The video game industry is constantly evolving new technology to enhance the player experience. Using artificial intelligence is a technique that developers have increasingly started incorporating into games. It is one of the major developments that studios focus on due to positive feedback from players in recent years. Applying AI is commonplace these days, but recently many video game developers use AI to overcome problems that players encounter while playing games.
This is most common in horror games, where AI can elevate tension, challenge player ability, and even induce fear. A good AI system makes the player feel like they have been outwitted, which is especially powerful in a horror game. Enemies are not only more unnerving, but they feel eerily like humans, and can be unpredictable. This lead to some of the best moments during these games.
15 Milestone Game Releases That Demonstrate The Progress Of AI
AI in video games plays a huge role. These games, however, showcased just how advanced AI can behave when executed properly.
5 Sons of The Forest
V.A.I.L.
The Forest got a lot of positive feedback about NPC behavior. Being randomly spied on by cannibals, who reacted in different ways when the player performed a certain action, was captivating. In Sons of the Forest, Endnight Games stepped up the ante. They developed a new AI system called V.A.I.L., which gives NPCs different emotions and feelings. The addition of an actual AI companion in the game called Kelvin makes things even more engaging. Players can write instructions for him on a notepad, such as helping with construction, hunting for food, and gathering wood. He becomes less efficient if overworked, though.
Each NPC has a set of capabilities called "thoughts." This generates routes for each of them based on variables that change in response to player actions and decisions. The AI can make NPCs feel tired, hungry, thirsty, bored, or scared. It even features complex emotions such as grief and empathy. If an NPC is killed, the surrounding characters react in different ways. Someone who was close to the victim will approach the corpse in disbelief, while others will become hysterical and won't be able to fight. Some will flee, and some will become angry and aggressive, attacking the player. The developers of Sons of the Forest added unpredictability to the AI to prevent players from figuring it out completely, which makes for an interesting gaming experience.
4 F.E.A.R.
Goal Oriented Action Planning
Inspired by Japanese psychological horror films, F.E.A.R. was a revolutionary step for enemy AI in video games. Using a combination of clever game design and automated planning, F.E.A.R. gives NPCs different goals that they may want to satisfy, depending on all the player character's possible actions. Essentially, the NPCs are all independently planning their own actions in the world of F.E.A.R. based on a given set of goals and a set of possible actions they can then carry out.
7 Open-World Games With Unpredictable AI
Open-world games can frequently use an unpredictable AI that could cause challenge, frustration, or hilarity.
F.E.A.R. was the first game to use a technique that gives hostile NPCs a wide range of actions that respond to what the player character is doing. Although all NPCs act independently, they look like they are working as a team. They can effectively perform flanking maneuvers, lay down suppressive fire, and retreat when under fire. NPCs shouting dialog at each other is just a form of trickery that makes the player think that they're working together, but in reality, they planned their actions long beforehand.
The NPCs are also constantly moving — compared to other games, they have a greater number of combat animations. The AI of F.E.A.R. was so revolutionary that it inspired AI systems in games like Dying Light and Horizon Zero Dawn.
3 Left 4 Dead 2
The Director
The AI in the Left 4 Dead franchise is called The Director. It features a dynamic system that helps pace and dramatize the game, along with managing its difficulty. It has been heralded as a unique system that has inspired the creation of other director AI systems in open-world franchises such as Far Cry and The Witcher. As the name suggests, it is a managerial system that oversees the player's experience as they are trapped in a zombie apocalypse.
The Director looks at the proximity and number of zombies near the player, adds all the distances to the player together, and divides that by the number of zombies. It then has a value that it can map to certain AI-directed actions. Enemies and items don't have fixed spawn points; instead, the Director varies their locations and quantities based on each player's current position, scale, and location.
The Director also creates tension with emotional cues such as visual effects, dynamic music, and character communication. It goes through phases relating to the state of survivors, adding dynamics by allowing them to recover after an intense incident or meet heavy resistance when rapidly progressing through the map. What this means in practice, for example, is that it punishes players who aren't cooperating by placing more zombies around them, and rewards teams that are playing by the rules. Not only does this help immerse the players in the experience, it creates a fun multiplayer game that's impossible to outsmart.
2 Alien: Isolation
Two Alien AIs
Alien: Isolation has a famous artificial intelligence system that has led to arguably the best horror gaming experience in recent memory. The AI here is another Director system, and its programming is fascinating. It has a two-tiered system where one part is always aware of the player's location, but only feeds the information to the other part in small doses. Thus, players feel as though the alien is genuinely hunting them, because the alien isn't fully aware of the player's location. There are lots of videos explaining this online.
The gameplay is great because both AIs interact with each other to adapt to player behavior. For example, if players frequently hide in lockers, the alien will start checking lockers more often. If players use noisemakers or flares to distract the alien, it becomes used to them and ignores them. The first time a player uses a flamethrower, the alien doesn't react to it. The second time, it realizes that fire is bad and becomes uncomfortable. If used too much, however, it gets used to the flamethrower and will kill the player character anyway. Alien: Isolation has one of the most intelligent AI systems, and the xenomorph is probably the most terrifying enemy in a video game because of it.
1 S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
A-Life
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
- Released
- March 20, 2007
- Developer(s)
- GSC Game World
- Genre(s)
- FPS , Survival Horror
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is another FPS horror game that uses incredible AI to challenge the player. It is meant to simulate human behavior, and succeeds at doing so. It is incomparable to other combat AIs because it requires the player to constantly remain alert and on the move. The AI system in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is called A-Life. It has a set of rules that it follows based on the type of NPC and its role in relation to the player. It makes enemies fire upon the last known position of the player character, lays down suppressive fire so that other enemies can flank, and flushes players out of cover using grenades. Then, the player gets shot.
NPC enemies use cover dynamically, so the player never sees an arm or a leg sticking out like in other games. They can hear the player reload their gun, and take the opportunity to push (this was years before The Last Of Us 2). They can also see the player with their guard down, sneak up on them, and stab them. If the player opens their inventory, the AI gets a signal that the character is vulnerable to attacks, and sneaks up on them.
NPCs act completely independently of player actions too. A-life created Emergent Gameplay, which is what happens when games generate complex mechanics that are not directly specified by the developers. The developers needed to scale back A-Life for release because computers at the time couldn't handle it. Despite being more than a decade old, players today are still amazed by the unscripted moments in this game.
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