Whats even worse is when you can tell you have the highest kill priority of anything in the world, i hate trying to watch 2 different factions of any game. ESPECIALLY when they are meant to be sworn enemies and their suddenly like "oh shit!!! look of in the distance its a random dude who hasn't shoot at us yet, fuck we need to form an alliance to kill him" and the ai will do this switch in a heart beat, they will fight, 1 frame later they look at you and unload EVERYSINGLEBULLET they have and your dead the next frame easily breaks Immersion and if you do want to watch enemies fight you either have to be superfar away witch won't always work or you use modded camera mods and at that point it doesn't have the same inpact, basically anygame that has stealth and different factions that fight can have this problem, sometime it can make sense but most the time it super frustrating
Rain world is actually a really good example of this. The entire world and ecosystem acts independently of you, and so you often just feel like some random prey trying to survive in the world. Often times the lizards don't even notice you, because they are preoccupied with their own thing, like hunting some other food or being hunted by a pack of scavengers.
Love rain world but there are certain enemies that just usually reside in certain areas, and whenever you respawn they are most likely going to be in the same place
@@bobertastic6541 sure, but if you kill one of the animals, it isn't likely that another one would take it's exact place. If you aren't killing them it makes sense they would still be there.
I could not agree more. My biggest gripe with games like Skyrim is how every NPC always seems to recognize you as the special one or the main character. Also, it gets annoying when every mission seems to revolve exclusively around you. I wish games were smarter about how they implemented their npcs
It did hint it a bit right before you become a known dragonborn, you get treated like the other soldiers. I wish it kept that tone for maybe 1/4 of the story to build up such a big discovery, everything happens so damn fast, right before you know it, you'll just slay a dragon and become dragonborn in just like that.
@@mushroomcrepes4780yeah like if it wasn’t until the end of the game word about your stuff was really getting around it would definitely feel more like an underdog tale
I think I like your videos due to the way you script your dialogue and I find your voice soothing. So I don’t think it matters what you talk about. There’s also a short and sweetness too it. I never feel like I need to set time aside to watch one of your videos.
it might also be because the videos aren't very long either, they're usually not longer than a couple minutes, and this video is actually one of the longest ones on his entire channel, so you don't really actually need to set much time aside because, compared to other videos that are upwards of half an hour these days, these are really short.
Once you experience Stalker there’s nothing like that out there. I played and replayed all the games, read the book, anything to immerse in that atmosphere again.
I never could play Stalker until yeaaaaars, hell, almost two whole decades after. I was always too young to have a job to get a PC that could play it + the game its self. By the time i was old enough to do that, so many trillions of other games had come out and taken the attention. Finally in 2023 i remembered stalker and went to play it. Despite how awesome it is, its very dated. I cant wait for the new stalker coming out soon
this is why I love the older Animal Crossing games. things change, villagers leave the town, mail piles up, friends worry about you etc. It truly feels like the game lives on when you leave. something the new games don't achieve nearly as well
Yes but in the case of Stalker's Alife example, it puts a lot of strain on the system and the updates on the game engine even today can't help the experience from having huge stutters at times. I've played a lot of games in my life on many machines and the most stuttery experience I've ever had was Stalker Gamma, even on a 5800x3d and 6900xt.
@@last1729 Thankfully Anomaly doesn't have stutters, GAMMA does(which is a heavily modded version of Anomaly). I have a 6900XT which is about same with 4070ti. The stutters are not about GPUs as much as they are about how the engine handles under the hood simulation calculations. Even the best of CPUs can't escape stutter in GAMMA. I highly recommend giving it a try after you finish your Anomaly playthrough, it's challenging in a different kind of way.
I just bought the stalker bundle and see that there's quite a lack of stalker content on yt (Gamma or other). So i love that you're talking about it and often use it as background gameplay
Everything you've talked about reminds me of an indie game called Rain World, where every animal/creature lives their own life and the player is treated by the game not as player, but just as another creature in this huge world. The game simulates this big ecosystem where the player is only a really small part of it
This one exactly, you are just another part of the food chain and the amount of times you will be saved due to a bigger threat, eating the threat currently chasing you feels so natural and by chance. No other game is like it. Even when you die you can just watch the world carry on around you.
Oh, yea absolutely. It's sad though there are quite a lot of things you can do the NPCs can't though... It makes up for it in other sectors though. Still waiting for the day when we learn even more about Kenshi 2... I am still waiting 😭
Another game with similar mechanichs is Mount and Blade: Warband. Each Lord has his own life and you know what they're up to in the little feed on the bottom left. Something like "Count Despin is now prisoner of Sultan Hakim" or "village Blah got raided by Emir Muhr". They are not scripted notification, if you use cheats and find them, you can see the events happening on the map.
Yeah, I played that game for hundreds of hours. In many ways the sequel Bannerlord takes everything I loved about Warband and just makes it even better. People have their complaints about the game which are fair, but what I was looking for was vastly improved.
You reminded me of Fallout 3. It was the first game I had ever played where the world felt alive. Like you can fetch a key for an npc and mission complete, but all of a sudden you see them leave their post, and wonder off. You can follow them and you can pickpocket them to find a note of coordinates where you can get a power armor early on in the game (earlier than you're supposed to). I understand that this example is more like a hidden mission than completely autonomous AI, but it still blew my mind.
Love seeing more Gamma on the channel - the A-Life system can enable really unique experiences! And just to expand on the "you're not the main character" side of things, I gotta say that I love having my own adventures and creating stories that make me feel more special in the game world. Was I the chosen one, the sole individual who could defeat the big bad guy thanks to some prescribed abilities? No - I was a regular guy, going through trials that tested my fortitude... Experiencing trips where I confidently sauntered back to base with a full backpack of goods, or barely limping home with desperation and pain filling my eyes. Let me earn my own story, and I'll love every minute of it.
I think the sweet spot is when you can maintain the illusion while also having a narrator tipping the scales and drawing in relevant characters to create memorable events instead of just random noise.
This is EXACTLY what keep bringing me back to Anomaly, I don't think I've ever played a game this immersive before. I love how it gives and takes too. Sometimes one of your tasks will be completed by some other character while you're not even nearby and you still get the rewards, other times you will have a simple mission to deliver a package to someone in Rostok and then watch their marker slowly heading for the Red Forest before you can get to them. 😂
Ah, a topic for me! I love not being the chosen one/the one/the main character/etc. It makes the world feel much more real if not everything falls in your lap by order of plot convenience. The usual chosen one stories go like this: You are the chosen one, therefore you accomplish X. But in Morrowind it is the exact opposite: You accomplish X, therefore you have the qualification to be called the chosen one. This inversion is also the reason why Morrowind is the best elder scrolls game. Sure, the game starts with a goddess literally telling you that you're the chosen one, but on the island of Vvardenfell no. one. cares. Also you find out later that you are just one of many, many fools the goddess sent to the island to try and become the Nerevarine. Gods also routinely lie to your face if it furthers their goals. And the key words here are "try to become the Nerevarine". Even until the end no one can say with certainty that your are Nerevar reborn, but you worked your ass of and convinced everyone that matters to believe in you weather you are real or not. It does not matter. They play along because it is in their best interest to proclaim you the Nerevarine. The prophecy is just the justification on the surface. The real reason they support you are tangible benefits for them. It mirrors how religion and ideologies are used in real life. Sure, there are some die hard believers, but the vast majority doesn't. I abhor stories where the main character gets some kind of special ability/constitution/something that makes them literally the only person capable of doing some task. Imagine an actual world with these kind of rules. The main character got drunk, fell and broke his neck? Guess the world is going to end, sucks to be you.
I've had a similar experience to this in the begining of one of my play throughs, there was a clear sky member named "Dimka bigshot". i took him with me for a while to help with some of my missons. once I was done, i dropped him back off at the clear sky base, where I found him. the last time that ive ever seen him was as he walked out of the base, never to be seen again. I still think about dimka, and every time that walk pass a group of clear sky stalkers, I make sure to check everyone of them in hopes dimka would be one of them. I know that his most likely end was death. killed by another stalker, or eated by some mutant. but as a small side quest for myself, i still try to search for him.
man you know what this video feels like.. it feels like im siting down with you drinking beer and you just randomly bring up this subject i feel like convesations with you would just be so chill and interesting i like that you know what you like and you go so deep to try to explane to us what you feel thanks , keep on makeing :D
RIP Lightning Bigshoe. I'm so glad you got into STALKER Anomaly. It's one of those games that does so many things right, but yet not many people know about it.
Thank you for keep going with the great content, Garbaj! You're one of my favourite creator on this platform! I've sent countless of your videos to friends of mine because I think you explain extremely well everything you want to explain! You're one of the greatests! I love creators that explain things about games like Game Maker's Toolkit, Daryl Talks Games, creators that explain mechanics in a game like Shounic and creators that explain things about graphics like Acerola, but you end up doing all three things and I love it! You're great, dude! Keep doing what you do! I'm so happy that you decided not to quit! Me and 461k people are here to support you in everything you want to do!
This isn't a case where the NPCs feel like Player but rather a cool feature that can be added to the "base" that you will raid multiple times. In Metal Gear Solid V if you infiltrated camps at night all the time, the Soviets would come equipped with night vision goggles like they reacted to your invasions. Or if you used headshots all the time, the soldiers would wear helmets. It'd be cool to add that mechanic to the AI that you described in the video. The whole camps will react to your attacks and try to counter you.
Idk why but after hearing you i am so low-key getting Soul series vide but doesn't matter how much I play and die over and over it never gets bored. Keep it up bro.
Thats why battlefield was so fun. You're just a single body in the middle of a HUGE battle happening in the skies above, in the river next to you, and in the tunnels below you.
Honestly for how incredibly old the A-Life system is, it holds up shockingly well. Granted yes after playing so many hours of G.A.M.M.A. you kinda start to notice the seams, so to speak. But even then, it's still a very engaging, if albeit marginally simple system. I really feel like if any big studio were to mimic this system and put more _just a little more_ work into it, it could easily be an incredibly robust and immersive system while remaining reasonably simple. I think the next closest thing would be Oblivion's NPC management system (Dunno if they had a catchy name for it or not). Being able to do something like steal all the food from an NPC's house and leave a poisoned apple so they'll be forced to eat that and die from the poison, _that_ is emergent gameplay. I wish more games invested time into creating systems that enable things like that to work, especially for RPG games.
Couldnt have agreed more, i hate being the "chosen one" the destined one to order to chaos or something. Just being your every day man is kinda nice, also in that world you arent usually forced to do anything since you dont have a special gift the world needs you to use to save it or something.
I think one of the other things that cements the feeling of not being the MC is that everyone is always at least slightly hostile. it doesnt matter how high your reputation, almost every character will be somewhat paranoid and hesitant as they usually are. In games like skyrim or zelda, youre the chosen one! everyone knows you and loves you! you can do no wrong! In stalker youre just another person in a zone filled with hostiles, criminals, scientists and mercenaries. every character talks like they have a life to get back to and most couldnt be bother to care you exist. They will NOT go out of their way to help you, because when you go out of your way to help someone in the zone, unless youre the tutorial character, you DIE. (EDIT: something else to mention is when you die, you can sit and watch as long as you like. your body will rot as everyone and thing goes on with their day. in plenty of games, enemies will either freeze or continue attacking your body.)
This is why i love extraction games and am hoping they will be the new trend when BRs die out. Especially when bungees new extraction shooter 'Marathon' comes out. Its so interesting to have a map that is live 24/7, it goes through day and night cycles, has weather and NPCs and mobs move around, players drop in and extract 24/7 regardless of wether you are online or not. its truly a meta experience
When red dead redemption 2 did that, people got so excited, gave it the title of having the most alive NPCs'. Never realized that this old game had that almost a decade ago.
This video got me to try the stalker series after I heard so many people talking about it and wow I wish I played it sooner, I'm just couple of hours in and got a couple of the starting quest done like getting that artifact in the radioactive waste dump, saved fox from the blind dog things, and also died several times trying to get the artefact in the building in front of the broken bridge and it was only when I found out that you can shoot them to move them around that I was able to push it towards the back hole and picked it up
This reminds me so much of shadow of war, I loved shadow of war because of how the NPCs felt like they were their own people who existed in my world and could be my enemy or nemesis and I could conquer them in many different ways that I could choose. They would have unique names and traits and things that made them difficult to defeat and they would level up in their own ways by completing tasks on their own as I passed time or by killing me or my allies and they could even cross continents to chase me down if they were so inclined to do so.
STALKER might be smaller worlds, but they have a lot more going on in them. Part of the reason everyone loved New Vegas was it properly paced out interesting areas and setpieces with space to just walk in through to get a better feel for the atmosphere without it taking so long you get bored. The longest walk without anything happening is a couple minutes max when you stick to any of the roads. Starfield is a dud because there is nothing going on at all, and there's no stakes, and nothing matters, and nothing happens until you show up, and people will wait forever. But it is very, very big.
I remember playing the original two STALKERs when I was a kid and them being super jank but such love-fillled games. Years later I came back to it with STALKER Gamma and hooooooooooooly shit it will forever be one of my favourite gaming experiences until the day I die. The feeling of just exploring the wilds and coming by a pseudogiant slapping around some bandits, but the next day there being nothing there but grass... super cool. ZA MONOLIT
@@KishiQit’s a older game so you will see bugs and mishaps but I’ve also seen the ai do some pretty wild tactics when it works right. Also it’s neat how the higher the rank the stalker is the more cautious and tactical they are
I always enjoy moments like that too, where something so cinematic happens without it even being scripted, it was just a lucky coincidence. I understand why devs don't do this often because not only is it hard to develop a system capable of that but also the risk of it never happening to some players, but it means a lot in terms of immersion. I feel like if you make an immersive enough experience then players will be so focused that they won't be thinking about quitting or how fun the game actually is, so hopefully more devs take more risks and chances like this.
Was never super in to Anomaly that turns Stalker more into a Tarkov lite but I do still enjoy playing through vanilla Stalker series. I've been eagerly awaiting Stalker 2. I really hope it lives up to the hype.
The stalker trilogy, and stalker anomaly/gamma are probably the most crazy interesting and fun games I’ve personally played. Other than borderlands and it’s own weapon randomness, I’ve probably never felt as lost and captivated by a games world
I don't play a lot of games complex enough for this to come up, but what I think is really cool in fiction is when the main character isn't the only main character. They're special. Most people don't go on one crazy adventure after another. But they're not unique. They run into other people who are themselves on crazy adventures, and where all that crazy stuff is as normal to them as it is to the main character.
A-Life is the official AI module for stalker The mod has its own modified version P.d: Good to see new videos again a world that its alive with or without the player!
I love Gamma. It´s a cool Sandbox in the World i fell in love with in the original Games that lets me live my own Adventure. And what you said is absolutely right, the world feels more alive when stuff happens when you´re not there. Good hunting, Stalker.
When I first started Anomaly, it took me around an hour to go from Cordon to Garbage. Much later in the game, I returned back to Cordon for a delivery mission, and just out of curiosity, I wanted to test how big Cordon actually is, so I went to the Rookie village and floored it from there to the Garbage entrance without fighting anybody. I reached there in just under 3 minutes. The map is fucking tiny, but the way the game is designed, it feels much bigger than it actually is.
Dude you got a great taste in video games you are only i know about these great games because i don't have a pc neither im a pc gamer and also you motivated me to be a game dev and now my life goal is to be a gamw dev ❤
There's always more depth in being an unspecified civilian placed into a world who doesn't care about you rather than a named hero whose world revolves around you.
Ive only played about 20hrs of stalker. But those 20hrs were inpactful enough that it's become my biggest inspiration for the kind of games I want to make
I had a pretty similar situation happen to me when I was playing GAMMA as well, there was a guy that I saw in Rostok and his name was really close to my characters name (Artyom) which is the only reason I remembered him, and I came across him a few times, and then I did a mission for Duty (I'm a loner) to 'defend Rostok' and he got killed in the process right outside of it also trying to defend the outskirts
