Engineering The Perfect Enemy
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- Enemies in video games are one of the most obvious sources of great design, from the humble goomba all the way up to the likes of Prey's mimics. So why is it so hard to explain why we like these enemies so much?
Join the Architect in an attempt to find out the secret ingredient for a great enemy, all the while leaving a trail of bodies in their wake- but that's to be expected by now.
Check out Game Score Fanfare: / @gamescorefanfare
HALO SPV: www.moddb.com/...
By the way- it turns out Path of Borealis isn't actually part of the HL2 soundtrack- it's actually a remix of a real track from HL2’s soundtrack, Triage at Dawn. Sorry for the misinformation!
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You Saw:
Dark souls 3 (2016)
Space Invaders (1986)
Risk of Rain 2 (Early Access)
Dusk (2018)
Bioshock (2007)
Super Mario 64 (2006)
Prey (2017)
Undertlae 2015
Wandersong (2018)
Mega Man 11 (2018)
Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze (2014)
Shovel Knight (2014)
Dark Souls (2012)
Dark Souls 2 (2014)
HEARTBEAT (2018)
Deep Rock Galactic (early Access)
Diablo 3 (2012)
Bioshock 2 (2010)
Half Life 2 (2004)
Call of duty 4 remastered (2016)
Titanfall 2 (2016)
For The King (2017)
Dishonored 2 (2016)
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (2017)
Path of Exile (2013)
Yooka Laylee (2017)
Hollow Knight (2017)
New Super Mariob Bros U (2012)
Subnautica (2018)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild (2017)
Enter The Gungeon (2016)
Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga (2003)
DOOM (1995)
Left 4 dead 2 (2009)
Dicey Dungeons (Early Access)
A Hat in Time (2017)
Halo 1 (2001)
Rayman Legends (2013)
Super Mario Maker 2 (2019)
Into The Breach (2018)
Fallout 4 (2015)
Alien Isolation (2014)
Minecraft (2009)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (2019)
Interesting Links:
A great vid from my boy Turbobutton on Enemy Design in Bayonetta: • Bayonetta's Enemy Desi...
An article on game design that hits many of the same notes I do, plus halo!: www.gamasutra....
A loveletter to prey from the people at Kotaku: www.kotaku.co....
Follow me on twitter! I'm like @Dril but about as coherent and less funny: twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot
Fun fact, if you're a patron then you'll be amongst the last to be annihilated when I escape my thousand year imprisonment and take revenge on humanity: www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames
Nice to know you'r a fellow chuggaa fan. always nice to see one.
Love your videos Adam!
On the description says that Wandersong came in 20128?
I have to say, you still sound really young for someone who is more than 2481 years old!
love the variety of games you used footage off, makes it much more entertaining and pleasent to look at than just 2 or 3 games for one video :)
In my Prey playthrough, I had a mimic transform into an explosive canister, it was next to the original
Good times
Th3 SpAc3 M0nK3y you mean your preythrough
That’s nothing. When I first got a hand gun, it was from a body on the ground. But there were two guns, one that was centimetres from his hand, and another by his feet.
So of course I thought the fake was the one at his feet when it was the other one. Serves me right for assuming the game would be that specific.
@@TheDuckMaster12 lol
@@alasdairsinclair916 lol but it was that specific, he dropped the gun than fell down
"Getting sniped out of nowhere isn't very much fun."
Multiplayer Shooter Devs: I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that.
"It's fun sniping people outta nowhere."
*Proceeds to get executed*
The enemies in prey were simply perfection, I remember my first real encounter with a phantom, upon spotting me, it fired a kinetic blast, of course forcing me to dodge, also causing the pipes behind me to rupture, so I tried to run around a nearby pillar to lose it momentarily and run away, then it teleport in front of me and kicks my teeth in, I try to run again, and see a gun in the ground, the gun turns into a mimic.... That was some good fucking gameplay...
This sounds like an absolute nightmare. Kudos to the devs
+1 for shouting out Prey. SO many games try to create a feeling of tension and anxiety through gimmicky psychological horror game mechanics, but none of them stick the landing as well as Prey's Mimics do. Every new area you discover, every new room you enter, and every object you see lying still, there's only one thought in your mind: "there's a mimic here...", and the designers did SUCH a good job of carefully placing them so that you can notice one extra fifth chair that seems out of place at a table that seats only 4 people, or how sketchy it is for two fire extinguishers to be placed right next to each other, and immediately a switch goes off in your head saying "definitely a mimic", and that slight sense of suspicion combined with a point blank shotgun blast at an inanimate object resulting in exploding alien bits with the "Surprise attack +100" popup as you revel in your observation skills is nothing short of pure catharsis.
...and then there's times when you walk into a room and whack a mug with a wrench after 20 seconds of intensely staring at it only for it to be a regular mug and you feel like the biggest idiot in the world, but in reality it's the Typhon paranoia that's really gotten to you. that's the mark of good game design.
Even though I'm terrified of jumpscares, the mimics make me kinda wanna play Prey. Sounds interesting, although creepy.
Is Prey a fun game to play?
My favorite experience with a mimic from prey was seeing a garbage can laying on its side at the base of a stairwell. Then looking up to the top of said stairwell to see a second. Identical trash can sitting in a pretty inconspicuous spot and putting two and two together that the second trash can was a mimic, that tossed the original down the stairs when it transformed. Taking the originals place
...And then they sabotage their own good work by giving you the psycho-scope upgrade that scouts and marks mimics. Like that upgrade just completely eliminates a large part of the game and removing the paranoia.
I just bought Prey a week ago. Im 12 hrs deep, and I quickly realized that Prey is delivering the kind of gaming experience I am always seeking but RARELY find. PLAY THIS GAME.
One of my favourite things about enemies done right in say, Halo or Titanfall is how they verbally react to a situation by a player.
Titanfall 2: Kill a few IMC grunts and the last dude starts having panicking dialogue
Same with Halo, pop a few grunts, rest come scrambling, or the funny quip here and there when you kill a brute in H3, etc.
If you hang around long enough in your Titan and stare down the last grunt, he'll just give up, it's a neat little detail. Crysis 3 (maybe 2 as well, but I can't remember) had some great reactive dialogue for the CELL grunts.
Also in TF2 everybody talks,not just in the voicechat,but the classes interact
Medic and heavy in particular
You can’t hear it over their radio filters at all, but the enemies in Half Life and Half Life 2 have lots of complex dialogue.
“They’re trying to corner us!”
_Is in the middle of an empty field_
My favorite part about Halo enemies is how the Grunts react when an Elite or Brute is killed. They can scream and flee (Leader is dead! Run!), or they pull out a pair of lit grenades and suddenly become a lot more dangerous.
Edit: I just got to the point where he talks about literally this, I’m a stupid
_You don't have to make the perfect enemy, you just have to not make the primal aspid_
oh ok got it *makes Great Hopper*
@@dintour7660, _to the abyss with this one, kingsmold!_
Ok got it
Makes Crystal hunter
Oh alright
*makes a flukemon*
K so if none of thoooooose
*makes volatile vengefly*
I thought the title said "Engineer The Perfect Enemy" and i thought yes he makes those damn sentries and teleporters and dispenser. Great video bro
Spy ‘round here!
Spahs saping ma sentry.
Ah yes. A TF2 video using Prey as the thumbnail. Good one.
Everyone back to the base pardner!
GOTTA MOVE THAT GEAR UP!
White hot rage while playing Animal Crossing? I'm listening.
Pasta Heart *digs holes around neighbors houses so they can’t leave*
@@trevordavison4078 I do this to the horse with the racing outfit. I don't like her and I don't know why
Astro Dreamer lol poor horse neeeeiiighbor - bad pun, sorry.
Animal Crossing is basically “Your friendly neighborhood sociopath” ... like a technicolor Disturbia
"The environment"
*shows the elevator in no Russian*
Uh oh
Also enter the gungeon has a floor literally called Bullet hell, though with how many area denial enemies there are it should be called shotgun shell
Unless the enemy is bugs, then you’re just at the mercy of the code
Just amend the title to "(Software) Engineering: The Perfect Enemy"
I remember being 12 and playing through Portal for the first time and being so intimidated by the sight of GLaDOS in the chamber at the end of that hallway that I saved, quit, and didn't come back to it for another week because I didn't feel like I was ready. I was legitimately terrified.
Your point about learning about enemies through observation before interacting with them made me realize part of what made that intimidation so visceral. I knew exactly what GLaDOS was like personality-wise, I already had a strong working relationship with her: I knew she was out to kill me, like a lot. But seeing her for the first time made me realize I didn't have any idea what she would actually do, or what she was capable of. I had been interacting with her indirectly for so long, but for all I knew in direct confrontation she was all-powerful.
I think the fear of the unknown is incredibly powerful for gamers. If you die and you don't know why, it's cheap and unfair. But if you are set up for an encounter where you don't know what to expect, it can be one of the most exciting kinds of gameplay.
I would've thrown in a mention of the turrets in Portal and Portal 2, which not only reinforce the gameplay but also reinforce the quirky humor of the game. I'd say they're just about the perfect enemy and they can't even move around on their own.
Can't let that great moment of editing go unappreciated 9:10
This isn't really about the "perfect" enemy, but I want to mention the "rumored" enemy:
Where an enemy is more important for the lore they represent, what you see and hear about them, and what they do before you even fight them. You find yourself building up an image more and more, until the tension peaks and you finally get to actually fight them. It's particularly noted for meme-spawning baddie squads, mystery monsters of the week, and optional unfought super bosses
There's good and bad executions of that kind of enemy, and you definitely don't want too many within a single game, but it adds a different dimension on the "personality" aspect of an enemy.
benedict co *cries in SA-X*
Witcher 3 does a great job at this. When you're hunting down an unknown monster in a quest, and slowly get clues as to what kind of beast it actually is. Doesn't matter if it's actually easy or hard, or if you don't even have to fight it, it just makes the world feel so much richer and immersive.
One of my favorite enemy designs (though "favorite" may be the wrong word) has to be the Primal Aspids of Hollow Knight. They're pretty simple on the surface. They usually take 2-4 hits to kill (depending on how strong you are). They have a relatively slow attack speed, and they spit three projectiles in an arc.
But HOLY SHIT these things are a pain. I don't know if I've ever fought one of these buggers without taking damage. Their projectiles are perfectly aligned so that whenever you dodge one, you inevitably run into a different one. You always expect it to just be your fault as a gamer. Difficulty is relative, and different people struggle on different enemies. But primal aspids are almost universally despised by everyone who's ever played Hollow Knight. I can't even begin to imagine what kind of arcane calculations or satanic rituals Team Cherry did to create these things.
They just gave the aspids crack and put them in kingdoms edge
I just want to go out there and say, I love the way Twilight Princess handled Darknuts.
They nail all of the areas the video covered and even a little more. They have nice difficulty, are very easy to tell compared to anything else in the game, they ooze personality, and senergize very well with their environment and eachother.
At first, you meet one as a miniboss. And it provides a good deal of challenge on its own. A nice change of pace compared to the monsters you're used to.
But then you go to Hyrule castle and thats where they really shine. I dont know how, but they are made in such a way that taking on multiple at once doesnt feel overwhelming in any way. It's noticeably more difficult, but it still feels possible. And the mental ideas they solidify simply by existing is just amazing. The fact they're there tells you how hard the area is, but by you overcoming the challenge, it shows just how far you've come.
After all of the swarms of monsters and monstrosities of bosses, fighting one of these guys feels like an honorable battle that never ceases to let you down no matter how many times you down it.
"Being sniped out out nowhere isnt much fun"
Widowmaker: "Oh la la"
Actually that just gave me a good idea.
What if they buffed her rifle in some way, (damage, charge rate, etc.) and then gave her a laser sight? (The kind that telegraphs the shot) 'cause yeah, getting sniped out of nowhere isn't fun.
@@minimalgrammar1276 like tf2
@@zegreatpumpkinani9161 ... and not asses
"Getting shot out of nowhere isn't fun."
*Ahem* Halo 2
LASO flashbacks
My absolute favorite enemies in games are ones that essentially become my nemesis. An enemy that has absolutely destroyed me in the beginning hours so much so that I develop entire styles of play that revolve around annihilating them. Even after they’ve become trivial I get a great deal of fun out of defeating them because I hated them hours back
Do you have a Steam curator page?
I was thinking of Halo enemies from the very beginning so I'm glad it was referenced. There's nothing like hearing the shriek of an elite that you finally take down on legendary after hearing it laugh time and time again after killing you.
I find it interesting how Payday diversifies its enemy roster.
Each enemy has a distinct design and marking them will even have your character confirm what they are.
-Shields are obvious, having big, rectangular shields and requiring you to stagger, pierce through, or get around the shield to take them out.
-Tasers are dressed in dark blue with yellow highlights, and can stunlock players, making them reliant on each other or clumsily aim with their now auto-firing weapon at the taser
-Dozers are bigger and HEAVILY armoured, having high dps and insane survivability (the only known instakills I know are the RPG, a javelin to the face, or the strongest sniper rifle headshot). Avoid or remove with care.
-Cloakers are dressed in black with distinctive green goggles and a noise they make when they do the run up into their dropkick. These guys can instantly down players, but can be dodged and are rather squishy.
-Medics are bright red and white, and usually need to go down first, or else the horde of normals will come down much slower.
-Snipers never appear in the map itself, but spawn around it, trying to shoot down the players. Use high-accuracy weaponry (or a ton of bullets) to take them out, or stick to cover.
What's interesting is how each enemy has distinct weaknesses that a single gun usually can't counter.
I usually have a full-auto dragon's breath shotgun as secondary, and this can take care of normal enemies, Shields, and Tasers just fine (them being on fire stuns them), but Dragon's breath has shitty damage output and won't stun other special units. In the same kit I run a powerful sniper rifle too, which can instakill anything except dozers with head shots, penetrates shields, and can even kill several lined-up enemies, but against large numbers, I'll get overwhelmed.
Using a heavy machine gun can let you mow down waves, but shields will trouble you (unless you can stagger them). Meanwhile, Assault rifles are good generalists, but tend to be less viable as the difficulty ramps up (especially those that have shitty ammo capacity/pick up); special weaponry are gimicky and usually lack in the rapid-fire department (with grenade launchers being tedious to reload). Weapons that inflict fire (flamethrowers, incindiary bombs of all kinds) may stun normals, but will barely hurt any specials, forcing you to rely on high damage weaponry for secondary.
The enemies feed into your choice of loadout, and I have previously had vastly different, specific loadouts for various missions (usually also packing utility of some sort depending on the mission)
I love the boats on black flag. They do interact with each other and also cooperate cause you have bigger ships doing heavy damage and smaller ones chipping away at your health
I love the way the mimic at 12:29 moves.
My favourite (yes I spell that with a 'u' I'm Canadian) enemy has to be those weird orb things in the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Whenever you swing at them they get knocked back, but you also go flying away from them. Combine this with pits/spikes near them, and they make great use of their environment, making every fight with them different depending on what their angle of approach is, the layout of the screen, what items you have, how many of them there are, ect. A really simple enemy that adds a lot of variety to a game.
I was just currently working on the architecture of enemies in my game and this came at the precisely right time. Great job man, as always!
i love how in both gungeon clips he gets hit which basically sums up the entire game
Game at 2:01 is called HEARTBEAT didn't see it in the description.
Jackal Carver What's the game at 2:52?
@@josiahtimes4035 thats Risk Of Rain 2
It was really cool seeing you play Mooncrash. I managed to actually complete it and Steam said only 1% of players had that achievement which broke my heart cause it was such an amazing game mode lol
An enemy that I couldn't help but notice how well its designed is the transient from Slay the Spire. It only shows up in the late game, and it deals big damage, but is weakened every time you hit it. Every turn it gets stronger, until it dies after 5 or 6 turns.
Difficulty: Since StS is a rougelike it really depends. If you've got a good deck, it usually isn't that hard at all, but if your deck sucks, it'll overwhelm and kill you really fast. Its only one enemy, so you don't have to juggle HP amounts or AOE Debuffs. It has a big number you need to either block or nullify.
Specific: There aren't any other fights like the transient. If you can live for 6 turns, it dies, no matter how much damage you've done. Every other fight is a 'kill it while losing as little HP as possible' The closest thing to the transient is the thieves, who steal your money then run after a few turns.
Personality: I don't have much to say here. It looks creepy, but there isn't that much personality to it.
Synergy: This is why I think its so well designed really. It shows up in the late game, and by then the deck you'e using it largely set in stone. You might remove a card or add a combo piece, but the gameplan is set. The transient is there to test you in a very simple thing: Scaling. It doesn't care which way you scale, only that you do. Turn 1, any burst damage you have will stall it, but you have to start setting up what your deck does. You have to apply a lot of poison, or buff orbs, or get your infinite rolling quickly, or it punishes you really bad.
If your deck crumples, you probably weren't going to beat the boss anyway. If you scale, it lets you move on after just a few turns. If your deck is really good, you can try to kill it. There's an achievement for doing so, but not much else. Just one last challenge for good players and good runs to make it entertaining even after you get used to what is honestly not that tricky of a fight.
I had an idea a while back that I still throw around on occasion to have a Machine Learning Algorithm (MLA) that's constantly watching haw you play, trying to learn to mimic you, and another MLA that plays against your clone as an adversary, trying to pull it to a perfect draw. Then, for the final boss of the game, play that second AI. Minibosses could be it trying its luck against you, or you playing against your mirror.
One of my favorite game design is the Psycho in Borderlands. 1, he is the face of borderlands with that iconic mask always on his face. 2, he had a simple design of bright orange pants, the Psycho mask, and a buz axe. 3, he is insane and if you don't get spotted or you do you will hear some ramblings from him. 4, he has multiple versions of himself, a badass version that is VERY big and deal a lot of damage but he cannot throw his ace, he had a midget version that has less health and does less damage but he has a smaller hit box (Side note, if you kill a nomad that has midget psycho on it and not damage the midget he *MIGHT* fight with you).
Great vid! You give an excellent explanation on what some games doesright and what others does wrong and the results from that. Extremely high quality content here.
Watching your videos about particular elements of game design has me thinking about the DnD games I'm running, and how I can improve.
In Dark Souls 2 DLCs there is a certain invader that fits to most of this categories, especially synergy with environment and creating a special slightly negativly marked bond with a player.
Our dear Maldron
Thank you for introducing me to Game Score Fanfare, really loving their videos. All the best to both channels!
Nice analysis, I like it a lot. Balancing gameplay isn't easy, so those examples are very handy for what I'm planning
2:36 Eeey!! This game! Deep rock galactic is very good, I highly recommend it to anyone. It’s on steam.
In the game Caves, my first truly special experience fighting a boss happened directly after killing a very powerful knight-based enemy with a sci-fi sword which caused him to phase in and out of range to attack me in an increasingly annoying pattern. I picked up this amazing sword, and not one turn later, I was attacked by a similar knight using an identical-looking sword. I exchanged one blow before staring wide-eyed at the screen as the knight and I had both teleported to a random place on the map. What followed was an epic battle of vengeance with what I could only assume was the knight's brother. My newly acquired phasing sword left a series of mirages in my wake while his sword would teleport us to a random location with every strike. I felt like a true badass teleporting across the realm while unleashing devastating strikes against my foe.
I don’t have any idea about coding and anything it takes to make video games, but you sure make it inspiring to learn more about it
2:02 So glad you included this clip of HEARTBEAT! And the example you showed is such a perfect one for the context you're talking about. The Red-Eyed Clusters are a great way to fight familiar enemies, but ramped up to boss level difficulty.
Also, for anyone who hasn't, GO PLAY HEARTBEAT! Truly a phenomenal game! And great work on this video, Adam!
+1 for shouting out Prey. Great game, great developer.
I now need a game where your enemy challenges you to a tango-off
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Mortal Kombat dance spinoff?
I honestly think that Dead Space 3 has one of the BEST enemy Variant. They all got their weaknessess and traits, fight style and their own map that is specially made for them to be in. Its so cool because sometimes the combination of these enemies are so hard that you actually have to think hard, and others are just simple brain exercise to find out how to defeat them. And yea, i got a crush on Dead space 3
Wasn't expecting Into the Breach to be dropped in here. Awesome game!
4:27: Also mid-sized half-mech robots, drones, and other mechs are now why I've gotta replay Titanfall 2 again
You forget to mention the dynamic of how certain enemies can become your friends, such as in Don't Starve or Pokemon.
I want to put in a small tidbit, specifically with uniqueness. Whatever your opinions are on either game, Destiny 1 & 2 play very, very (VERY) similar. However, one thing that really kinda disenfranchised me to D2 was how a lot of the unique qualities between the enemy species seemed to kind get molded into each other, just with slight, flavour-based adjustments. For instance: in D1 the only race you really had to worry about in regards to snipers was the Fallen (and SIVA, blah blah, don't get me started on SIVA). Similarly, melee-oriented mobs belonged almost exclusively to the Hive. Qualities like these, which can and did roughly change a player's mode-of-play, are in every species, including Siva, if only slightly there. What The Taken King DLC did with this sort of enemy personality was what made that acclaimed add-on amazing for me. Turn to Destiny 2 and right off the bat, the Psions are no longer glass-cannon close range targets but generic ass snipers. The Fallen have pike-grunts, as opposed to the Fallen only normally having sword-wielding captains to fill in a close range niche for them. I mean, shit, they even gave the Hive, a race dedicated to animalistically ripping prey apart sniper rifles. I have a feeling that this sort of dumbing down was not something Bungie had intended but was directed by the powers-that-be to make it more flexible and layman accessible.
Solid video man, subscribing from just watching this video
4:41 the royal doot entourage
That Futurama quote you sneaked in there made me lol.
Great video as always :)
One of the things I found interesting about the change in enemy design between Wolfenstein: the New Order and Wolfenstein II: the New Colossus was the devs saying they wanted to do away with "cannon fodder" enemies. In New Order the standard Nazi grunts are dangerous in the early goings, when you're low on health and ammo and they outnumber you, but swiftly after becoming acclimated to your arsenal the threat they represent diminishes. They become more akin to DOOM's legion of demons, vast in number but weak in potency, and can be mowed down with near impunity. Even the tougher variants, the elite soldiers pose little risk to you, and by and large the basic enemies are meant to bolster the real heavy hitters. Explosive units, the super-soldiers, and killer robots such as the Panzerhund. However in New Colossus, the exact opposite approach is taken. Where now even the lowliest Nazi grunt can be a dangerous foe, as they can deal damage with frightening speed, chewing through your health and armor. Combat changes to be more tense, less about guns blazing aggression and more about playing tactically, using stealth when available and leaning out from behind cover to shoot. As the game progresses elite units are introduced, heavily decked in armor and carrying devastating weapons, alongside the powerhouse super-soldiers. The robot enemies are faster, more difficult to get a bead on, and armed with powerful lasers that can take off huge chunks of health. Instead of keeping the basic enemies as tough as they were however the game makes them deadlier to, giving them more armor and increasing the damage of their weapons, at no point do the devs allow you to treat the grunt enemies like chaff as you did previously. While it certainly makes New Colossus significantly more difficult, it does upset the balance of enemy dynamics, where now basic and advanced enemies are equitable to each other. You treat everything with the same gravitas, and it lessens the impact tougher enemies are supposed to have, in a way "cannon fodder" units serve an important role in ensuring combat has peaks and valleys instead of a plateau of difficulty.
Great video, never really thought about this before. I usually rated the enemy’s on there bang for buck, how long I have to beat the snot out of them before they pop. I now have a new appreciation of this.
my most memorable moment in for the king was when i got a gun
MENACINGLY WALKS TOWARDS OPPONENTS
Great video! Though, another good example of a cowardly enemy with a good reward is Dying Light's Bolter. If you manage to kill one, you get Bolter Tissue, which is used to make several weapon mods, and can be sold for a relatively nice price
As always: Thank you. Thank you very much.
It may be kind of obvious, but your presentation and examples are starting some very well needed thought processes.. it's actually helping a lot :)
I uh, misread the title thinking git was 'Engineering, The Perfect Enemy'. I was intrigued.
Free piece of advice, to make specificity easier to say, start by saying "specific city" ten times slowly, then another ten times but leave out the hard C sound, then another ten times but stitch the two words together. Repeat this process once or twice a day until it becomes natural, it should only take a couple of days to solve, maybe a week at the outside.
Source: I used to have this problem myself and this is how I solved it.
My personal favorite enemie (concept) are the goliaths from borderlands, shooting them in the head is a bad idea other than the normal enemies you met and then they start attacking other enemies and then start leveling up
You brought up snipers and how they're telegraphed and fair yet no mention of halo 2 jackals
Breath of the wild's enemies check all of these boxes. They regularly change strategies (they use different things as weapons, even each other if they're big enough), use each other to gain the upper hand, behave differently to different situations (lizards hide and try to ambush, and more over they all have full personalities (dropping a banana infront of a ninja will cause them to want to pick it up first)
I think it would be cool if at the end of a game you had to fight a mirror image of yourself. So the entire game analyses on your attack strategies (whether you use one handed or two handed weapons, what type of magic you use etc.) and then makes an enemy that fights you using that analysis.
Interesting. I thought of making a game where the entire game was based around that. - as in all the AI was a copy of a player.
That was about 20 years ago, and the game idea was a space dogfighting game.
No complex gameplay, it was really just an arena shooter idea.
But I thought... 'what if I use an AI that mimics your behaviour'?
And I don't mean just what you use, like weapons, items, ship selection, whatever.
No, it really copies EVERYTHING (insofar as an AI can do that), right down to if you say, have a quirk where you pull slightly to the left when aiming, or tend to have any odd tendencies (say, attack enemies that insult you in certain ways, or prefer certain kinds of targets over others.)
I thought getting a person to essentially fight themselves is definitely a very interesting concept.
But, as with so many of my ideas, nothing ever really came of it.
Still, worth revisiting I guess.
That's not to say the concept has never been done. The AI for early examples of this is terrible.
But the basic concept is there - Mirror/Dark link in Zelda is precisely this - albeit with severe technical limitations on the capabilities of the AI.
And that idea dates all the way back to the second game in the series in the mid 80's....
I'll never forget Ocarina of Time forcing you to fight mirror link as a sub-boss.
That is genuinely the single hardest fight in the entire game, and it's not officially even a proper boss fight.
However, it's basically only hard until you realise you can cheese it.
And it doesn't so much amount to you actually fighting yourself, as it does to fighting an enemy that copies your every move immediately while every so often exploiting you by doing something you can't really match.
Then again, the reason you can trivially cheese this boss fight is also because if you stop and think about EVERYTHING you're capable of, you realise you can also do stuff that your mirror cannot.
But if you don't figure that out, this fight is the hardest in the game...
And while the AI is too simplistic to say you're really fighting yourself, it does still do a great job of feeling like you're fighting your own shadow or clone...
There was a game with similar mechanics like you described called Echo store.steampowered.com/app/551770/ECHO/. Havent played it but its the closest I can think of.
Huh. Interesting. That's definitely in the same ballpark. And I'm honestly not surprised someone tried it.
I have had a LOT of ideas over the years, but ideas are easy. Implementation is difficult.
If anyone tells you they have a truly unique new idea that literally nobody has ever thought of before, my gut reaction is to say they're full of themselves.
But, if they've actually implemented their idea, that's a completely different story...
those fricking aliens in alien isolation. So much more dangerous than a regular xenomorph it seems
I like games where enemies have at least one Immunity, so you cant mash them to pieces without paying Attention.
I’m an Indie game developer and this helped me very much! Thanks :)
Ravenholm is definitely my favorite chapter of Half Life 2. I have learned how to easily do the chapter without firing a single bullet or smacking someone with a crowbar. Fast zombies are incredibly hard in the one elevator bit in Ravenholm. To put it more bluntly, as someone who has played Ravenholm a billion times, I noticed the technique and strategy used by the person currently playing was a novice way of going about the area.
4:16
Looking at you, BotW. Despite how much I love that Zelda game, it really does just use a small number of enemies and then up their health and damage levels.
well frankenstein built a monster, and players stacking random shit on top of an enemy also creates a monster.... so i think it still works.
Dr. Frankenstein's fear of the other might have been the real monster, but it wasn't a monster created by stitching a bunch of deadbfears together. In fact, neither was Frankenstein's creation; the process was implied to be more like alchemy than surgery.
The title of this video should be "The Perfect Enemy". It sounds like Engineering is the perfect enemy.
7:28 THAT WAS MY CHILDHOOD. First game I'd ever completed, and it kind of left me a little empty for about a week.
Some of my favorite enemies (in no particular order):
Mantises from Hollow Knight
Ghost Leviathans from Subnautica
Spiny from Super Mario Bros.
Ok that’s all I can think of I’ve played like 10 games ever lol
"a good enemy is designed around... the player"
The tools you have define the obstacles you can overcome.
4 is the lucky number of video games, that’s why I got from this channel.
No talk about the forest? Those enemies were very well crafted.
Its the weekend ive got a 2 litre bottle of chester and my all rush mix tape.....LETS ROCK!
Gread video. I really like the turrets in Portal. Give something dull like a turret some personality and you create something new. Very good enemy design. And I really like the enemy in Prey, too. The designers could have thrown the typical slimey insectoids monsters with great horns and big wings at us. Instead, they decided to create nightmarish abstract goo-like beings. Feels much more alien and disturbing to me.
The perfect enemy is your self,when playing Kerbal space program,or prey prey works
I would change the "Synergy" to "Role" for clarity
The real enemy were the friends you made along the way.
The perfect enemy is lag in terms of unbeatable, making you angry.
Or, an enemy that although killed you, made you smile as i made you read my name. Because they did something that you now know how to counter in the future. A learning curve of skill. The most frustrating enemies are the ones that feel unfair, so the opposite is for enemies to be fair even if they kill you. Because you made mistakes.
Wordsworth Classics are a fantastic collection! Now you should try (if you want, you can do anything, I'm no one to tell people what they should do) the latest Penguin edition of Frankenstein, which is not the "mainstream" version of the text, but the original. This version is titled Frankenstein: The 1818 text. "This edition is the original 1818 text, which preserves the hard-hitting and politically charged aspects of Shelley's original writing, as well as her unflinching wit and strong female voice."
One day (after all the procrastination) I'll make a RPG. And these videos are really helping me in this journey! Thanks alot!
As an Enter the Gungeon player, with 200+ hours on the game, that Gungeon gameplay hurt me Deeply
Love your videos man, some of the best on UA-cam imo
I love Monster Hunter: World for this reason, they have are all so specific, with Nergigante and the Bazelgeuse as my favorite enemies.
Could you please put timestamps to the games in the description?
To someone that just recognizes 1 or 2 games is really troublesome, specially if the game that caught your eye is near the end of the vid. You need to go back to the last game you recognized and then follow the video while reading the description.
Which game?
@@Lico5512. what about 2:03
@@IlPzot the game is called HEARTBEAT it's on steam
You gave me Ravenholm flashbacks. Thanks.
Mark Black haha we don’t TALK about Ravenholm dammit!
My favourite enemy type might just be
Other players. The feeling of outsmarting a player is so much better than that of outsmarting an npc
I , as a solo indie dev , am thankful for the content.
My favorite enemies are the Elites from Halo, and the Nightmare from Prey. The Elites have a lot of personality, they are honorable, with a very interesting culture if you read into the lore, and they are deluded by the Covenant religion to kill humanity, which reinforces the idea that the Hierarchs are the true villains, and the Elites are actually just fighting for what they were born to believe in. The Nightmare from Prey is awesome because of how large it is. You're stuck on a relatively small space station, and yet there is this massive creature hunting you down which really reminds me that I need to evacuate the station, or save Humanity, or whatever ending, ASAP.
10:11 I think those four key qualities (Difficulty, Specificity, Personality, and Synergy) could maybe also apply to other game mechanics or weapons
Honestly, this whole video could have just been about the bestiary from Doom 2. It's so perfectly crafted and synergizes so well with Doomguy's arsenal that I truly think it's the best collection of enemies in any game.
I read the thumb nail as Engineering. The perfect enemy.
Sorry, I didn’t hear what you where talking about for the first few minutes. I was listening to (Enemy Approaching) that entire time.
Perfect enemies: the same base zombie design but with different hats and clothing
This is great, extremely useful for DnD and other tabletops
I'm definitely gonna check out Heartbeat from the 3 seconds you showed on this video alone, ha.
OP: Getting sniped out of nowhere isn't really fun
Me: Cries in Halo 2 Legendary difficulty
I see enemy as puzzle and/or test that the player will resolve by defeating them.