A) Behavioural modelling is an important part of NPC development for games. Should emotive modelling be part of that development?

Emotive modelling should most definitely be a part of NPC development as where the universe games are set in can be crafter down the to most minute detail for the sake of immersion, all that can go out the window if the NPC’s the player interacts with are flat, lifeless characters. It makes the game so much less enjoyable and can give the player the feeling of the game dragging on if they have to regularly interact with NPC’s who have all the personality of a lump of wet soil.

An example of how emotive modelling failed is Fallout: New Vegas’s character Benny. He is characterised as being a charismatic, suave guy but any trace of that is lost with the flat voice acting and little to no emotive modelling making his character come across as flat and emotionless. Benny is an antagonist to the player so it would only make sense for the creators to want to make it so you hate this guy but when playing the game I only found myself at an annoyance with Benny, wanting to skip through as much of his dialogue as possible as I found interacting with him to be so dull.

That being said, Fallout: New Vegas is a somewhat older title, being released in 2010 but that doesn’t excuse Bethesda’s lack of emotive modelling. New Vegas is an open world RPG game, one that relies heavily on character interactions with a large number of NPC’s that fill the wastelands of the games world so with that, it’s hard to remain immersed in the game with such a lack of character in the characters.

B) Consider your favourite video game. If it contains AI controlled agents how individualistic are they and their behaviours, and, how might you set about improving them?

Though I’m sure many have already spoken about Skyrim when it comes to discussing the AI’s and character interactions but there’s fair reason for that. In the world of Skyrim there are hundreds of NPC’s dotted across the towns, cities and spaces between making for countless encounters with the player providing they don’t try to kill you on sight or visa versa.

Of course with the sheer number of NPCs across the whole of Skyrim there will be NPC’s that share the same voices, same lines of dialogue or same reactions to the player as scripting entirely unique behaviours, dialogue and hiring as many voice actors to fill all the roles would be insanely expensive and the effort would be wasted on the casual player. On the one hand, the NPCs can remember if you’ve wronged them or the town they’re from, reacting negatively towards you for being a terrible person in the past or react to the groups in which you’ve aligned with or status condition you may have. But on the other hand, it’s a well-known fact that the smallest thing can suddenly turn all of the characters of a town into an angry mob trying to kill you such as in my first playthrough of Skyrim when I killed a chicken hoping for xp or food and then the majority of Riverwood’s residents were chasing me down, baying for blood.

To improve the AI of Skyrim I would definitely work to have not quite so strong mood swings among the people of Skyrim or have levels of aggression dependent on what the player was doing.

(2016) Let’s talk about voice acting. [online] Reddit. Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/fnv/comments/5a4wk4/lets_talk_about_voice_acting/ [Accessed 3 December 2017]
Jay Green. (2014) The Making of Fallout New Vegas Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scqESZbRNkU [Accessed 3 December 2017]