>> The technology powering this next generation title is doing so much more than simply making everything look great, it’s also changing the rules of how virtual game worlds function. As mentioned before, the area of Tamriel that is the setting for Oblivion is populated with 1,000 NPCs. Unlike current games, these characters don’t simply disappear once the player leaves the area, they exist 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Every character has its own virtual life and its own schedule to follow.
You know who really did this? It's a game called Rain World [1]. In Rain World, the world keeps turning when you're gone. Literally: predators and prey go about their way, chasing and fighting and eating each other, after you die. When you come back they don't respawn. The game simulates their actions while you're away and you meet them again in medias res, doing whatever they were doing while you weren't there.
And what was the reaction of the gaming public to that? A typical reaction on release was this article by Brendan Caldwell on Rock Paper Shotgun, whence I quote:
Modern platformers that want to be difficult have learned the value of a quick and nearby spawn. Fell into some spikes? Never mind, says the game, and one second later you are at the last brick wall you leapt from. The slugcat doesn’t get this treatment, instead it is transported back to the nearest save point, the last hibernation chamber. The things you have done to the environment have been undone, the parts of the map you revealed have been recovered in shroud. You are ten screens back from where you were, only now the predators and prey will be in different places.
(...)
The oddest thing about it is that, like the controls, this difficulty feels entirely deliberate. It is like Rain World wants to have the strength of difficulty we find in Dark Souls. But that classic of dying and re-dying had the impetus of soul currency, a sense of gambling, a sense of pace, and the relief of clever shortcuts with near-perfect geography. Not to mention the HUGELY SIGNIFICANT gesture of always putting the enemies reliably in the same place, like a solid, immovable set of spiky hurdles. You always had the means to overcome and defeat them. You just needed to learn.
In other words: "What? I can't just memorise enemies' positions so I can defeat them by muscle memory alone??? I have to think?? Each time?? During a game????"
:Throws controller:
Yeah, so much about AI simulating enemies that have an independent existence.
You know who really did this? It's a game called Rain World [1]. In Rain World, the world keeps turning when you're gone. Literally: predators and prey go about their way, chasing and fighting and eating each other, after you die. When you come back they don't respawn. The game simulates their actions while you're away and you meet them again in medias res, doing whatever they were doing while you weren't there.
And what was the reaction of the gaming public to that? A typical reaction on release was this article by Brendan Caldwell on Rock Paper Shotgun, whence I quote:
Modern platformers that want to be difficult have learned the value of a quick and nearby spawn. Fell into some spikes? Never mind, says the game, and one second later you are at the last brick wall you leapt from. The slugcat doesn’t get this treatment, instead it is transported back to the nearest save point, the last hibernation chamber. The things you have done to the environment have been undone, the parts of the map you revealed have been recovered in shroud. You are ten screens back from where you were, only now the predators and prey will be in different places.
(...)
The oddest thing about it is that, like the controls, this difficulty feels entirely deliberate. It is like Rain World wants to have the strength of difficulty we find in Dark Souls. But that classic of dying and re-dying had the impetus of soul currency, a sense of gambling, a sense of pace, and the relief of clever shortcuts with near-perfect geography. Not to mention the HUGELY SIGNIFICANT gesture of always putting the enemies reliably in the same place, like a solid, immovable set of spiky hurdles. You always had the means to overcome and defeat them. You just needed to learn.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/rain-world-review
In other words: "What? I can't just memorise enemies' positions so I can defeat them by muscle memory alone??? I have to think?? Each time?? During a game????"
:Throws controller:
Yeah, so much about AI simulating enemies that have an independent existence.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_World