Would you prefer a little more emotion from the enemies you face in games?

[pulse2]

As of now you run around shooting or killing hordes of mindless enemies like a mass murderer and feel nothing, not one tear is shed for those poor souls, they were forced out by their bosses to take you on and god knows what their personal predicaments are but now they are dead, dead forever....well until you start the game again.

So lets say you played an FPS for example and enemies started cowering begging you to spare their lives and that they have a family, or heck, shooting and killing one enemy makes another go: "NOOOOOO FRED!!!! YOU BASTARD!!! YOU KILLED FRED!!! I'LL KILL YOU!!! I SWEAR IT!!!" and they start spraying bullets like crazy or charge at you with a sword. Or how about they can see they are in a dire situation and grab an innocent nearby to defend themselves with.

Would this sort of gameplay appeal to you or do you prefer the mindless scripted zombie AI that shoots from the open rather than taking cover

 

[Mr Thin]

I want to see a man scream in agony as I run him through, and watch his dying twitches until he finally stops moving. I think a game like that would make me genuinely regretful of murdering someone.

Angsty morbidness aside, yes, I truly would like to see more emotion and, well, life in my enemies. In basically any game, regardless of genre. I liked the panicky anger of the enemies in Splinter Cell: Conviction, for example; though it got a bit old when they said the same panicky angry thing ten times in a row.

I think a game would have to approach it very maturely to make it work.

At the very least, it'd be interesting to find out if more emotion in enemies made a difference to me, or if I'd still just see them as digital bad guys in need of a good stabbing/shooting/exploding.

 

[CommieX]

The short answer is yes.

When I say this, I'm thinking of the stealth sections in Batman: Arkham Asylum. I LOVED hearing the joker's thugs slowly lose their freaking minds as I picked them off one by one. How they started off mocking you and then became more and more paranoid until there was only one guy left, pissing his pants, just waiting for me to strike. That game had my favorite stealth sections ever, because it made YOU the hunter, and the reactions of the henchmen played a big part in that.

This probably isn't what you're talking about, but I would love to see more of this.

 

[Dogstile]

What Commie said about AA is my feelings on this. I would like it in an unhealthily sadistic way.

Hell, in timeshift enemies would surrender if you slowed down time and went around taking the guns out of their hands. Once there were no guns left, they wouldn't do anything to hurt you. I thought that was really cool.

Of course after I figured this out I opened up the next section and shot down a load of enemies. I originally thought they were just taking the time to run to their friends while I was distracted. Turns out they were just picking up weapons. Surrendering enemies instantly got a headshot with something explosive from there on.

 

[Lord Legion]

It would certainly make things realistic... when npc's don't die after just a few shots and instead crawl around on the ground, crying in pain as they try to get away from you.

I imagine every firefight would then be like that scene from Unforgiven... and everyone is the "bad guy"

 

[Phlakes]

Yeah, it would be nice if they had AI other than "shoot at player" and "hide behind cover", so you could see some surrendering and different fighting styles depending on their emotions. So let's say it randomly sets two soldiers as friends when they spawn, if one is killed, the other will start raging and spray bullets everywhere.

 

[Simalacrum]

Now that would make a good game. Media in general doesn't really portray the duality of conflict. So on top of the gameplay elements, I think it could also be used as a great story-telling mechanic; it could be great for giving a political message that, in war, both sides are victims.

 

[TheGreatAndPowerfulZOG]

depends on the tone of the game. If a game is trying to be taken seriously at all I think it's more respectable to put a human face on the enemies. I liked how in Perfect Dark enemies would sometimes surrender and beg for their lives and when they died they screamed things like "why me????" or "Oh my god I'M DYING!!!" although that was played more for sadism than emotional impact.

 

[ManInRed]

There are a lot of reasons why shooter games avoid this, but I could see it work, especially if the game allowed you to avoid killing guys -or rather had objective not forcing you to do so.

Though whether this could make some bad guy seem sympathetic another story. I remember a line in Hunter X Hunter, where the protagonist comments on how the team of villains care so deeply about their allies but are so willing to hurt others being proof of how evil they must be for lacking any sympathy to outsiders. (Kind of a fun line as you do not expect him to go that way when he brings up the topic.)

 

[Zhukov]

Yes! That would be nice.

The mindless zombies do have their place in games like Serious Sam, but in general I would like to see more complex behaviour and "emotion" from AI enemies. I want enemies that will flee or surrender rather than suicidally charge the nigh-invincible protagonist that just gunned down their five friends.

For example, some of my all-time favourite enemies are the big daddies from Bioshock. They don't just attack you on sight, in fact, to begin with they're happy to completely ignore you. Even if you run up and point a gun in their face they'll just push you aside or adopt a scary pose and growl a bit. Plus, they're fairly benign in nature. After all, they're just protecting a little kid. But when you piss a big daddy off, good lord, they go from lumbering gentle giant to thundering engine of violence.

Someone posted a leaked trailer of I Am Alive on here recently. It showed melee-based enemies backing off when the player pulled out a firearm. That looked fairly promising.

[sub]PS. You make a lot of threads.[/sub]

 

[zehydra]

Generally, I don't like shooters where you have tons of health, mowing down tons of people/things throughout a level (with the exception of L4D and Goldeneye).

This is more or less why I like multiplayer shooters, because everyone's got a fair chance. It's just more fun that way for me.

I do think that adding emotional impact to killing people in RPGs would be fitting, but for a shooter, maybe. In an RPG, your actions are supposed to have consequence upon the world in which you're "living" in, so that makes sense. Generally however, in an FPS, the focus isn't the world, it's the fast-paced shooter gameplay. The hunt is what matters, not the hunted.

 

[neonsword13-ops]

Anybody remember the trial in Heavy Rain where Ethan had to go kill the drug dealer?

If not, I'll just leave it in a spoiler down there.

Spoiler

Well, at after the confrontation, Ethan has a choice to kill the man or not. The man admits that he has kids and he cries. That really pulled my heart strings. I killed him. I felt so bad. No game really makes me feel that way.

 

[Dethenger]

I don't know. It might come off more comical than anything else. In Halo 3, there was a chance that when you kill a Brute, another Brute would shout, "You killed my lover!"
When you think about it, that's actually really sad. But I lol'd.

 

[pulse2]

The short answer is yes.

When I say this, I'm thinking of the stealth sections in Batman: Arkham Asylum. I LOVED hearing the joker's thugs slowly lose their freaking minds as I picked them off one by one. How they started off mocking you and then became more and more paranoid until there was only one guy left, pissing his pants, just waiting for me to strike. That game had my favorite stealth sections ever, because it made YOU the hunter, and the reactions of the henchmen played a big part in that.

This probably isn't what you're talking about, but I would love to see more of this.

No, this is precisely what I'm talking about. Emotions whereby the enemies get friggin terrified by you, angry if you shoot their comrades, get cocky if they think they have the upper hand and surrender and beg for their lives giving you that moral choice of taking their ammo and moving on or being a heartless bastard and blasting them. Take Max Payne for example, you go on a killing spree because they murdered your family in cold blood, now in your journey for revenge, it would be entirely up to the player to decide who they should kill and who they shouldn't. Heck, even a choice of killing or sparing the final boss would be cool depending on whether or not a sequel is being considered.

Its simply that Yahzee put it the right way, FPS' are pretty simple concepts, point at something you don't like, shoot and it goes away. But gameplay is always like that, you move from room to room just mowing down enemies with little or no variety in the types of enemies you come across. Not based on what they are wearing or the weapons they have, but their tactics, their state of mind, their emotions. Do ALL the hundreds of men you kill to get to the boss have no families and friends?

 

[Worgen]

Ive only seen one fps that really did more then have the enemies act as bullet magnets, oddly enough that was turok evolution, if you did so much damage then the dino guys would surrender to you, you couldnt do anything other than just hang around and watch them fade away... or shoot them in the head if your an ass, but they would usually drop ammo once they surrendered

 

[redisforever]

This. Is. Awesome.

I do have to point out that story in Concerned, the Half Life 2 comic, well, just read it:
http://www.hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2006-05-17
http://www.hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2006-05-18
http://www.hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2006-05-20
http://www.hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2006-05-22

 

[Ldude893]

Even in games like CoD where you're shooting seemingly mindless hordes of people, I can't get rid of the thought that these people might have families. They have their own lives, comrades, histories and personal loves. Even when killing Nazi zombies, radiactive ghouls or the Combine soldiers from Half Life 2 of the wasteland, it makes me shrudder a bit when remembering what the people I shot used to be like.
When I'm playing a human being shooting human being, there has to be some emotion present in there.

 

[pulse2]

Yes! That would be nice.

The mindless zombies do have their place in games like Serious Sam, but in general I would like to see more complex behaviour and "emotion" from AI enemies. I want enemies that will flee or surrender rather than suicidally charge the nigh-invincible protagonist that just gunned down their five friends.

For example, some of my all-time favourite enemies are the big daddies from Bioshock. They don't just attack you on sight, in fact, to begin with they're happy to completely ignore you. Even if you run up and point a gun in their face they'll just push you aside or adopt a scary pose and growl a bit. Plus, they're fairly benign in nature. After all, they're just protecting a little kid. But when you piss a big daddy off, good lord, they go from lumbering gentle giant to thundering engine of violence.

Someone posted a leaked trailer of I Am Alive on here recently. It showed melee-based enemies backing off when the player pulled out a firearm. That looked fairly promising.

[sub]PS. You make a lot of threads.[/sub]

Yeah, I was looking at I am Alive, if those weren't scripted events, they were pretty damn awesome. But again, with Bioshock, what made it so awesome was partially voice acting and the fact enemies had personalities, psychotic yes, but personalities none the less which made them all the more freaky rather than monotonous ¬_¬ As opposed to say a game where the first level consists of green enemies, the second level consists of red enemies, the third level consists of yellow enemies, the only differences are their colors and weapons. The fact that you attempted to attack the little sisters only to make her scream then out of nowhere comes this frigging pissed off Big Daddy just goes to show that enemies can have emotions, fear factors, to make them seem different from one another. Next time you see a little sister, you'll bet you'll be more careful before bothering her, even if it seems like she is alone.


[sub]PS. I only go thread crazy like this when I actually come on which is like every few days, and I usually have a lot of things I want to discuss all at the same time, if I leave it, I forget it, lol. As long as I'm not trolling I don't see the issue tbh.[/sub]