Companion AI and Mechanics

[Moonface]

I'm currently watching someone playing Kingdom Hearts 2, and they've just started a boss fight in the Pirates of the Caribbean level that happens right after Jack steals one of the coins to become cursed, which if you don't know the movie it means he can't die. He serves as a companion to you in the fight, however, he can somehow die?! Even though he literally just became immortal, if his health goes too low then you game over. That utter level of bullshit for an AI companion is what made me think of this thread.


Now I'm not against AI companions having a health bar. If Ashley in RE4 didn't have one for example it would mean the only risk to her is being kidnapped, which would ruin the whole concept of escorting her character through the game. On the other hand, companions in the Uncharted and The Last of Us games do not have health, and while for the latter games it would thematically fit in the companion AI would need to be vastly improved for them to not end up dead every two seconds on higher difficulties. Something TLoU did do with companions that I did like though was making them invisible to enemies during stealth, even if it does result in some funny moments where Ellie will run right into an enemy sometimes when she's moving positions in the first game.


So when it comes to companions, how do you feel about certain mechanics and/or their AI, either overall or within a particular game/genre?

[Maniakkid25]

I would actually rather ally AI I'm escorting not have a health bar. It means I don't have to micro-manage their position and health if their AI does something stupid. Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite immediately comes to mind. She's always following you until combat happens, at which point she literally disappears off the map, only reappearing to aid you in some way (ammo pickups, field drops, stuff like that). The implication is she's smart enough to get out of the line of fire, only appearing when she has something you might want, as well as the enemies having the knowledge of who Elizabeth is, and maybe they shouldn't shoot her?

Another time where AI companions was a bad idea is Persona 3. See, in the original versions of the game on the PS2 -- so the original and FES -- your party members were controlled by AI only. You could give them general commands to influence what they tend to do, but they do whatever the hell they feel like otherwise (Mitsuru...). What's nice about this is they have their own stock of items. I don't think I need to explain the downsides of this in a JRPG setting. There's a reason they stole the combat from Persona 4 when making P3P.

Of course, if we are talking about AI companions, we should address the elephant in the room: Sheva Alomar. In her original incarnation, she was rock stupid. So rock stupid that a challenge gamer (ZEROistaken) did a challenge run where he was tasked with AI SHEVA never taking damage, and this was on the PC with her improved AI! She didn't respond to you being bound, dying, or anything unless you called out to her, and some of the things she would do would be outright kick-worthy in an online match-up! She was not very bright, and could outright ruin a game for some people. Sheva is a stain on AI companions, and it's likely never coming out.