Week 3: “Sorry Mario, but the Princess is in another castle!"

Realistic NPCs (Active vs Reactive)
by Dan Shiovitz
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article249.asp


Ok, so this is an old post from 1995 but it got me thinking about just what is an NPCs’ roll in gamming. For most of my life all I’ve seen them as is “The place to get quests from” and while that is true, surely they provide something extra to the game. Why have them otherwise.

NPC behaviour in video games is generally automated. There are some examples where the NPC is controlled by another player or a Game Master but in this post I want to focus on the scripted ones.

An NPC is just like any other character you would insert into a story, they’re there to further the storyline. They introduce a player into a new world through the direction and information they provide.

They give information on what to do but not the motivation to do it. Most of the time they don't give their back-story or provide the emotional resonse you expect people to have in certain circumstances. If you can relate to a person you can begin to understand their circumstances. Take for instance Princess Peach, I just can’t feel for her (Seriously, I don’t understand why a giant turtle would want to kidnap her in the first place). Her personality still isn't as strongly defined as the ‘others' (not that ‘short, Italian-American plumber’ gives you much of a clue either) but then who tells complete randoms their whole life story?

I guess what dissapoints me about NPCs is that they don’t have a big enough role in the game. Why aren’t they developing with the story, as the gamer interacts with it. Fable 2 allows you to spawn children for your character… Um? What exactly do they do other than get themselves captured? And what about the Alliance in WOW. Well, they want to stop the Horde but they don’t really do anything about it. They just stand there like set peices… Come on, do something already! Well no, I’m wrong, there are AIs that do seem to run off on their own automated path. That’s fine but if you try to interact with them, they have a very brief response or none at all. NPCs are not the smartest, but I guess if they were smart the game would be too easy.

So how do you humanise a AI without it seeming too scripted? There are games that have started to deepen the NPC and Player relationship such as Mass Effect and Fable but they are still restricted to a script. The unpredictability of human nature is just to complex to replicate and I guess that is the reason why we are goning back to RPGing (ie. Dungeons and Dragons. Where the NPCs are played by the Game Master.)