Posted January 18, 2021
You get sucked in by the graphics, are heading out on a mission or even just exploring this amazing world of Night City, then suddenly you accidentally bump into a single person in a completely accidental "oops, sorry wasn't watching where I was going" kind of way, or they even bump into you like that, or any of a dozen similar scenarios. But it's practically impossible to NOT bump into people since they are in your friggen way like EVERYWHERE in the entire game, and they aren't walking from point A to point B to actually do something useful, but it is very obvious they just teleport into the game to act as filler to make the illusion that the city is alive and teeming with city life. But they just walk a random path, and will change direction arbitrarily and walk somewhere else like a mindless robot with no end goal.
So you're walking around and bump into one of these mindless fillerbots and then they have this massive overreaction "She's trying to kill me!" or "no, no, please don't kill me I have a family!" or some other similar incredible overreaction, and it often causes everyone within anywhere from 5 meters to a half a kilometer away to go into AI panic mode and run in fear, duck to the ground and wave their arms over their heads etc. and then stay doing this for a very long time. Sometimes more than 20 minutes goes by and I re-enter an area and see people cowering in fear still all because I accidentally bumped into someone walking along the street a half hour ago.
Not only that, but the pedestrian NPC AI is so stupid that they will purposefully walk RIGHT INTO YOU because you do not exist in the game's AI that determines where ethey will walk, and then when THEY bump into YOU, then THEY panic that you're trying to kill them or some dumbass shit.
It is so horrendously stupid and annoying. You want to just walk through the city like a normal person and get around, but you have to either micro-manage how you walk to painstakingly avoid accidentally bumping someone in even the slightest way to avoid triggering neurotic panic syndrome wave across the whole city, or you just say fuckit and walk around like nobody else is there, bumping into people without giving a shit and not care about immersion at all, and just roll your eyes at how half the city is cowering in fear in unison and how absolutely stupid that is.
You SHOULD be able to walk around and have the pedestrians NOT walk directly into you. They should get the friggen hell out of the way when you're coming along and they are in the way, and when you beep the horn of your car it should send a loud clear message "GET THE F**K OUTTA THE WAY, I'M DRIVING HERE". They should also be programmed to not walk all over the few actual parking spaces in the entire game, and to recognize when a car is trying to drive anywhere, and notice it like a real human would and get the hell out of the way instead of walking like a brainless zombie from a game from 2002 era.
Seriously, the game's pedestrian AI is absolutely terrible, only thing worse is the NPC driving AI.
I was just on a mission where I had to stay close to someone who went into a crowded area, and not make a scene, but it was almost impossible to follow them without bumping into people and having everyone in the whole area go into deep hyper panic mode. It really ruined the immersion for me and after the 200th time that happened I felt I had to say something about it here at least.
It's so irritating to me at this point that I would half rather just have a game option to disable pedestrians entirely as their AI is just so terrible that they ruin the experience of playing the game rather than giving the illusion of a diverse city being alive.
It's crazy, just did some amazing quests in the main story line that were AAA quality top notch, then go outdoors to this D- quality pedestrian AI. How can a game have such high quality elements mixed with such gutter quality elements all in the same game? It's mind boggling.
Will they fix things like this I wonder, or is it baked into the game permanently and they'll just fix bugs that break quests and graphics screwups, but we're forever plagued with the worst pedestrian AI ever in a game? Who knows. I want to believe, I really want to believe they'll revamp all of the major flaws in the game like this that make these particular elements of game play just suck, but will they?
It needs so much work that if they do actually come clean and do the work, it's going to be a completely different game experience to play it in a year or two when the game is actually a finished game, if that happens.
I really do like the main story line and characters though. That stuff is all top shelf, but so much of the rest that ties everything together seems rushed.
So you're walking around and bump into one of these mindless fillerbots and then they have this massive overreaction "She's trying to kill me!" or "no, no, please don't kill me I have a family!" or some other similar incredible overreaction, and it often causes everyone within anywhere from 5 meters to a half a kilometer away to go into AI panic mode and run in fear, duck to the ground and wave their arms over their heads etc. and then stay doing this for a very long time. Sometimes more than 20 minutes goes by and I re-enter an area and see people cowering in fear still all because I accidentally bumped into someone walking along the street a half hour ago.
Not only that, but the pedestrian NPC AI is so stupid that they will purposefully walk RIGHT INTO YOU because you do not exist in the game's AI that determines where ethey will walk, and then when THEY bump into YOU, then THEY panic that you're trying to kill them or some dumbass shit.
It is so horrendously stupid and annoying. You want to just walk through the city like a normal person and get around, but you have to either micro-manage how you walk to painstakingly avoid accidentally bumping someone in even the slightest way to avoid triggering neurotic panic syndrome wave across the whole city, or you just say fuckit and walk around like nobody else is there, bumping into people without giving a shit and not care about immersion at all, and just roll your eyes at how half the city is cowering in fear in unison and how absolutely stupid that is.
You SHOULD be able to walk around and have the pedestrians NOT walk directly into you. They should get the friggen hell out of the way when you're coming along and they are in the way, and when you beep the horn of your car it should send a loud clear message "GET THE F**K OUTTA THE WAY, I'M DRIVING HERE". They should also be programmed to not walk all over the few actual parking spaces in the entire game, and to recognize when a car is trying to drive anywhere, and notice it like a real human would and get the hell out of the way instead of walking like a brainless zombie from a game from 2002 era.
Seriously, the game's pedestrian AI is absolutely terrible, only thing worse is the NPC driving AI.
I was just on a mission where I had to stay close to someone who went into a crowded area, and not make a scene, but it was almost impossible to follow them without bumping into people and having everyone in the whole area go into deep hyper panic mode. It really ruined the immersion for me and after the 200th time that happened I felt I had to say something about it here at least.
It's so irritating to me at this point that I would half rather just have a game option to disable pedestrians entirely as their AI is just so terrible that they ruin the experience of playing the game rather than giving the illusion of a diverse city being alive.
It's crazy, just did some amazing quests in the main story line that were AAA quality top notch, then go outdoors to this D- quality pedestrian AI. How can a game have such high quality elements mixed with such gutter quality elements all in the same game? It's mind boggling.
Will they fix things like this I wonder, or is it baked into the game permanently and they'll just fix bugs that break quests and graphics screwups, but we're forever plagued with the worst pedestrian AI ever in a game? Who knows. I want to believe, I really want to believe they'll revamp all of the major flaws in the game like this that make these particular elements of game play just suck, but will they?
It needs so much work that if they do actually come clean and do the work, it's going to be a completely different game experience to play it in a year or two when the game is actually a finished game, if that happens.
I really do like the main story line and characters though. That stuff is all top shelf, but so much of the rest that ties everything together seems rushed.
