Grand Theft Auto: How Smart is the AI? - IGN (original) (raw)

When it comes to games that spotlight clever artificial intelligence (A.I.), few titles compel one to shout out with glee ¿ "I have seen the future of AI, and Dark Flanger X is it!" Unless, of course you have played a game called Dark Flanger X...

After having lunch with a few folks at DMA last week in a restaurent around the corner from their offices, the conclusion we drew about AI, at least at the table, was that even though the developers were better now and that technology was better than ever, few, if any, games necessitated brilliant. In other words, usually the AI characters in a game are only as "smart" as they need to be, not as smart as they could be.

At first I thought they were back-peddling, but then I realized it's kind of hard to argue against that one. Most games don't really need to be that smart, and perhaps if they were, would the game leave any room for fun? The fact is, in a game such as Quake III, the bots need to be fast, pretty accurate, able to run and hide, and are able to "think" somewhat like a gamer. And they perform a decent job of it, but never enough to simulate real human gameplay. They are never as smart, or perhaps as unpredictable as a human is.

With Grand Theft Auto 3, DMA has programmed its non-player characters, the artificial intelligence (AI), to perform several acts that simulate Good Samaritan behavior, but it's also programmed them with personalities, which means quirks, oddball behavior, and therefore even some surprises.

The pedestrians, or "peds," as DMA called them, in this game are programmed to act like good, law-abiding citizens. OK, well, the ones that look they are good law-abiding citizens usually are the ones who are good, law-abiding citizens, and the one who don't look the part, well, let's say you might expect different, perhaps even violent behavior from them. In Liberty City, the peds walk around in the morning and talk to one another. They are programmed to react to one another, and to you, too, depending on your actions. In Driver and Driver 2 cars never hit pedestrians. As soon as a car is inches from a ped, bam! He runs away. In Grand Theft Auto 3, the peds may fight back if you attack them!

Here's a good example. You can carjack any car in the game -- a cop car, bus, taxi, boat, limo, sports car, if it's in the game, it's yours for the taking. But depending on the non-player character in the game, he or she may react differently. In some cases, you open the door, grab the driver and throw them onto the ground. They yell, scream, or curse you. But some will simply lie on the ground afraid, while others may quickly get back on their feet and fight back. Yeah, they are programmed to get mad!

As the day turns into night in lovely Liberty City, the friendly Samaritans of the day go home and the sinning, drug-porn, pimped-out, badass daddies of the night take over. These folks won't make phone calls to the cops when you kill somebody. If it's a member of another gang, the response is "it ain't nothing but a thing..." But if it's a member from their gang, you just messed up big time, my friend. They'll come after you. In another instance, you may simply be walking down the street in front of an alleyway, and if the neighborhood isn't so good, a gang might appear from the shadows and mug your ass. Like the Boy Scouts say, always "Be Prepared!" At least at night...

Grand Theft Auto 3, in a way, is about law and order more than anything else. It's about breaking the laws and seeing just how much you can get away with. Part of the AI's job in this game is to keep you from doing what you do best ¿ which is basically to break the laws in all of the worst ways ¿ to steal, murder, and destroy. Take an afternoon killing, for instance. If you murder a person in this game, and a ped sees you, he or she will run to the nearest phone (I'm not sure, but they may actually have cell phones, too), and call the police. Now you have a new problem on your hands.

DMA suggested that they are ways to escape this situation. One is to simply carjack a car and drive away. However, another way is to kill the onlooker, or onlookers. In some cases, you might have to slaughter a handful of innocent people just to get yourself out of the situation. Of course, but doing that, you have upped the character's level of notoriety, or the internal "most wanted" meter, and have therefore increased the difficulty of the game.

Each time a particularly violent or destructive act is performed a little badge-like star appears on the screen indicating that the player has just earned a new level of dangerousness or notoriety. There are five levels of this kind, and each time one is earned the cops grow increasingly more lethal toward you. As you become more violent, the cops first grow in numbers, and then they invite Swat teams, the militia, and helicopter squads. In fact, swarms of cops of all kinds will come looking for your booty!

Another interesting feature about the AI is how it's built into jobs and tasks. Where there used to be phones everywhere in GTA 1 and GTA2, now there are many areas to pick up jobs from. Wherever you are in the game, arrows lead you to the nearest job, with a few exceptions. Some jobs come in strange places. If you steal a taxi, for instance, the guy or guys in the car may talk to you. After all, you are driving a taxi, so they "think" you are a taxi driver. They may talk to you, and some might even suggest in passing that they have a job requiring "offing" somebody. You can take the job or pass it up entirely. The fact is, the job is there in the taxi!

Another neat aspect to the taxi-driving scenario is that there are four levels of perspectives when in a car, and the fourth places you inside, at the steering wheel. Using the shoulder buttons you can actually turn left or right, and you can see the character in the car with you, talking away! It's really cool.

Lastly, there is a dark, brooding old man who hides, or sort of dwells, in the shadows of the game, and his name is Darkel. Darkel is more or less like the city's muse, or prophet, and he says weird things, and asks you to do weird things, too. From Darkel, you can find jobs, too. In one situation, Darkel asks you to perform a hideous task that can only be found in the darkest of comic books (I'm thinking of Spawn at the moment). In this one case, Darkel sets you out to steal an ice cream truck and to acquire some dynamite. Your job is to attract as many people to the truck as possible and to set off the bomb to kill as many of them as you can! Dark! Evil! Gruesome! But hey? When was the last time you did that in a game?!

Like the folks at DMA said, the AI is a game shouldn't be so smart that the game ends up being no fun at all. It should be smart enough, and no more. From the sounds of the AI in Grand Theft Auto 3, the characters are smart enough to create a good amount of tension (i.e. keeping the game balanced), create annoying obstacles, and to create enough trouble to keep you on your feet, be they peds, thugs, or the police themselves.

For more details on Grand Theft Auto 3, make sure to aim your browser our special feature on The Living City, or check our preview, by clicking on the link below.

-- Douglass C. Perry