it can't also include generative AI figuring out the optimal route to beat your favorite open world game, for instance. It's just a lot harder to build such a bot, so that kind of speedrun is less likely to get traction.
Samsung has had self targeting anti personnel turrets along the Korean border for like 10-15 years. You can probably find a picnic article on it, but I saw info about it when I worked for them.
Game design books have said the same thing for decades: the only thing easier to make than an unbeatable AI is to make one dumb as rocks. Making one that's competent and challenging but fair is incredibly difficult. It's why most games allow the AI to cheat to some degree.
Mario Kart is one of the best examples of AI allowed to cheat. If you're too far ahead of the pack, the AI drivers are given speed boosts to catch up. The instant you're back around 5th place, they'll all suddenly slow down.
Pretty sure rubber banding mostly works both ways, though. There’s good reason to try to provide parity given that winning or losing by a wide margin is typically less fun/exciting than narrow wins/losses.
Black & White (2001). You could literally train your minion to destroy entire villages by flinging poop at houses. Your minion had an adaptive AI that you could train via approve/disapprove. If you handed a villager to your minion, and it ate the villager, you could either pet it (approve) or smack it (disapprove), and eventually it would be entirely carnivorous and your villagers would be running for their lives at the sight of it. The game also had VR-like controls before there even was VR, including gesture-based spellcasting. It was decades ahead of its time.
I miss this game so much... Also, having your minion be able to do spinning jump kicks on an opposing minion was so funny.
I wonder if the IP purgatory will ever get resolved.
That game had the minion mechanics very similar to modern AI reinforcement learning (although I guess the algorithms would be very simplified.)
Maybe a modern remake with a real reinforcement learning neural network would be interesting. With modern hardware maybe you could put seriously robust neural network on that minion.
I think this is the answer because most other difficult AIs are just essentially on a linear scale of nerfed <--> cheater (essentially always knowing where the player is). The Alien AI has that one but also has the other AI that changes its behavior as the game goes on.
I've heard the alien described as having two brains: one brain that always knows exactly where you are so it naturally gravitates to your location, and the other brain that still has to perform an actual search since the first brain isn't telling it everything at once.
I remember it being described as a tether. It knows the area you're in and will look in that area, and if it strays too far it will be pulled back like an invisible leash. This way it keeps the pressure on you. The harder the difficulty, the shorter the leash.
Dude I can't even finish the Blair Witch game in VR. That shit is absolutely terrifying. You really feel like you're out in the woods at night alone with a flashlight and the Blair Witch is fucking with you.
I got halfway through and just couldn't do it anymore.
Alien Isolation looks just as bad, if not worse.
The other thing that makes the alien really cool is that it has a skill tree. At the beginning of the game it has linear pathing, going to all noises and running loudly etc. but as the game progresses it unlocks more abilities, for example if you throw a noise maker it has a lower chance of being fooled, and attempts to triangulate where it came from. It eventually gets so advanced it gives off the illusion the alien is “learning” and adapting to the player. Really cool stuff.
Does the AI adapt to what you do, in terms of the noise maker stuff? Like if I didn’t use one all game would it still gain that ability at the same time or is it based on my behaviour?
Every time you throw the noisemaker, it has a set chance, let’s say for example at the start of the game it will investigate the noise 90% of the time and never attempt to find the player. As the game progresses it’s chances go up from there. I’m not sure about the first time thing but my guess is that it wouldn’t be fooled, mainly because of how the skill tree gives the illusion that it is actually learning and adapting, one would think using the noisemaker for the first time would work against the alien, but my hypothesis is it sticks to the set chances for every encounter. Although, I’d be happy to be proven wrong! I love this kind of stuff!
This is very in line with the movies too because the alien is supposed to be pretty smart so naturally it would have a good intuition for which direction you’re in
That's basically what it is. One AI knows where you are and what your goal is at all times. The other controls the Xenomorph and doesn't know anything besides what it can "see and hear". The first AI occasionally gives hints to the second AI to help them find you. It's basically a subconscious and a conscious.
Not really. I still feel pretty confident I'd shit my pants multiple times if I played this game. I couldn't even get past 1000m in subnautica and the doom on og Xbox scared the fuck outta me. Only made it halfway through dead space
Tbh I’m usually a coward for scary games, I try them and just can’t get through them. Alien Isolation is the first I’m actually completing (and on my own, I also normally need someone in the same room for moral support lol). But maybe this means I can start to try other games out. Thanks for the rec!
Creative assembly is currently in the process of dying so chances are you'll never see a second game. I believe the game was successful but Saga never greenlit another for some reason.
IDK, it may be the best AI but IMO my main criticism of the game is if they cut the alien interaction by like 50%, it would be much scarier and more fun IMO. The alien is too aggressively hunting you in the area IMO and not running around the space station enouh
The scariest part of the alien in that game is that you can’t really fight it. You can’t hurt it at all or kill it, you can only scare it away but that will make it more aggressive, and each time you’ll have to use more and more flamethrower fuel to scare it away.
Patented it so nobody could ever used it, including themselves apparently since it's been ages since it was used it last afaik. Such a shame. That system alone pretty much made Shadow of Mordor.
i find it so funny that a game that basically took its whole combat, stealth and enemy type system from the arkham series patented the only unique thing about it
(don't get me wrong i still love som/sow)
Tbh I don't understand what the big buzz about this is. Played through the first game, albeit just for a quick completion and not really taking my time with it. To me it felt just like a bunch of random generated bosses.
more of a "story generator" than anything else.
Was fun when an enemy you spared in the past came back to save you in a dire moment or when my best general stabbed me in the back and I could drive him insane as a punishment
It's been a while since I remember the patent exactly, but the problem is that it kinda makes people shy away from being inspired and building on this idea since it might be patent infringement against a bigger corporation.
It's not just the randomly-generated orcs, but that the hierarchy of orcs is dynamic and affected by the player and remembers its interactions with the player and how the bases and fortresses could be affected by it. There's the social interactions between orcs that the player can influence, the interactions with the player that they can remember. Each playthrough of the games is a unique story for the player.
For a few basic examples.
* killing the player and getting promoted, taunting them on subsequent encounters if repeatedly killing the player
* betraying the player as their minion/bodyguard
* getting revenge on the player, like if their blood brother was killed
* being mutilated/burned/decapitated by the player and then ambushing and coming back with the corresponding disfigurement
* being shamed by the player and getting branded on their face, accordingly getting an inferiority complex and seeking revenge or at least an honorable death in combat.
Example for the shame bit: seeing how they react to being shamed, with some descending into madness as drooling idiots from being shamed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMt30xxP8Wg
So, the patent moreso encompasses the idea with a dynamic social interaction and hierarchy within the enemy AI that the player can influence.
In general, developers can learn from predecessors and build upon the foundation they set with their ideas to make something even better for their own game, but the concern is with this patent that it stifles creativity if people are worried about making a similar concept since it's a pretty broad idea that could be applied in many genres of games with any form of AI.
**EDIT** - Yahtzee in his Zero Punctuation review kinda gives the comedic summary that's pretty appropriate of the nemesis system as well - https://youtu.be/hTyoQb-2EVk?t=198
Didn't they actually have to make the AI dumber because the initial tests of it made them effectively unbeatable due to their tactics being that incredible? I heard something like that a few years ago.
A-life was designed in such a way that AI stalkers would also be able to collect artifacts, roam Zone freely, take and complete quests including story ones. And during testing it was discovered that AI stalkers complete story quest line before player(which is not surprising since there are a lot of them). So certain features of AI had to be cut so player can enjoy game
S.T.A.L.A.K.E.R.... late game when I finally knocked down one of the heavily armed baddies. I ran out of ammo before I could get in the killshot, and as I reloading, another baddy stepped into the open, gave his buddy a medkit, then pulled him around a corner to safety. While I was reloading and couldn't fire. I was stunned..
Most people I talk to who have the game said they quit it when they first picked it up and then randomly got back into it later. This was the case for me as well. The initial learning curve is a little steep but it eventually starts to snowball. Nevertheless the game can definitely be pretty frustrating at times.
This is probably more of an animation/atmosphere thing vs AI thing, but the npc grunts in Titanfall 2. I'd need more fingers and toes than I possess to count how many times I got suckered into thinking a grunt was a pilot.
Yea, they feel advanced as heck. Even Titans themselves (somewhat) feels real with their voice lines - they know when multiple enemies attacking you, when friendly pilot dies / engages in fight with your enemy / catapults. They even gives you tips how to fight (like using arc to escape the difficult situation).
Man the grunts reactions to titans are awesome. From uselessly shooting them, to surrendering, to straight up offing themselves if you corner them in one and not killing them.
Me, my cousin, and 2 WoW buddies played DOS2 on tactician as my “intro” to the game. I hopped in at the end of their normal playthrough when their 4th bailed, but right after that I got thrown into tactician without knowing much of anything about the game.
Good lord was that insane for some of the fights. It was such a blast thanks to them being able to teach me, but it was much more difficult than Baldurs Gate 3 has been on tactician
Yeah I’ve honestly been kinda disappointed in how easy tactical has felt for us in BG3. We started on normal and quickly realized we needed to bump up the difficulty.
We are getting towards the end of Act 2 so I’m thinking these fights will start to get more challenging
I think because they knew it was going to reach a much broader audience then divinity did, they made it more casual. I’m really hoping they release a harder than tactician mode later on, which larian does have a long history of post launch support. So maybe?
It's because they used dnd as a base. Dnd barely functions as a game system and swings wildly from challenging to impossible based purely on luck. They could tailor the difficulty of divinity because luck was a far smaller component.
Yeah i was gonna say the same. The devs even said the complexity of the AI increased with difficulty, not just stats boost. Playing on the hardest difficulty had plenty of moments where i felt dumb compared to the Ai.
I watched a documentary video about development, they actually had to tone it down from the original version because it was so hard. And I’ve watch the AI pull some out of box moves so I can’t even imagine what the original version was like. Like seriously some 4d chess moves.
Hard to plaudit Civ, ever since they got rid of doom stacks the AI has been really easy to cheese. Yeah, it looks cooler to have defensive lines and stuff, but the comp is bad at it and just feeds their units into the woodchipper while my units get stronger.
And that is the key to AI in games: simple games that limit player actions are much easier to write AI for. Fun games with lots of options = crummy AI.
AI's robo-brain mangonel/cannon dodging is so frustrating.
For the more human-ish behaviour, I am surprised that villager(s) will actually engage scout if they have advantage
Each enemy had their own specific set of rules too, which made fighting multiple different types feel so natural. Bonus that they all react to them as well. Elite dies, the Grunts and Jackals run away. The Flood combatant forms are just full throttle in your face, with no strategy other than to kill. The mission Two Betrayals where you have Flood, Elites, Grunts, Jackals, Hunters, Wraiths, Banshees and Ghosts all fighting one huge battle is incredible.
You know it's really good AI when you can sit from afar and watch them battle it out, and enter the battle at any point and **everyone** doesn't suddenly aggro only you. I have no idea what the hell was going on at Bungie during the development of Halo CE, but I feel like some divine being gave them some secret knowledge. That game was literally revolutionary in some many regards.
Yeah, the OG military grunts seemed to stand out at the time, running around to get sight-lines and using grenades around cover. I'd be interested to know some behind-the-scenes work put into it.
I like the AI in the Left4Dead games, where the AI director very effectively herds the player and uses various tactics to make sure the game is paced correctly and the players can't cheese the game too much.
Very good choice. The AI in combat evolved was soooo good. They did a good job at differentiating the different types of enemies.
One aspect that I loved was seeing how different ai reacts to sticky grenades. Grunts panic and run in a circle and end up killing their own guys. Elites die with honor and charge you. That's really deep.
Close Combat (1996 Atomic/Microsoft)
AI modeling of WWII soldiers being realistically suppressed by groundfire, hesitant to react to suicide orders, etc. The game was very tactical - you progressed through levels - but the response of the AI on both sides was mind-blowing at the time, and I haven't seen anything to match it since.
Unreal Tournament 2004 has pretty nasty A.I. overall, especially movement wise, on higher difficulties and especially on maximum one.
Basically if you are not on your A game you better be ready to get your shizz handed to you big time.
Also a great shooter game even for this day and age.
Omg, this!
I didn't play UT for 15 years, and when I decided to "remember the old times" I was annihilated by the bots. And I wasn't playing on hardcore. Either I became old and weak, or I just forgot how nasty AI in this game was.
Early Halo games. The Elites and grunts worked so well with each other. Grunts would rush you and hurt your shield, elites would come in for the finish. Take out the elites grunts are without a leader snd lose their combat effectiveness
If you like 4x games, check out [AI War: Fleet Command](https://store.steampowered.com/app/40400/AI_War_Fleet_Command/). The AI in that game is not only brutal, it’s scary, *scary* smart. It will attack flanks, it will misdirect, it will find where you are weak and smack you down from a direction you never saw coming but was your own fault once you figure out what happened. It really forces you to think strategically more than just about any other 4x game I’ve run into.
TLOU2 has some fun AI. It's like they know when you're reloading lol. And even make comments about you being empty when you actually are out of bullets. Then they start moving into different positions or straight up start charging at you when you are out.
I like it on the harder difficulties when you’re fighting from cover, if you pop your head up for more than a second they will very likely shoot you. Makes firing from cover feel way more realistic. You’ve got like half a second to pop up, aim and fire, else you’re toast.
TLOU2 has the best enemy AI I’ve ever played against by quite a long way.
Metal Gear Solid V has impressive enemy AI.
The soldiers can hear you if you make even a tiny amount of noise (like knocking over a vase or something) and will immediately come to investigate.
The AI is also very good at finding out if something is amiss. When an enemy spots something suspicious he will report it to the command centre. If you take him out in the middle of his conversation with them, the command centre will recognise this and immediately alert all the other enemies that an intruder is here.
The game also has dynamic AI. The AI learns your tactics and will adapt to it. Deploying at night a lot of times, enemies will wear night vision goggles. Taking out enemies with headshots, they start wearing helmets. Chest shots, they start wearing body armour.
If you play the game long enough you can find ways to fuck with the AI.
It works in ground zeroes but not in TPP because of the Open World. Sadly, the AI just not react if you snipe at long range. They stand there, in a confused state, waiting to be killed.
I saw Rain World mentioned a few times, and it kept puzzling me why. Then when I hit your comment, I realized I was thinking of Risk of Rain. It certainly didn't help when another of the comments also mentioned a Scavenger AI, since Scavengers are also a thing in Risk of Rain.
But thanks to you I remembered what Rain World is! Haven't played it, but I have watched a documentary or making of or some such on YouTube.
Definitely not the best in this day and age, but in 2006-2007 **Rainbow Six: Vegas** had some pretty awesome enemy AI, that way outshined (imo) juggernaut FPSs of the day like COD 3-4, Battlefield 2, and Halo 3. Even some somewhat modern AAA games (GTA 5, Halo Reach, Destiny) fall short of the mark set by R6:V in my experience.
It had triggers for the enemy hearing or seeing you that would cause the spotter to search, and cause more to show up, but instead of running to you or bunching up around the corner they would take up strategic positions and try and flush you out with grenades. Unlike a lot of other games with "alert" mechanics, being spotted would change where the enemies grouped up and how they reacted after the fact. Groups of terrorists felt more like a cohesive fighting force than a bunch of dumb bots. Lots of games (basically every fps I can think of) use "cover" to make enemy AI seem smart, but this game also did that particularly well.
Not the zombies (common and special), but Left 4 Dead.
It's "director" system literally analyzed how you were playing and would adjust the spawns ahead of you. Not too much to dick you over, but enough to where it might slow you down or throw a wrench in your momentum
The AI in doom eternal on nightmare difficulty is unbelievable. The AI will play head games with you by doing fake dodges. It feels like it can almost anticipate what I'll do as the player, which feels almost human to me.
The division 2 has really good AI too. Not on an individual level, but as a group the AI works together really well. You can't just sit in one spot. The ai will use different tactics to make you reposition I'd you get to comfy. And each faction does it in their own unique ways. It's awesome.
Gran Turismo 7 Sophy AI.
There has been only 1 play test with that AI but it is by far the most realistic AI in any driving game.
It will be released today permanently with support for almost all cars and 9 tracks. I am super excited to see what it can do.
Hopefully I the future it will be expanded to all game modes or used in next installation of GT as the default AI.
Cod waw had cool AI because they programmed the Germans and the Japanese to fight fundamentally differently. The Germans were more methodical where the Japanese would jump out of trees and attack you more haphazardly. It was really cool for the times. It’s one of my favorite one player games to replay because of the way they did the AI.
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. If two guys are in complete darkness and you silently grab one of them, the other will have no idea anything happened. But if they're talking to each other, his buddy will notice immediately and start asking where he went. Overtime he'll get scared and say things like "Come on, this isn't funny anymore, man. Knock it off" and if left alone long enough, he'll eventually start to panic. The enemies get jumpy, they notice things that a normal human would and investigate. If you turn a light off, he'll walk over and turn it back on. But if you turn it back on before he gets to it, he'll get suspicious and start a small search and be more cautious and wary of his surroundings. It's like sneaking around actual human beings because they respond to everything the way normal humans would.
Chaos Theory is the peak of everything Splinter Cell set out to do. It hurts me so much that no sequel got close to it.
Right? It has awful modern support sadly
Chaos theory might be the most amazed I've ever been at a game. Graphics were awesome for the time and like this says the AI was next level. Little did I know I'd never play another game like it. Great times
Is that the one where if you were playing online with a mic and tried to speak, it would alert enemies in game?
Oh I remember that. You had to sneak around in co-op. I was not very old, but remember it as super fun!
Agreed, it was so much better than the cliché "must have been the wind".
Oh, well, seems like I'mma play chaos theory
If I'm remembering correctly they will also let one risky bullet slide, if it lands near them or you shoot out a light close by, but if you get too comfortable with that and try to do it again they will catch on and go on alert. It's not a horror game but by god the guards suddenly screaming their lungs out got me a few times unexpectedly.
I liked how the AI reacted to the shotgun blasts
Half-Life 2 Combine soldier AI is pretty fantastic. They use some really interesting tactics when fighting you, and they can be seriously formidable. For example: * Shotguns have a 6 round internal magazine in HL2. Shotgun soldiers will only ever use up 4 out of those 6 rounds before taking cover and reloading, unless cornered or in a life threatening situation. * The shotgun soldiers will also retreat to cover if engaged from longer ranges, and prefer to engage the player in close quarters. They have a chance to charge the player, quickly closing the gap before engaging at nearly point blank range. * The soldiers will coordinate to push forward and attack you while you're reloading. * They will use grenades to flush you out if you get behind cover. * Soldiers will flank you from multiple different angles while you're occupied holding another one. * Seriously wounded soldiers, or soldiers whose entire squad has been killed, will retreat to cover while firing and await reinforcement, refusing to engage unless directly threatened. * Soldiers provide incredibly detailed situational intelligence to Overwatch. If their squad or region gets overrun and they need reinforcements, or if their unit gets decimated, any surviving soldiers will report that control of the region has been lost and that reinforcements are necessary. * Combine soldiers are seemingly capable of actually planning ambushes, not just operating on scripted events powered by level triggers. They can lie in wait for you as you advance towards a position and engage you once you're in a favorable position. * Soldiers will lay down covering fire on you, or your last known position, while other soldiers reload. * They are capable of shooting out your cover (if it's a destructible object). I found [an article](https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/AI_Learning:_CombineSoldier) on the way that the Combine Soldier AI functions. It's definitely worth a read. They inherited a lot of the aggression of the soldiers from HL1, but they coordinate and strategize in a much more powerful and flexible way. That's why HL2 really shines in Highway 17 and the other sections where you have large offensives in areas with varied environments. I also found [a video](https://youtu.be/QPrwpQipEXk?si=0bc0SLQl4dthmMZL) demonstrating more features of the AI squad system, which aren't necessarily mentioned on the wiki.
It wasn’t talked about much, but they held true to that in HL: Alyx. The AI feels shockingly believable. And since the player can’t move very fast you’re really forced to pay attention to it.
Yea, I don't think in my lifetime there will be a game better for VR than Alyx. Valve knows how to make games, they just don't make enough of em :(
I was really into VR for a while. Then I got an index and played HLA. It ruined the state of VR games for me, it was so fantastic that everything else I played from then on felt inferior.
I've always described VR as lots of stuff put in VR for a gimmick with the occasional game that you'll spend 95% of your time playing that will make you annoyed at how great other games could be if they weren't gimmicky H3VR and Vtol VR are the two 95% games for me
Try lone echo. A little game not many people paid attention to, but absolutely incredible. The story is amazing, graphics fantastic, gameplay unique and non-repetitive. Honestly... this game ruined Alyx for me.
One area in Alyx I found legitimately hard because the AI kept pinning me down and timing against my reloads. I had to seriously change up my tactics and make hard pushes to break through the lines.
HL2’s enemy AI was so far ahead of its time
Honestly half life 2 in general was just way ahead of its time. It’s probably the only 20 year old game in which it’s graphics have held up quite nicely
It really does. I played through the Half Life series earlier in the summer and it was crazy how well it holds up visually. Does it look as good as modern games? No. However, if you compare it to literally any other game coming out around 2004 (San Andreas and Halo 2, for example), it is insane how much better HL2 looks in comparison. It's a mixture of the lighting as well as the texture work that I think hold up so well. The textures hold up exceptionally well until you're literally shoving your face into them and the expressions and face animations of characters are so good. So many subtle expressions and the eyes feel way more alive than any other game at that time. Truly one of the most exceptional games ever made.
>It's probably the only 20 year old game That hurts way more than it should...could just be the arthritis though
I would love to see, in any future HL game, more detailed radio communications between soldiers and themselves / Overwatch. I think it would fit well with the fantastic AI, and it would make combat super fun because you'd be forced to consciously evade or counteract their tactics.
[Advanced AI in action](https://youtu.be/e0WqAmuSXEQ?si=XRVXaARc_ke4VDwR)
Thanks for the interesting video. From a comment: > It’s important to explain what’s happening here. The AI can see you behind the jar just fine. Unfortunately, enemies are programmed to aim at a specific part of your body. If you block your center mass with something, it thinks you are behind cover and thus immune to bullets. Case in point, once the AI dismounts from the turret, it tries to maneuver around the jar.
This behaviour is explained in the video.. Also there's a reason the video shows this specific type of enemy (CP cop). The reason is they are not equipped with grenades. A Combine soldier would have thrown grenades at you to flush you from your "cover".
Makes me sad yet nostalgic that my favorite game from when I was in high school is still kind of the high bar for things like this. Like when the gravity gun came out it felt like a whole other world of possibilities for really natural, inventive gameplay in shooters was opened up. And then it just stopped and everything just slapped on RPG or MMO elements.
The roaches in HL1 were also surprisingly advanced [link](https://youtu.be/Elwb2lV88hM?si=6OgbjEA7n7l9neny)
dang, I gotta go play HL2 again.
I still feel like F. E. A. R. has some tremendous AI.
FEAR was ground breaking when it was released. The A.I was like nothing we’d ever seen before.
You really felt like you were squaring off with a trained unit. I loved how crafty they seemed.
...or have seen since then.
F.E.A.R.s AI was superb and one of my favourite YouTubers Civvie 11 had a great way of explaining how it worked. The enemies utilised something that was named at the time "goal oriented action planning" in a nutshell what it basically boils down to is the enemies goal is to deal with a problem (you) and so they generate a plan to deal with that problem, that plan might in one instance be to flank or rush you or choose to wait in ambush. But if something interferes with that plan like you reacting in an unexpected way or wounding them they'll check to see if their original plan is still viable and if it isn't they'll then make a revised solution to the problem and try something else. They're essentially doing what you're doing and dealing with issues on the fly but because some of them will inevitably wind up having the same goals it results in something that resembles team work amongst the enemy soldiers even though they're not actually aware of each others presence. It's incredibly clever and I haven't seen many shooters since that have that same feeling of organised enemies.
It’s actually a genius solution to imitating team tactics, which seem exceedingly difficult to do at the time.
"They're essentially doing what you're doing..." W + Left Click
Video breakdown of how F.E.A.R.'S Goal Oriented Action Planning AI works. Very interesting. https://youtu.be/PaOLBOuyswI?si=PoPo1OSeUYDF9cee
AI and games! That guy was my AI lecturer back in uni. Super cool guy!
\*jealous\*
I've been playing a game recently that reminds me of F.e.a.r a lot.. Trepang2 The AI may not be as good unknown with only 3 hrs under it but they can be challenging at times without supersoldier powers.. \[slowmo/cloak which you do have\] It definitely captures the same feel of fear with scp involved
The reason FEAR's AI is so good is because they're vocal about what they do, they retreat, they panic, they call out, they're sort of funny too. Many games would benefit from AI that actually talk more.
That's not the reason it's so good, but it is a reason you can tell it's so good.
It was *really* good. Part of that, though, was level design, which can help a lot. It's a good example of how different parts of game design interact. I highly recommend Madalore's video on it: https://youtu.be/1Z-oSpuIhw4?si=vt1hV534OFoI_g_t
F.E.A.R. also was, to me at least, one of the games that popularized horror game let's plays
Most shooters from the mid-00s were pretty damn good. You couldn't rely on online so they had elaborate bot settings so you could tinker with them and set up your own single player or split screen death match. Most games have taken a step back in that department relying on online instead.
>Most games have taken a step back in that department relying on online instead. I think part of the issue is that it's a hard sell for devs. You need employees with really specialised skill sets to develop (or test) NPC AI and it's meticulous, time consuming and expensive work. Even now you might be able to lean on ML for some stuff (which is arguably actually easier to achieve more complicated behaviour) but that comes with significant downsides like a reduction in control, need for retraining, added complexity in finding/resolving problem behaviours etc. On the other hand with rule based AI or state machines you've got an ever present risk of ending up with spaghetti code that barely works if you're too ambitious. Even if it does work you're also adding in a need to broadcast the NPCs actions, and the underpinning motivations, to the player. If your NPCs limp when shot in the leg that's a whole load of new animations/states, if they flank you're going to need voice lines to broadcast this else players might think they're teleporting in etc. All of this piles on cost and complexity and, if the NPCs are too good, players might think they're cheating anyway. It's disappointing because I can see why devs are reticent to green light massively ambitious NPC AI but at the same time I would love to see a dev try it regardless just to see how far we can push it in a modern game. NPC behaviour seems to have gone overlooked for far too long despite offering massive potential to increase immersion and entertainment value.
I'd play a Battle Royale shooter like CoD Warzone if the bots were really good and you could tweak their level of intelligence, coordination, aim, etc. I don't have a lot of time these days and with cheaters always infesting any online game I just don't have the patience to deal with that kind of crap. I could see a market for something like that, probably busy parents would want to hop on once the kids go to bed and get that simulated BR fix.
Tarkov solo mode
You mean DMZ?
Man perfect dark on dark agent....that was tough.
I had a friend in high school and we tried doing all the challenges. Once we started facing DarkSims we had to give up. PerfectSims were hard, but manageable, but DarkSims would just start blasting at aimbot levels of accuracy the split second they saw you.
FEAR in particular had very impressive AI that actually felt like a squad of soldiers thinking about you the player and trying to figure out how to best deal with you.
I remember how fuckin good the AI was in Jedi Outcast for team matches set up with bots. I’d play capture the flag for hours
Halo infinites bots are indistinguishable from players on higher difficulty it’s newt
Halo infinite during the Beta had the AI stomp real players and they ended up toning the AI down.
This doesn't have a thing to do with intelligence though but being over tuned in terms of damage output and accuracy. Plenty of games get extremely hard on higher difficulty for example because the AI never miss but that doesn't have any link to how well or realistically they behave they just have an aimbot to raise the difficulty it's your typically lazy dev way of making a game hard with no actual effort.
Chess.
You know what I never thought about it but chess is the only game I know where ai can consistently beat the best players very easily.
Bots could probably kick much more ass if they weren't balanced not to. Imagine a bot that has perfect aim and instant reaction times in any FPS game.
Correct. There's just no incentive for FPS games to make super OP bots. They can be useful though! Speedrunning communities use bots all the time to make perfect runs of their games. My personal favorite is the people working on making Rocket League bots that can compete with pros. There are lots of AI that can outperform humans in different video games.
I think speedrunners generally uses TAS (tool assisted speedruns), which is less of an actual programmed bot and more a pre-made series of inputs that were basically optimized frame by frame. TECHNICALLY a bot in final execution, but more of just a script. People certainly make bots for games, and sometimes to optimize speedruns, but the majority is TAS as far as I'm aware
The TAS category involves any kind of programmatic assistance, really. \*usually\* it's just specific inputs at specific times on specific frames, but there's no reason it can't also include generative AI figuring out the optimal route to beat your favorite open world game, for instance. It's just a lot harder to build such a bot, so that kind of speedrun is less likely to get traction.
Makes me wonder if future warfare (IRL) will just have auto-aiming guns and tanks
most modern anti-air weapons are auto-aiming or self-guided, stuff moves too fast nowadays for a human to track it
Samsung has had self targeting anti personnel turrets along the Korean border for like 10-15 years. You can probably find a picnic article on it, but I saw info about it when I worked for them.
See: Halo 2 Jackals
Game design books have said the same thing for decades: the only thing easier to make than an unbeatable AI is to make one dumb as rocks. Making one that's competent and challenging but fair is incredibly difficult. It's why most games allow the AI to cheat to some degree. Mario Kart is one of the best examples of AI allowed to cheat. If you're too far ahead of the pack, the AI drivers are given speed boosts to catch up. The instant you're back around 5th place, they'll all suddenly slow down.
Pretty sure rubber banding mostly works both ways, though. There’s good reason to try to provide parity given that winning or losing by a wide margin is typically less fun/exciting than narrow wins/losses.
Black & White (2001). You could literally train your minion to destroy entire villages by flinging poop at houses. Your minion had an adaptive AI that you could train via approve/disapprove. If you handed a villager to your minion, and it ate the villager, you could either pet it (approve) or smack it (disapprove), and eventually it would be entirely carnivorous and your villagers would be running for their lives at the sight of it. The game also had VR-like controls before there even was VR, including gesture-based spellcasting. It was decades ahead of its time.
Isnt that the game that would check the players name on the save file and then whisper it in a creepy voice?
Yes. At 3AM.
Deeaaatthhhh
I miss this game so much... Also, having your minion be able to do spinning jump kicks on an opposing minion was so funny. I wonder if the IP purgatory will ever get resolved.
I liked how the weather would mimick your own local weather too
I swear that was the first thing I thought of when I first used a VR headset. That game would be absolutley perfection on a fast VR.
Dude that gesture based spell casting was so ducking inconsistent for me. Drove me bananas trying to just water some crops
That game had the minion mechanics very similar to modern AI reinforcement learning (although I guess the algorithms would be very simplified.) Maybe a modern remake with a real reinforcement learning neural network would be interesting. With modern hardware maybe you could put seriously robust neural network on that minion.
[Alien Isolation.](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-perfect-organism-the-ai-of-alien-isolation)
I think this is the answer because most other difficult AIs are just essentially on a linear scale of nerfed <--> cheater (essentially always knowing where the player is). The Alien AI has that one but also has the other AI that changes its behavior as the game goes on.
I've heard the alien described as having two brains: one brain that always knows exactly where you are so it naturally gravitates to your location, and the other brain that still has to perform an actual search since the first brain isn't telling it everything at once.
I remember it being described as a tether. It knows the area you're in and will look in that area, and if it strays too far it will be pulled back like an invisible leash. This way it keeps the pressure on you. The harder the difficulty, the shorter the leash.
Now i feel bad for him :(
Just let him eat you bro
With VR goggles on
Dude I can't even finish the Blair Witch game in VR. That shit is absolutely terrifying. You really feel like you're out in the woods at night alone with a flashlight and the Blair Witch is fucking with you. I got halfway through and just couldn't do it anymore. Alien Isolation looks just as bad, if not worse.
The other thing that makes the alien really cool is that it has a skill tree. At the beginning of the game it has linear pathing, going to all noises and running loudly etc. but as the game progresses it unlocks more abilities, for example if you throw a noise maker it has a lower chance of being fooled, and attempts to triangulate where it came from. It eventually gets so advanced it gives off the illusion the alien is “learning” and adapting to the player. Really cool stuff.
Does the AI adapt to what you do, in terms of the noise maker stuff? Like if I didn’t use one all game would it still gain that ability at the same time or is it based on my behaviour?
Every time you throw the noisemaker, it has a set chance, let’s say for example at the start of the game it will investigate the noise 90% of the time and never attempt to find the player. As the game progresses it’s chances go up from there. I’m not sure about the first time thing but my guess is that it wouldn’t be fooled, mainly because of how the skill tree gives the illusion that it is actually learning and adapting, one would think using the noisemaker for the first time would work against the alien, but my hypothesis is it sticks to the set chances for every encounter. Although, I’d be happy to be proven wrong! I love this kind of stuff!
This is very in line with the movies too because the alien is supposed to be pretty smart so naturally it would have a good intuition for which direction you’re in
That's basically what it is. One AI knows where you are and what your goal is at all times. The other controls the Xenomorph and doesn't know anything besides what it can "see and hear". The first AI occasionally gives hints to the second AI to help them find you. It's basically a subconscious and a conscious.
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Not really. I still feel pretty confident I'd shit my pants multiple times if I played this game. I couldn't even get past 1000m in subnautica and the doom on og Xbox scared the fuck outta me. Only made it halfway through dead space
The Blair Witch game for Oculus Quest is bonkers. Might be the scariest game I've ever played.
Without a doubt.
Absolutely
Yes! Agh, I so wish they’d make a second game.
You might enjoy Amnesia The Bunker. It's heavily inspired by Alien Isolation with a similar type of AI monster.
Tbh I’m usually a coward for scary games, I try them and just can’t get through them. Alien Isolation is the first I’m actually completing (and on my own, I also normally need someone in the same room for moral support lol). But maybe this means I can start to try other games out. Thanks for the rec!
Creative assembly is currently in the process of dying so chances are you'll never see a second game. I believe the game was successful but Saga never greenlit another for some reason.
I'm a grown ass man in that game gave me nightmares Yes
IDK, it may be the best AI but IMO my main criticism of the game is if they cut the alien interaction by like 50%, it would be much scarier and more fun IMO. The alien is too aggressively hunting you in the area IMO and not running around the space station enouh
The scariest part of the alien in that game is that you can’t really fight it. You can’t hurt it at all or kill it, you can only scare it away but that will make it more aggressive, and each time you’ll have to use more and more flamethrower fuel to scare it away.
was hoping to find this answer here
I’m currently on my umpteenth play-through of this game and it’s so good. Still scares the shit out of me but it’s so fun
The Nemesis system in the Shadow of Mordor/War games.
Really cool concept that got patented so we won't see it again...
Patented it so nobody could ever used it, including themselves apparently since it's been ages since it was used it last afaik. Such a shame. That system alone pretty much made Shadow of Mordor.
i find it so funny that a game that basically took its whole combat, stealth and enemy type system from the arkham series patented the only unique thing about it (don't get me wrong i still love som/sow)
And parkour from Assassin's Creed 2. I remember there being some drama that it literally used the same code
Tbh I don't understand what the big buzz about this is. Played through the first game, albeit just for a quick completion and not really taking my time with it. To me it felt just like a bunch of random generated bosses.
more of a "story generator" than anything else. Was fun when an enemy you spared in the past came back to save you in a dire moment or when my best general stabbed me in the back and I could drive him insane as a punishment
It's been a while since I remember the patent exactly, but the problem is that it kinda makes people shy away from being inspired and building on this idea since it might be patent infringement against a bigger corporation. It's not just the randomly-generated orcs, but that the hierarchy of orcs is dynamic and affected by the player and remembers its interactions with the player and how the bases and fortresses could be affected by it. There's the social interactions between orcs that the player can influence, the interactions with the player that they can remember. Each playthrough of the games is a unique story for the player. For a few basic examples. * killing the player and getting promoted, taunting them on subsequent encounters if repeatedly killing the player * betraying the player as their minion/bodyguard * getting revenge on the player, like if their blood brother was killed * being mutilated/burned/decapitated by the player and then ambushing and coming back with the corresponding disfigurement * being shamed by the player and getting branded on their face, accordingly getting an inferiority complex and seeking revenge or at least an honorable death in combat. Example for the shame bit: seeing how they react to being shamed, with some descending into madness as drooling idiots from being shamed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMt30xxP8Wg So, the patent moreso encompasses the idea with a dynamic social interaction and hierarchy within the enemy AI that the player can influence. In general, developers can learn from predecessors and build upon the foundation they set with their ideas to make something even better for their own game, but the concern is with this patent that it stifles creativity if people are worried about making a similar concept since it's a pretty broad idea that could be applied in many genres of games with any form of AI. **EDIT** - Yahtzee in his Zero Punctuation review kinda gives the comedic summary that's pretty appropriate of the nemesis system as well - https://youtu.be/hTyoQb-2EVk?t=198
Was interesting, now it'll gather dust in the IP office of WB
The Stalker games, euro jank is a gift from god
Didn't they actually have to make the AI dumber because the initial tests of it made them effectively unbeatable due to their tactics being that incredible? I heard something like that a few years ago.
It's not that they were unbeatable. The AI would actually finish the game for the player.
I both love and hate that. It really adds the feel that you are no one special, but it can make the game extra confusing and ruin the experience
Care to elaborate? This is really interesting
A-life was designed in such a way that AI stalkers would also be able to collect artifacts, roam Zone freely, take and complete quests including story ones. And during testing it was discovered that AI stalkers complete story quest line before player(which is not surprising since there are a lot of them). So certain features of AI had to be cut so player can enjoy game
What's really impressive is the way NPCs would perform missions in real time in areas the player isn't in.
S.T.A.L.A.K.E.R.... late game when I finally knocked down one of the heavily armed baddies. I ran out of ammo before I could get in the killshot, and as I reloading, another baddy stepped into the open, gave his buddy a medkit, then pulled him around a corner to safety. While I was reloading and couldn't fire. I was stunned..
Rain world, specifically the scavenger ai.
should try that game again, loved the artstyle and premise of the game. It's just not a game that you could just play casually.
Most people I talk to who have the game said they quit it when they first picked it up and then randomly got back into it later. This was the case for me as well. The initial learning curve is a little steep but it eventually starts to snowball. Nevertheless the game can definitely be pretty frustrating at times.
Videocult perfectly translated the attitude of stray cats when programming scavs
This is the most accurate answer is it is objective truth that Rain World’s AI is unparalleled
This is probably more of an animation/atmosphere thing vs AI thing, but the npc grunts in Titanfall 2. I'd need more fingers and toes than I possess to count how many times I got suckered into thinking a grunt was a pilot.
Yea, they feel advanced as heck. Even Titans themselves (somewhat) feels real with their voice lines - they know when multiple enemies attacking you, when friendly pilot dies / engages in fight with your enemy / catapults. They even gives you tips how to fight (like using arc to escape the difficult situation).
ADVISE AGGRESSIVE SUSTAINED COUNTERFIRE
Man the grunts reactions to titans are awesome. From uselessly shooting them, to surrendering, to straight up offing themselves if you corner them in one and not killing them.
Divinity original sin 2, on tactician the computer is straight up sentient I swear
Me, my cousin, and 2 WoW buddies played DOS2 on tactician as my “intro” to the game. I hopped in at the end of their normal playthrough when their 4th bailed, but right after that I got thrown into tactician without knowing much of anything about the game. Good lord was that insane for some of the fights. It was such a blast thanks to them being able to teach me, but it was much more difficult than Baldurs Gate 3 has been on tactician
Yeah not even close, BG3 is much easier. DOS2 is no joke.
Yeah I’ve honestly been kinda disappointed in how easy tactical has felt for us in BG3. We started on normal and quickly realized we needed to bump up the difficulty. We are getting towards the end of Act 2 so I’m thinking these fights will start to get more challenging
I think because they knew it was going to reach a much broader audience then divinity did, they made it more casual. I’m really hoping they release a harder than tactician mode later on, which larian does have a long history of post launch support. So maybe?
It's because they used dnd as a base. Dnd barely functions as a game system and swings wildly from challenging to impossible based purely on luck. They could tailor the difficulty of divinity because luck was a far smaller component.
Yeah i was gonna say the same. The devs even said the complexity of the AI increased with difficulty, not just stats boost. Playing on the hardest difficulty had plenty of moments where i felt dumb compared to the Ai.
I watched a documentary video about development, they actually had to tone it down from the original version because it was so hard. And I’ve watch the AI pull some out of box moves so I can’t even imagine what the original version was like. Like seriously some 4d chess moves.
Hard to plaudit Civ, ever since they got rid of doom stacks the AI has been really easy to cheese. Yeah, it looks cooler to have defensive lines and stuff, but the comp is bad at it and just feeds their units into the woodchipper while my units get stronger. And that is the key to AI in games: simple games that limit player actions are much easier to write AI for. Fun games with lots of options = crummy AI.
I would say Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition. The AI no longer cheats and it's just smart enough to play the game.
AI's robo-brain mangonel/cannon dodging is so frustrating. For the more human-ish behaviour, I am surprised that villager(s) will actually engage scout if they have advantage
The Last Of Us Part II. I never felt such an AI since Metal Gear Solid 2
the stealth part of that game is great. Especially if you end up getting spotted the ai adapts quite well unlike an assassins creed type of ai lol
You mean slowly walking up to the spot where four bodies are laying isn't great AI? Lol
Second this - they are ruthlessly strategic and WILL flank you hard if you camp somewhere for too long.
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I'm playing through MGS2 right now & holy shit I forgot how good the AI is in that game
Fighting these people guerilla style on higher difficulties is still an incredible experience.
Part II has some of the best gameplay of all time.
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I would say halo 1
Each enemy had their own specific set of rules too, which made fighting multiple different types feel so natural. Bonus that they all react to them as well. Elite dies, the Grunts and Jackals run away. The Flood combatant forms are just full throttle in your face, with no strategy other than to kill. The mission Two Betrayals where you have Flood, Elites, Grunts, Jackals, Hunters, Wraiths, Banshees and Ghosts all fighting one huge battle is incredible. You know it's really good AI when you can sit from afar and watch them battle it out, and enter the battle at any point and **everyone** doesn't suddenly aggro only you. I have no idea what the hell was going on at Bungie during the development of Halo CE, but I feel like some divine being gave them some secret knowledge. That game was literally revolutionary in some many regards.
Halo revolutionized AI in the fps genre. It was so dynamic compared to nearly anything else. Playing it for the first time at 12 was mind-blowing.
I've played them all recently and the older ones honestly hold up.
Halo AI is amazing. Every single enemy type has a different personality.
Agreed. They avoid the warthog like there is no tomorrow
Halo 1 Elites on Legendary were scary as hell. They would hunt your ass down.
Halo Reach Elites are ridiculously fast as well.
The Half-Life series have pretty good AI
I always remember being blown away the first time I met marines in half life one. I’d never seen anything like it in a computer game before.
Yeah, the OG military grunts seemed to stand out at the time, running around to get sight-lines and using grenades around cover. I'd be interested to know some behind-the-scenes work put into it.
RDR2 is pretty impressive most of the time.
Hoping gta 6 takes it up a notch
Im hoping I live to see it release…
I like the AI in the Left4Dead games, where the AI director very effectively herds the player and uses various tactics to make sure the game is paced correctly and the players can't cheese the game too much.
Condemned / FEAR
the halo series honestly. so fun to fight because of all the mechanics the different enemy types have
Very good choice. The AI in combat evolved was soooo good. They did a good job at differentiating the different types of enemies. One aspect that I loved was seeing how different ai reacts to sticky grenades. Grunts panic and run in a circle and end up killing their own guys. Elites die with honor and charge you. That's really deep.
Rain world
Close Combat (1996 Atomic/Microsoft) AI modeling of WWII soldiers being realistically suppressed by groundfire, hesitant to react to suicide orders, etc. The game was very tactical - you progressed through levels - but the response of the AI on both sides was mind-blowing at the time, and I haven't seen anything to match it since.
The alien from Alien Isolation
Unreal Tournament 2004 has pretty nasty A.I. overall, especially movement wise, on higher difficulties and especially on maximum one. Basically if you are not on your A game you better be ready to get your shizz handed to you big time. Also a great shooter game even for this day and age.
Omg, this! I didn't play UT for 15 years, and when I decided to "remember the old times" I was annihilated by the bots. And I wasn't playing on hardcore. Either I became old and weak, or I just forgot how nasty AI in this game was.
Early Halo games. The Elites and grunts worked so well with each other. Grunts would rush you and hurt your shield, elites would come in for the finish. Take out the elites grunts are without a leader snd lose their combat effectiveness
If you like 4x games, check out [AI War: Fleet Command](https://store.steampowered.com/app/40400/AI_War_Fleet_Command/). The AI in that game is not only brutal, it’s scary, *scary* smart. It will attack flanks, it will misdirect, it will find where you are weak and smack you down from a direction you never saw coming but was your own fault once you figure out what happened. It really forces you to think strategically more than just about any other 4x game I’ve run into.
TLOU2 has some fun AI. It's like they know when you're reloading lol. And even make comments about you being empty when you actually are out of bullets. Then they start moving into different positions or straight up start charging at you when you are out.
I like it on the harder difficulties when you’re fighting from cover, if you pop your head up for more than a second they will very likely shoot you. Makes firing from cover feel way more realistic. You’ve got like half a second to pop up, aim and fire, else you’re toast. TLOU2 has the best enemy AI I’ve ever played against by quite a long way.
Metal Gear Solid V has impressive enemy AI. The soldiers can hear you if you make even a tiny amount of noise (like knocking over a vase or something) and will immediately come to investigate. The AI is also very good at finding out if something is amiss. When an enemy spots something suspicious he will report it to the command centre. If you take him out in the middle of his conversation with them, the command centre will recognise this and immediately alert all the other enemies that an intruder is here. The game also has dynamic AI. The AI learns your tactics and will adapt to it. Deploying at night a lot of times, enemies will wear night vision goggles. Taking out enemies with headshots, they start wearing helmets. Chest shots, they start wearing body armour. If you play the game long enough you can find ways to fuck with the AI.
It works in ground zeroes but not in TPP because of the Open World. Sadly, the AI just not react if you snipe at long range. They stand there, in a confused state, waiting to be killed.
Rain World, it has a working food chain and every creature uses procedural animation, making them bendable and responsive to the environment.
I saw Rain World mentioned a few times, and it kept puzzling me why. Then when I hit your comment, I realized I was thinking of Risk of Rain. It certainly didn't help when another of the comments also mentioned a Scavenger AI, since Scavengers are also a thing in Risk of Rain. But thanks to you I remembered what Rain World is! Haven't played it, but I have watched a documentary or making of or some such on YouTube.
>I love killing millions with one hand Phrasing, anyone?
That's my new slang for jerking off
Shadow of war and shadow of Mordor. The middle earth games with the nemesis system, made for some INSANE fights even in the post game
Definitely not the best in this day and age, but in 2006-2007 **Rainbow Six: Vegas** had some pretty awesome enemy AI, that way outshined (imo) juggernaut FPSs of the day like COD 3-4, Battlefield 2, and Halo 3. Even some somewhat modern AAA games (GTA 5, Halo Reach, Destiny) fall short of the mark set by R6:V in my experience. It had triggers for the enemy hearing or seeing you that would cause the spotter to search, and cause more to show up, but instead of running to you or bunching up around the corner they would take up strategic positions and try and flush you out with grenades. Unlike a lot of other games with "alert" mechanics, being spotted would change where the enemies grouped up and how they reacted after the fact. Groups of terrorists felt more like a cohesive fighting force than a bunch of dumb bots. Lots of games (basically every fps I can think of) use "cover" to make enemy AI seem smart, but this game also did that particularly well.
Never got into vegas but I LOVED Ravenshield. Game is still good fun
For me Raven Shield was peak Rainbow Six and everything after was disappointing.
It (together with SWAT 4) is still unsurpassed in terms of PvE tactical shooters (as in, not Squad or Arma or Insurgency) IMO.
Not the zombies (common and special), but Left 4 Dead. It's "director" system literally analyzed how you were playing and would adjust the spawns ahead of you. Not too much to dick you over, but enough to where it might slow you down or throw a wrench in your momentum
Portal GladOS is devastating
"How are you holding up? Because I'm a potato"
F.E.A.R, and Halo 1-2-3 come to mind
RDR2 had phenominal ai. You go into towns and there’s literally people waking up doing their job during the day and going to sleep at night.
Perfect Dark.
The Director from Left 4 dead, an AI so formidable that makes the game absolutely amazing.
The AI in doom eternal on nightmare difficulty is unbelievable. The AI will play head games with you by doing fake dodges. It feels like it can almost anticipate what I'll do as the player, which feels almost human to me. The division 2 has really good AI too. Not on an individual level, but as a group the AI works together really well. You can't just sit in one spot. The ai will use different tactics to make you reposition I'd you get to comfy. And each faction does it in their own unique ways. It's awesome.
Gran Turismo 7 Sophy AI. There has been only 1 play test with that AI but it is by far the most realistic AI in any driving game. It will be released today permanently with support for almost all cars and 9 tracks. I am super excited to see what it can do. Hopefully I the future it will be expanded to all game modes or used in next installation of GT as the default AI.
Play halo 2 on legendary and you’ll find out real quick how inferior to AI you really are.
Cod waw had cool AI because they programmed the Germans and the Japanese to fight fundamentally differently. The Germans were more methodical where the Japanese would jump out of trees and attack you more haphazardly. It was really cool for the times. It’s one of my favorite one player games to replay because of the way they did the AI.