5 OPEN WORLD Games With INCREDIBLE Enemy AI

some games you're up against drones and some games you're up against the chess master i mean figuratively speaking hi folks it's falcon and today on game ranks five open world games with incredible enemy ai starting off with number five it is shadow of mordor here's an open world game where the ai system is front and center one of the biggest parts of the game is the nemesis system which generates unique enemy orcs for you to deal with who all have their own personalities and quirks as you progress through the game they either raise up the ranks of sauron's army this is a lord of the rings game keep in mind or die and get replaced by a new org each orc which remember are mostly randomly generated have special names and titles that explain their characteristics their looks can change based on their attributes like which rank they are possibly how they've been defeated in the past like if you defeat an orc by attacking it with a swarm of bees it'll come back with its head covered in stings or you can cut an orc's head off and sometimes it'll even return with his head stitched back on stuff like that what makes all this more complicated is that the various orcs don't just form an antagonistic relationship with the hero of the game talion they also have their own rivalries with other forks that means they're more likely to fight than help each other but on the other hand you can get orcs who are blood brothers and allies they might start showing up to hunt you down together and if you kill one then the other may seek revenge at first a lot of this stuff is only in the background it doesn't really matter a whole lot but once you get the ability to dominate or mind control orcs wading in and taking advantage of the various personalities of orcs can work in your favor when they're not patrolling certain areas are actively hunting you orcs are often going off on their own missions and it's possible to influence things to either help or hinder an orc on a mission helping an orc can lead to them going up in the rank and another way they can increase in power is by well killing you yeah every time an orc kills you they increase in power sometimes even making them go up in rank and of course they don't forget what happened and if you encounter them again they happily gloat about how they've already beaten you once already basically there's a ton going on with the nemesis system in shadow of mordor and they refined it further in shadow of war sometimes as a player you might not see a lot of this in action unless you really take the time to engage with it but there's some really interesting stuff going on and you'll see it if you do at number 4 is metal gear solid 5 the phantom pain like shadow of mordor metal gear solid 5 contains a unique gameplay mechanic that plays a big role in how the ai reacts to your actions it's called the revenge system or simply enemy preparedness and it's a system where enemies will respond to snakes actions with new defenses at its most basic level this system will see enemies respond to snake shooting soldiers and the head by putting on helmets or if you sneak into enemy bases at night a lot they will start wearing night vision goggles a lot of stuff along those lines it sounds pretty simple but the whole thing is actually a lot more complicated than you might first think with a lot of different possible triggers that cause enemies to react to things very differently there's some particularly clever stuff like if enemies discover comrades that have been tranquilized a lot instead of just waking them up they'll start calling for an alert as well as waking them up or if you snipe enemies from long range eventually enemies will respond by stationing snipers at various bases in the world there's a lot of these like if you're caught using the falten system a lot you know the balloons that you can use to steal enemy resources and capture soldiers instead of just being shocked when they see someone get balloned up soldiers will start trying to shoot them down this doesn't just involve direct stuff like that either if you mostly complete missions by stealthily eliminating enemies then the enemies will respond by making it more difficult to sneak like they'll start installing cameras in certain bases at higher levels of response they'll put down mines and they'll start putting gun cameras instead of regular security cameras eventually as well let's be clear here mgs mgs5 doesn't have the best enemy ai in the world or anything there's a ton of videos people exploiting the ai basically just to run circles around them what it does have are these systems in place so that enemies can respond to the player's actions in ways that feel organic and there's enough variety in there that it's possible they can surprise you the first time you see soldiers equipping flashlights at night in response to your actions it feels like you're dealing with a clever enemy even if the ai can sometimes be best described as forgiving at number three is stalker here's another game that doesn't have the best ai but what it does have is atmosphere the enemies feel smart even if they're sometimes shown not to be for one thing stealth in this game is hard it is not forgiving like an mgs-5 if enemies even catch a sniff of you they will go on alert they will surround you and most likely blow you away combat encounters in this game are incredibly tense and that's partially because of how ai enemies will intentionally team up on you this on its own isn't revolutionary but when you combine it with the a life system it makes the world feel a lot more alive yep this is another game with a special system in this game a life refers to how the developers created their ai to make the world feel more alive it's less about simply creating entertaining combat encounters and more about making the world of stalker feel more like a real place where things are happening that you're not a direct part of reddit users offer some examples of this system in action scott pohl talks about how you can hear gunfire in the distance but in this game's case it's not just some background noise it's actually something going on somewhere in the map sometimes bandits and other stalkers will wander around the world and get attacked by monsters sometimes they'll survive and make the area easy for you to pass through sometimes they'll all be killed and there will be a monster hiding somewhere nearby gallagher marine mentions that you can find dogs eating dead bodies and you can watch bloodsuckers drag around dead bodies from a distance although if you do that you're weird i'm joking it's a game and it's made for that just sounds like a weird thing though there are other interesting things that can happen that you might never notice like according to this d-zone.com article it's possible for bandits who survive an encounter to leave and join up with other bandit groups it's also possible to heal a wounded bandit which will make them non-hostile it's sometimes simple stuff but rarely things you see in open world games even today apparently the whole thing was a lot more complicated before release but the developers were forced to scrap a lot of it because it was just too system intensive for computers at the time like i said at the top the individual level ai and stalker can be unimpressive to say the least to a lot of people but the way the developers used ai to make their world feel more reactive is still to this day an impressive achievement at number two is legend of zelda breath of the wild part of what makes the legend of zelda breath of the wild feel so fresh and unique is the fact that it takes a game series that's been known for being fairly rigid and turning it into a reactive playground where it feels like almost anything can happen and a big part of this is clever ai ai that will often surprise you some notable things enemies will do is stuff like intentionally set their weapons on fire to make them more damaging when fighting you or throwing rocks at you when their weapon breaks because this is nintendo we're talking about they're pretty tight-lipped about how their systems work there's no big gdc conference video we can check out to get a full rundown on all this so we're mostly looking at people's experiences with the different things they've seen happen in the game like this gif posted by marissa sama showing an enemy moblin kicking a bomb back after link throws it at him people also mentioned that moblims will avoid explosions as well depending on their range sometimes they just run around the blast zone if it's more convenient but it's not just the ai being smart sometimes dumb ai can be really immersive too like the fact moblims will pick up things and throw them without thinking and sometimes completely blow up their allies while the characters in the game are being dumb it's actually smart ai it's programmed to be more lifelike interesting and immerse you another example is this part as mentioned by nintendo glitch on reddit it's possible to chase away these two guards in the desert by luring an enemy over to them they might even fall down which is something rarely seen in the game these types of events in which non-player characters basically present this interesting situation is part of what makes this game so damn immersive there are tons of examples of different things going on with the ai in this game and it just goes to show how ai doesn't have to be brilliant to still be a lot of fun it's better described as being adaptive the enemies don't have to be smart they have to be realistic it doesn't just run at you and swing its sword enemies actually respond to your attacks sometimes in ways that if they happened in real life we would deem unintelligent and sometimes it's pretty funny to be completely clear and at number one is red dead redemption 2. when it comes to unique encounters and creating a world that feels active and alive rdr2 is basically unmatched the amount of little random events and scenes that you can encounter in the open world is huge as well as the variety of things that can happen it also expands on the living world concept from gta 5. because rdr2 is set in the wild west there aren't as many npcs as gta 5 it allowed rockstar to add more detail and life to each of the people you can possibly encounter npcs have daily routines some more elaborate than others but pretty much all of them save quest characters who just stand in one place waiting for you to show up will do something with their time npcs also respond to you differently depending on your appearance and any prior encounters you've had with them and your notoriety if you're wanted for example town folk will respond to you differently than if you're not same if you're covered in mud or if you're not wearing any clothes another interesting wrinkle to the ai is how they adapt to your situation as illustrated by this article by thegamer.com the ai can actually catch itself making a mistake and fix it mid-scene like with this sequence where they're supposed to dump a body in the swamp if they screw up and it doesn't actually go in the water they'll pick up the body and try again but let's also bring up the wildlife they've also got their own ai they react differently depending on the situation deer avoid wolves wolves avoid bears and everything generally avoids you to offer a simple example there are so many unique ai things that can happen in this game if you're particularly notorious music might stop when you enter a saloon or random thugs might try to pick a fight with you there's unique interactions when you're dealing with people in town versus on the road versus out in the sticks and the ai just responds accordingly the actual combat ai is fairly basic but the world ai much like stalker is incredibly good and in this way the game feels like a real successor to what the game was trying to do but at a much more complex and larger scale basically rdr2 takes the ai of open world games to the next level like we said the standard combat ai isn't really that impressive but that almost seems to be by design because all the underlying stuff going on in the world is just absolutely impressive that's all for today what do you think leave us a comment let us know if you like this video click like if you're not subscribed now is a great time to do so we upload brand new videos every day of the week the best way to see them first is the course's subscription so click subscribe don't forget to click the notification bell and as always we thank you very much for watching this video i'm falcon you can follow me on twitter at falcon the hero we'll see you next time right here on game ranks

Channel: gameranx

Views: 591,528

Rating: 4.9365659 out of 5

Keywords: open world games, smart AI, video game AI, open world games smartest AI, smartest npc, best open world game AI, games with the best AI, video game artificial intelligence, AI in video games, best AI in all of gaming, rockstar games npc ai, gameranx, falcon

Id: C8NLT6P9mgY

Length: 11min 42sec (702 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021