I believe everyone saw the Official Trailer for Skyrim? Anywho, um, I wanted to point this out.

In the trailer between 1:36 and 1:38, there are about 3 very short clips, and the one I want to focus on is the clip of a mage type NPC (at least I believe thats a NPC, it could be a PC, whatever I'm just talking). One thing that you notice right off the bat is he does some sort of erea effect fire spell (which is sweet by the way). Ok he does a really cool spell, whatever, but if you look closely you will notice the group of draugr he is facing are acting in a way that :tes: A.I. have never acted before.

They are monuevering around him. You could say they are giving him the sense that he is being surrounded. They are ganging up on him, their tring to gain a tactical advantage over him. Their also you could say waiting for him to make a mistake or going to attack him one at a time. If you remember in Oblivion and in Morrowind, when hostile NPCs were alert of your presence they would just immediately go on the attack, but what you see in here is they take, and as I said, a tactical position and trying to conner him, instead of just rushing in to attack him.

Any feedback?

Ya that's quite a clip. I also noticed that the Draugrs were not just simply running at the player in a straight line, It has been said in many interviews how changing combat was a top priority, this could be proof of that.

Enemies using tactics and terrain sounds great.

Okay will be confirmed on unconfirmed when the game is out theres nothing else to say.

Also think about this. Imagine that same type of situation, but in fps. In a dark dungeon. Just think about, undead are surrounding you, they keep on shifting in a circular pattern, you don't know how many of them there are. When are they going to strike? Are they going to strike?

Doesn't look anything special to me, hell it was about time they updated their [censored] 2001 combat AI. It looks like an ordinary combat AI to me, which you can see already in 10 year old action adventure games.

It could be that the NPCs did not maneuver into those positions. It could be that for the purpose of demonstrating an area-effect spell, the player merely charged his character into the center of a group.

I know that Valve when releasing Half Life 2 was going to put in smart enemies but they found gamers got frustrated. I say have a difficulty AI setting that way when you are learning the controls and just having fun the first play though it is not too frustrating. Later when you want more of a challenge crank up the AI and have mages and marksmen shooting from cover, rouges sneaking up on your butt, melee pinning you down, NPC's healing each other and etc etc etc.

Which action-adventure games, out of interest?

We can't afford to have smarter AI, it might become self aware and will svck you into the game!

Actually, that might not be a bad idea...

No way! There are no computers in Skyrim! I couldn't play Skyrim there!

I imagine that AI take a lot of effort to develop. For a few decades they have worked on programs for chess and the only terrain in that is black and white and movement is clearly defined and limited. Only in the last what 5 years or so have programmers made computers the masters of chess. Wouldn't even know where to start to program a TES with many more variables than chess. I would like to see "smarter" behavior but I will take what they offer and am sure I will enjoy it.

Yeah, but then you'd get to be the main character, plus you would LIVE in a computer, how much cooler could that be?

Also, look at the wolf when the archer aims at it. It's like it tries to make it harder for the guy to shoot him.

Yeah, I think the AI for Skyrim will be quite awesome

Anything would be an improvement over oblivion's combat AI.

It made it nigh impossible not to hit your allies, with everyone beehiving in the center of the action.

The ONLY exceptions to this are when they had a bow, or decided to throw a fireball.

Kudos to bethesda for improving it.

Well, that way I would finally know how taste does damn sweetrolls. On the other hand, I would need to change my pants after the the first encounter with a zombie .

Thank god for the better AI, it was pretty much [censored] before this. :confused: On another note, this AI will be pretty cool in Fallout 4...

It does look a lot better compared to Oblivion's. At least from what we saw in the trailer. I also really liked how the draugr held their swords more realistically, and how one of them pointed their sword at you all threateningly.