A huge thank you once again to Martin, Liz and Jurie for their time and enthusiasm for our interview. I had a great time chatting with them and I hope you enjoy hearing about their experiences.
I don't know where to ask this, so I'm asking it here :) Tommy, are you still in contact with Legion devs? if you still are, tell them that they're just brilliant. They fixed a huge issue I have with all those stealth action games of the recent years, including the ones Martin Walsh previously worked on. You know, all those stealth actions need tons of enemies on the screen to make actiony shooty bits fun, but when there are tons of enemies it's harder to stealth through them, it's easier to make a tiny mistake and get detected, and then bullets start flying. To compensate a small margin for error devs used different cheating mechanics diminishing player agency: Mark & Execute from Splinter Cells, Instinct mode from Hitmans, slow motion from FEAR and Watch Dogs 1. Even Kojima himself couldn't find a better solution in MGSV than another cheat - Reflex mode. Meanwhile Legion devs solved the problem. Legion enemies don't shoot/don't pull out guns first, when they notice you they go into H2H combat without raising the alert level. And that tiny detail they casually mentioned in passing during promo tour (speaking of Broken Videogame Discourse) changes everything. It allows players to avoid firefights in most of the cases, to be as stealthy as possible, to be as non-violent as possible. Legion's stealth is just so satisfying to play because of that. I mean, to me 'play as anyone' was already enough to seal the deal, but the way the game is balanced (especially on recently added Resistance difficulty with iron mode and all) makes it one of the greatest stealth games ever made. It's criminally underrated.
I know a lot of people are conflicted about how this system played out in game but i do hope they experiment more with systems like this to improve the overall experience
Ideally, Ubi can take the tech from this and work from the ground up to more closely mold the next game around the core mechanics of "play as anyone". It sounds like a MASSIVE resource drain was getting VA work for every possible character in every possible scenario, only to have back-and-forth sound stilted and the story seem more loose. If they can find some excuse to have all characters mute or using a 100% generated voice, they could cut out the part of the game that's perhaps outright *impossible* to pull off well and focus those resources on improving the "simulation" aspect. They've got full creative control over the Watch Dogs property, surely they can find some way in-world to excuse to the player why generated NPCs and PCs aren't voiced.
@@illegallyrested8868 they could try and make it have no voice actors in someway but I can see major backlash cause even indie titles get criticized sometimes for not having voice acting. I wouldn't be suprised if they try applying more generated voice tech cause I remember there being research for that stuff more with machine learning (correct me if im wrong please ) thought it is still early to tell.
Solution - the PC must wear special ear implants because blah blah blah (can be used like a batman-gadget to do something super-human) - this way, you can have everyone and everything sounds a little off, but not in an annoying way, and you hide the generated VA inside that.
That happens when you (the publisher) rush developers. It’s certainly not a lack of ingenuity of the people working on it. Hoping for the next real Watch Dogs 3 ❤️
Would have been an interesting "other side of the coin" experience to allow the player to turn as many citizens against the good guys, effectively working as a false flag operative for the bad guys. Follow people around, then do things that negatively affect their lives by interfering with their daily activities, hobbies etc. and always remembering to mask it as Dedsec activity and see how the city turns against the supposed faction you are representing.
@@emulation2369 It's more of a tecnical standpoint problem mate. Not not having enough balls; you can actually see something of what he's talking about already in game, but the fowarding system outshines it a bit to save resources to the recruited operatives, you will see that them can even engage against the player if you wronged them or their peers on your adventures, nut is still very minute ocasions, maybe they try to do this on the next watch dogs, since tech may evolve to make it not be a massive resource hog
This is an amazing level of AI in a video game. I'm glad that the next generation of graphics also is bringing about new AI systems and I really hope they keep building stuff like this!
For the next game, Ubi should forget about the Play-As-Anyone thing, and go with something like Socialize-With-Anyone. Meaning, any NPC can become related to your character - meet, help in a mission, interact, go out together, pick you up in car, pick them up in a car, date etc etc etc. This would make the most living breathing world. At some point you would have many contacts with different abilities and professions in your phone and you will be able to even get together with let's say up to 3 at the same time. Which can open the door to interactions (agreement/disagreement) between these NPCs. They will have actual daily routines based on their profession/personality and you would be able to observe anyone's routine in real time.
This has made me more interested in the game than any promo material. I haven't played the first 2 and the character system in this seemed like a gimmick from the ads. But this seems pretty cool.
Whilst I'm pretty sure this game isn't for me I have enormous respect for the amount of work that went into the system. I think I've learned to appreciate games a lot more since I started watching your content. It's crazy how often the "invisible" things are the most intricate.
I'm not sure if Final Fantasy or BioShock would really benefit, since they're not really sandbox games. Though for something like Elder Scrolls, which already has Radiant AI, this could be a next step for Bethesda's focus on immersion.
Omg Martin! If I am not wrong, he had such an amazing talk on splinter cell blacklist stealth mechanics to how npcs were structured. I actually still watch that video on repeat without hesitation, so much to learn from him! Thank you so much for this video, I seriously look up to him. I am building 2D stealth rpg since a very very long time.. but Martin’s video(s) and this channel keeps me sane most of the time! ❤️
Yes that is indeed Martin Walsh of Splinter Cell fame and in fact I made an episode on Splinter Cell Blacklist based on that talk earlier this year. He was great to chat and with and came across as a really nice guy.
@@AIandGames Oh my god, I have to watch those videos again. Seriously, thank you for this. I am so lucky to find youtuber like you who genuinely cares about all these.
30:37 “the way your Irish hitman is going to respond to a request is different than all the other personalities” except operatives don’t have different dialogue based on their jobs, it’s just one personality per voice. So an “Irish hitman” will have the same line as every other Irish character. It’s vernacular like that that the devs use to describe this system that deceives people and makes the system seem more complicated and in-depth than it actually is. Really disappointing
@@jsade are you sure about that? I’m pretty sure there is only one personality per voice. The Dublin accent guy is always a brash, tough guy for example
Thanks for this, it's a fantastic insight into the systems working behind the scenes, the game itself may of suffered from some mediocrity in places, but your content certainly doesn't well done and thanks again 😁
I have always been a big watch dogs fan, played both old games And had great time, but legion had me very very thrilled tho it's accused of boring gameplay and lack of centent, I knew it's exactly because its new AI system which is in fact a great technical achievement or advancement even though it might fail miserably (but it didn't in my opinion) I think it's very very well done. People should appreciate new breakthrough or effort to make different things much more otherwise we will always have those real copy and paste rpg shooting games, as other tech illiterate people claim legion is(however I think legion is a brave and innovative move).
If NPCs interactions/relationships in cyberpunk 2077 were as complex as this game, that would be maybe the cyberpunk we were all expecting to be, or close to it.
What I'm wondering is what are the RAM limitations on uprezzing NPCs? If I go around scanning every single person is the game going to lose track of them all or slowdown? Surely there's not enough memory and computing power to generate and keep track of all these systems if the player chooses to go nuts with uprezzing
Yeah I mention it briefly in the video, but there is a limit after which any new citizen you uprez replaces the oldest one you still have in memory. The actual final number is 'big' but I don't know what it is.
Great video!! I'm currently doing a playthrough and really enjoying it. I'm actually shocked at the implementation of the system and mechanics of the NPC. I've often wondered why this isn't talked and praised more. I think I'm building a wicked Deadsec team!
Very nice video. Looking at its comments i have to assume complicated systems like this usually fail on their weakest link. No matter how detailed an actors simulation is, if the mission placement is limited the player gonna look right through it, and vice versa.
Hey love ur content, but talking about the video, and analyzing the system. Playing as anyone is a technical achievement in an empty shell of a game. It's a system not supported by the rest of the game, that doesn't encourage u to play as a team of civilians and was for me poorly executed. I think it lacks a bunch of mechanics around it to make it good. Because even with the procedural agenda of every npc, if u look it's simply just them going to 3 buildings a day having no interaction on their way, and launching 2 or 3 basic animations when they work. I got that info from my experience and a video following the behavior of the citizen with the advanced profiler. I wished the game was better because the concept and the context described in the story are perfect for what they aim for, but it didn't work when integrated into the game. Plus their desire of making a story around characters and giving them voices is a terrible mistake, cause by trying to make those civil u recruit characters, u end up seeing them as generated npc without real character. The cinematics reinforcing this aspect, where it doesn't matter if u have a new recruit or a veteran, they will act the same way, say the same line. Even worst when u die with a character and u start with another one never mentioning those lost people in our team... I think they should less focus on bringing to life civilian and inspire more on the XCOM experience where the player is the one leading the team and having their lives being ur responsibility, evolving ur "soldier" and Dedsec too. Thanks again for ur work, that was an interesting video, knowing more about what the devs were thinking behind the game, always interesting :)
yeah I agree, I think they should of had you as a main character so you've got a more focused story about you having to recruit a team/teams to do various things like say bank heist or something like that, you'd be able to get more attached and invested in to the story and characters lives. So similar to how it is now you can recruit and swap to anyone but you can only have a team of 4 total at any time say, so your choices matter more when recruiting and jobs for the recruits you keep are more meaningful as you get to know them. You could have assassin missions where you have to make it look like an accident or they're surrounded by security and you've only got a photo and a place of work for the target I don't know I just feel like Legion is a good proof of concept just needs refining
yeah the system didn't work too well in practice, and the game is flawed even aside from that. But I think it's a good start and I hope it's something that gets adopted more widely in games
@@egoborder3203 Yeah good direction, they just have to build a game around it, and not put a good idea into the old Ubisoft's formula over and over. I was even thinking about the fact that u can put propaganda messages on walls during the game but why not create ur own. Like again in Xcom 2, it would have been so good using ur phone and putting some filters to decorate the city of London more personally :D
Very cool and I love that things like this exist, but it seems barely visible during gameplay. Maybe I just didn't pay much attention, but I didn't notice any of these features they describe.
When I played the game I noticed repercussions of the system almost everywhere. Like in main or side mission I have to avoid a guard, because he was related to one of my potential recruits. Or I knew that it's better to not raise the alert in one of the restricted areas, because one of my recruits often went to work nearby.
There are just way too many kinds of relationships in the game: brother-sister, husband-wife, lawyer-client, cop-mole, doctor-patient, pusher-client, hitman-target... It's kinda stupid to implement parents recognition, but ignore everything else.
Ugh.. one of those things where you start thinking about an idea and suddenly run into it out in the wild. Just started thinking about npc civilians with schedules and interactions, actions and events... a couple weeks back.. Then I run into this.
So I guess the next step for Watch Dogs would be to make it an MMO now. So that multiple people take interest in an NPC (for good or bad) and kinda have players be on different sides of the missions based on their relationship with that NPC. Start blurring the lines between PC and NPC.... could be fun.
Are you considering making a video on Police AI, how it's made in games considering the currently flawed system of the recently launched Cyberpunk 2077?
First of all, judging by the last seconds of this interview (46:15) it was recorded before the game release and its lukewarm critical reception. Second, Errant Signal video is unfair. He criticized the first game for the dissonance between its embedded narrative and gameplay, and then completely ignored the same issue in the 2nd game, because well, it has a likeable hero and a warmer color palette. And then he pretended like 'play as anyone' feature came completely out of the blue. Meanwhile the feature, the census system, the way your reputation works, and lots of other tweaks here and there were made to give the player a blank slate protagonist and through simulation of NPCs and their associates punish him for all negative deeds in an attempt of marrying gameplay and narrative. Well, at least he played the game the right way, role playing it with permadeath enabled.
@@KenTWOu That's not really all that unreasonable; if a movie has some issues, but I really connect with the characters, I'm going to like it more than a different movie with the same issues but bland characters. It does feel counter-intuitive, but I think certain good qualities can usually cover for the bad qualities in a piece of art. If there aren't enough good, that's when the bad starts becoming harder to ignore. Also that obviously comes down to personal preference a lot too. For those reasons, I think it's hard to say Errant Signal was really being "unfair".
@@shmunkyman33 I see where you're coming from, but it's still unfair. There are a lot more ways to tell a story in a videogame as opposed to movies. Some of the games like Uncharted focus on movie like authored content and make a protagonist with strong dialogues and stuff, meanwhile others like Half-life 1 and 2 are less prescriptive and give you a blank state character, who don't even have voice overs. It's pointless to compare them the way Chris 'Errant Signal' Franklin did, because the later games are at a disadvantage by design. There were people commenting under his video something like 'you made me want to play Watch Dogs 2 instead' not because Legion is worse, but because it's obviously not for them. They want an authored content, a strong written character, a story arc, a cinematic cut scene. They don't want a freedom to 'write' their own emergent stories that the lack of authored content in Legion allows them to do. Frankly, I don't care about WD2 story because I'm not a 20+ years old hacker guy, but I do care about Legion story, because I could find a NPC who looks almost like me, dresses almost like me, has a similar job and hobby, and then find NPCs like my friends and acquaintances and make them join DedSec. So Legion narrative is way more personal to me. After that famous The Last of Us review I thought that Chris is the same kind of players, judging by his Legion review, he's obviously not. But as I said earlier, I give him credit for playing the game the right way.
You need to make a video on the disaster Ai that is present in Cyberpunk 2077. It is easily some of if not the worst ai seen in a triple a game in the last 15 years.
Mate you should make a video on Cyberpunk 2077 and its AI, or the lackthereof...It would be a hilarious videos to contract the older games you've presented with what's supposed to be a living breathing revolutionary open world" that took 8 years and 300 million to make.
My issue was it never felt like the recruitment was justified. Why not just have one character that you can build the way you'd like instead of having to waste your time searching for someone closest to your vision...
In the real world, you can’t just build a person to what you like. The developers wanted to mimic the real world to make it more interesting and dynamic, that was part of their goal for the game.
"Play as Anyone" concept sort of exist all the way back in GTA V, although it's only part of the Director Mode, and the ability to possess NPCs in real-time is only possible with script mods. "Sort of" is the key word here, because once you possess an NPC with the mod, all associated AI logic are gone, except turning into a hostile enemy.
I think that's more like a character select though as opposed to seeing a random npc and being able to switch to them. Also there's no AI involved in generating the NPC for you to take control of.
I wish the character generation system was implemented in a different game. Watchdogs legion just does not give the mechanic any sort of justice. Gameplay is boring, repetitive,glitch filled,if it wasn't for the character creation mechanic this watchdogs would literally just be a carbon copy of 2.
I have to ask really nicely! In all seriousness it takes a long time for this to go through, as we need to find time in everyone's schedules. But Ubisoft have been rather supportive of my work given they know I can talk to developers about technical stuff without needing to dumb it down.
If it was on STEAM, I would buy it. No Steam no sale. It would be interesting to see how many millions Ubisoft lost on this release ? Because the bulk of sales won't be until it's on Steam in 1 year.
In reality this was an unnecessary gimmick. If you watch 100 videos of WDL gameplay, 90+% of the gamers will be using the same characters (spy, old person, Albion guard, beekeeper and a couple more). Most other characters are made boring intentionally to lead the gamer to pick the same characters from the marketing videos. Once you pick a characters it doesn't mean much because you do the exact same things you do in any other open world game: walk, shoot, drive. I much prefer WD2 which had an amazing living breathing world. I don't want to be the other people, I want the world around me be to be living breathing, and WDL was a huge letdown after WD2. If there is another game in the works, hopefully Ubisoft goes back to the drawing board and realizes what made WD2 so special.
Fun system, but despite the quantity there is no quality interpersonal relationship in the simulation. So yeah, another Ubisoft open world game, nothing less, nothing more.
There's nothing spectacular about this system from a programming standpoint. It's simple randomizing and data storing. Also, integration of this system was done poorly, it was almost unused to its full potential. Kudos to people who did the manual work to eliminate uncanny valley effect though.
I love your videos, so I'm asking you to please upload on alternative platforms. I'm deleting my RUclips account, because of the free speech restrictions. We should fight and defend free speech! I will miss your videos. I'm sorry for my unsubscribe!
I remember this concept. This version is newer. But the old-school Battlefield had this ability. Once you die you transported your characters consciousness into the closest Ai character near you. Sometimes you can float around and possess other characters of your choosing. Even tanks lol.
A huge thank you once again to Martin, Liz and Jurie for their time and enthusiasm for our interview. I had a great time chatting with them and I hope you enjoy hearing about their experiences.
I don't know where to ask this, so I'm asking it here :) Tommy, are you still in contact with Legion devs? if you still are, tell them that they're just brilliant.
They fixed a huge issue I have with all those stealth action games of the recent years, including the ones Martin Walsh previously worked on. You know, all those stealth actions need tons of enemies on the screen to make actiony shooty bits fun, but when there are tons of enemies it's harder to stealth through them, it's easier to make a tiny mistake and get detected, and then bullets start flying. To compensate a small margin for error devs used different cheating mechanics diminishing player agency: Mark & Execute from Splinter Cells, Instinct mode from Hitmans, slow motion from FEAR and Watch Dogs 1. Even Kojima himself couldn't find a better solution in MGSV than another cheat - Reflex mode.
Meanwhile Legion devs solved the problem. Legion enemies don't shoot/don't pull out guns first, when they notice you they go into H2H combat without raising the alert level. And that tiny detail they casually mentioned in passing during promo tour (speaking of Broken Videogame Discourse) changes everything. It allows players to avoid firefights in most of the cases, to be as stealthy as possible, to be as non-violent as possible. Legion's stealth is just so satisfying to play because of that. I mean, to me 'play as anyone' was already enough to seal the deal, but the way the game is balanced (especially on recently added Resistance difficulty with iron mode and all) makes it one of the greatest stealth games ever made. It's criminally underrated.
Great video. When i was talking to them about this for the review I was stunned at some of what was going on
Waiting for you and Ranton to have a boxing match 😌
I know a lot of people are conflicted about how this system played out in game but i do hope they experiment more with systems like this to improve the overall experience
Ideally, Ubi can take the tech from this and work from the ground up to more closely mold the next game around the core mechanics of "play as anyone".
It sounds like a MASSIVE resource drain was getting VA work for every possible character in every possible scenario, only to have back-and-forth sound stilted and the story seem more loose. If they can find some excuse to have all characters mute or using a 100% generated voice, they could cut out the part of the game that's perhaps outright *impossible* to pull off well and focus those resources on improving the "simulation" aspect.
They've got full creative control over the Watch Dogs property, surely they can find some way in-world to excuse to the player why generated NPCs and PCs aren't voiced.
@@illegallyrested8868 they could try and make it have no voice actors in someway but I can see major backlash cause even indie titles get criticized sometimes for not having voice acting. I wouldn't be suprised if they try applying more generated voice tech cause I remember there being research for that stuff more with machine learning (correct me if im wrong please ) thought it is still early to tell.
Solution - the PC must wear special ear implants because blah blah blah (can be used like a batman-gadget to do something super-human) - this way, you can have everyone and everything sounds a little off, but not in an annoying way, and you hide the generated VA inside that.
That happens when you (the publisher) rush developers. It’s certainly not a lack of ingenuity of the people working on it. Hoping for the next real Watch Dogs 3 ❤️
in short answer:The game sucked and downgraded a lot because of this idea.I hope they never ever do this again.
Would have been an interesting "other side of the coin" experience to allow the player to turn as many citizens against the good guys, effectively working as a false flag operative for the bad guys. Follow people around, then do things that negatively affect their lives by interfering with their daily activities, hobbies etc. and always remembering to mask it as Dedsec activity and see how the city turns against the supposed faction you are representing.
@@emulation2369 It's more of a tecnical standpoint problem mate. Not not having enough balls; you can actually see something of what he's talking about already in game, but the fowarding system outshines it a bit to save resources to the recruited operatives, you will see that them can even engage against the player if you wronged them or their peers on your adventures, nut is still very minute ocasions, maybe they try to do this on the next watch dogs, since tech may evolve to make it not be a massive resource hog
This is an amazing level of AI in a video game. I'm glad that the next generation of graphics also is bringing about new AI systems and I really hope they keep building stuff like this!
For the next game, Ubi should forget about the Play-As-Anyone thing, and go with something like Socialize-With-Anyone. Meaning, any NPC can become related to your character - meet, help in a mission, interact, go out together, pick you up in car, pick them up in a car, date etc etc etc. This would make the most living breathing world. At some point you would have many contacts with different abilities and professions in your phone and you will be able to even get together with let's say up to 3 at the same time. Which can open the door to interactions (agreement/disagreement) between these NPCs. They will have actual daily routines based on their profession/personality and you would be able to observe anyone's routine in real time.
This has made me more interested in the game than any promo material. I haven't played the first 2 and the character system in this seemed like a gimmick from the ads. But this seems pretty cool.
Whilst I'm pretty sure this game isn't for me I have enormous respect for the amount of work that went into the system. I think I've learned to appreciate games a lot more since I started watching your content. It's crazy how often the "invisible" things are the most intricate.
Now, I know a lot about a lawyer's daily routine..
These systems deserve a game that completely focuses on them. So impressive.
I really hope other developers take note and start implementing things like this into other games. Imagine a Final Fantasy or BioShock game like this
Bioshock im no sure about but i can see other open world games implementing and experimenting with systems like this if they want
I'm not sure if Final Fantasy or BioShock would really benefit, since they're not really sandbox games.
Though for something like Elder Scrolls, which already has Radiant AI, this could be a next step for Bethesda's focus on immersion.
They wont because they are lazy
3 years later the game sucked.Hope other devs never do it.
Omg Martin! If I am not wrong, he had such an amazing talk on splinter cell blacklist stealth mechanics to how npcs were structured. I actually still watch that video on repeat without hesitation, so much to learn from him!
Thank you so much for this video, I seriously look up to him. I am building 2D stealth rpg since a very very long time.. but Martin’s video(s) and this channel keeps me sane most of the time! ❤️
Yes that is indeed Martin Walsh of Splinter Cell fame and in fact I made an episode on Splinter Cell Blacklist based on that talk earlier this year. He was great to chat and with and came across as a really nice guy.
@@AIandGames Oh my god, I have to watch those videos again. Seriously, thank you for this. I am so lucky to find youtuber like you who genuinely cares about all these.
@@ashfid8987 Good luck with your 2D stealth game.
@@KenTWOu Thank you buddy! Means a lot.
30:37 “the way your Irish hitman is going to respond to a request is different than all the other personalities” except operatives don’t have different dialogue based on their jobs, it’s just one personality per voice. So an “Irish hitman” will have the same line as every other Irish character. It’s vernacular like that that the devs use to describe this system that deceives people and makes the system seem more complicated and in-depth than it actually is. Really disappointing
The voice actor might be the same for most Irish characters, but they do have different lines depending on their personalities.
@@jsade are you sure about that? I’m pretty sure there is only one personality per voice. The Dublin accent guy is always a brash, tough guy for example
That was a lot of work for them to build. The video itself seems like a massive effort to research coordinate and release as well
Thanks for this, it's a fantastic insight into the systems working behind the scenes, the game itself may of suffered from some mediocrity in places, but your content certainly doesn't well done and thanks again 😁
I have always been a big watch dogs fan, played both old games And had great time, but legion had me very very thrilled tho it's accused of boring gameplay and lack of centent, I knew it's exactly because its new AI system which is in fact a great technical achievement or advancement even though it might fail miserably (but it didn't in my opinion) I think it's very very well done. People should appreciate new breakthrough or effort to make different things much more otherwise we will always have those real copy and paste rpg shooting games, as other tech illiterate people claim legion is(however I think legion is a brave and innovative move).
If NPCs interactions/relationships in cyberpunk 2077 were as complex as this game, that would be maybe the cyberpunk we were all expecting to be, or close to it.
facts, especially since they advertised it would be something like this ...
CP2077's NPCs first need to get to the level of GTA SA from 2004.
This deserves more views 👍
THIS WHOLE CHANNEL IS INTERESTING AF
What I'm wondering is what are the RAM limitations on uprezzing NPCs? If I go around scanning every single person is the game going to lose track of them all or slowdown? Surely there's not enough memory and computing power to generate and keep track of all these systems if the player chooses to go nuts with uprezzing
There's a hard limit to the amount of people you can have in your team/saved to your contacts for later.
Yeah I mention it briefly in the video, but there is a limit after which any new citizen you uprez replaces the oldest one you still have in memory. The actual final number is 'big' but I don't know what it is.
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big fan of these videos man. i loved watch dogs 2 so I'm interested on how they improved their ai for legion
Great video!! I'm currently doing a playthrough and really enjoying it. I'm actually shocked at the implementation of the system and mechanics of the NPC. I've often wondered why this isn't talked and praised more. I think I'm building a wicked Deadsec team!
Very nice video. Looking at its comments i have to assume complicated systems like this usually fail on their weakest link. No matter how detailed an actors simulation is, if the mission placement is limited the player gonna look right through it, and vice versa.
Hey love ur content, but talking about the video, and analyzing the system. Playing as anyone is a technical achievement in an empty shell of a game. It's a system not supported by the rest of the game, that doesn't encourage u to play as a team of civilians and was for me poorly executed. I think it lacks a bunch of mechanics around it to make it good. Because even with the procedural agenda of every npc, if u look it's simply just them going to 3 buildings a day having no interaction on their way, and launching 2 or 3 basic animations when they work.
I got that info from my experience and a video following the behavior of the citizen with the advanced profiler.
I wished the game was better because the concept and the context described in the story are perfect for what they aim for, but it didn't work when integrated into the game.
Plus their desire of making a story around characters and giving them voices is a terrible mistake, cause by trying to make those civil u recruit characters, u end up seeing them as generated npc without real character. The cinematics reinforcing this aspect, where it doesn't matter if u have a new recruit or a veteran, they will act the same way, say the same line. Even worst when u die with a character and u start with another one never mentioning those lost people in our team...
I think they should less focus on bringing to life civilian and inspire more on the XCOM experience where the player is the one leading the team and having their lives being ur responsibility, evolving ur "soldier" and Dedsec too.
Thanks again for ur work, that was an interesting video, knowing more about what the devs were thinking behind the game, always interesting :)
yeah I agree, I think they should of had you as a main character so you've got a more focused story about you having to recruit a team/teams to do various things like say bank heist or something like that, you'd be able to get more attached and invested in to the story and characters lives. So similar to how it is now you can recruit and swap to anyone but you can only have a team of 4 total at any time say, so your choices matter more when recruiting and jobs for the recruits you keep are more meaningful as you get to know them. You could have assassin missions where you have to make it look like an accident or they're surrounded by security and you've only got a photo and a place of work for the target I don't know I just feel like Legion is a good proof of concept just needs refining
yeah the system didn't work too well in practice, and the game is flawed even aside from that. But I think it's a good start and I hope it's something that gets adopted more widely in games
@@egoborder3203 Yeah good direction, they just have to build a game around it, and not put a good idea into the old Ubisoft's formula over and over. I was even thinking about the fact that u can put propaganda messages on walls during the game but why not create ur own. Like again in Xcom 2, it would have been so good using ur phone and putting some filters to decorate the city of London more personally :D
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I expected a bit more insight on how the game does it and much less advertisement of what the game does.
Very cool and I love that things like this exist, but it seems barely visible during gameplay. Maybe I just didn't pay much attention, but I didn't notice any of these features they describe.
When I played the game I noticed repercussions of the system almost everywhere. Like in main or side mission I have to avoid a guard, because he was related to one of my potential recruits. Or I knew that it's better to not raise the alert in one of the restricted areas, because one of my recruits often went to work nearby.
This reminds me a lot of the core selling point of Shadows of Doubt.
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The parent of a character ignores them completely. You would think it's one of the base things to implement.
There are just way too many kinds of relationships in the game: brother-sister, husband-wife, lawyer-client, cop-mole, doctor-patient, pusher-client, hitman-target... It's kinda stupid to implement parents recognition, but ignore everything else.
Ugh.. one of those things where you start thinking about an idea and suddenly run into it out in the wild. Just started thinking about npc civilians with schedules and interactions, actions and events... a couple weeks back.. Then I run into this.
Awesome stuff bro. Keep it up ❤
Now this is how you do open world
If cyberpunk had this it would have lived up to the hype
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Thanks !!
So I guess the next step for Watch Dogs would be to make it an MMO now. So that multiple people take interest in an NPC (for good or bad) and kinda have players be on different sides of the missions based on their relationship with that NPC. Start blurring the lines between PC and NPC.... could be fun.
Are you considering making a video on Police AI, how it's made in games considering the currently flawed system of the recently launched Cyberpunk 2077?
Huh. This has a very different tone than the Errant Signal video.
First of all, judging by the last seconds of this interview (46:15) it was recorded before the game release and its lukewarm critical reception.
Second, Errant Signal video is unfair. He criticized the first game for the dissonance between its embedded narrative and gameplay, and then completely ignored the same issue in the 2nd game, because well, it has a likeable hero and a warmer color palette.
And then he pretended like 'play as anyone' feature came completely out of the blue. Meanwhile the feature, the census system, the way your reputation works, and lots of other tweaks here and there were made to give the player a blank slate protagonist and through simulation of NPCs and their associates punish him for all negative deeds in an attempt of marrying gameplay and narrative.
Well, at least he played the game the right way, role playing it with permadeath enabled.
@@KenTWOu That's not really all that unreasonable; if a movie has some issues, but I really connect with the characters, I'm going to like it more than a different movie with the same issues but bland characters. It does feel counter-intuitive, but I think certain good qualities can usually cover for the bad qualities in a piece of art. If there aren't enough good, that's when the bad starts becoming harder to ignore. Also that obviously comes down to personal preference a lot too. For those reasons, I think it's hard to say Errant Signal was really being "unfair".
@@shmunkyman33 I see where you're coming from, but it's still unfair. There are a lot more ways to tell a story in a videogame as opposed to movies. Some of the games like Uncharted focus on movie like authored content and make a protagonist with strong dialogues and stuff, meanwhile others like Half-life 1 and 2 are less prescriptive and give you a blank state character, who don't even have voice overs. It's pointless to compare them the way Chris 'Errant Signal' Franklin did, because the later games are at a disadvantage by design.
There were people commenting under his video something like 'you made me want to play Watch Dogs 2 instead' not because Legion is worse, but because it's obviously not for them. They want an authored content, a strong written character, a story arc, a cinematic cut scene. They don't want a freedom to 'write' their own emergent stories that the lack of authored content in Legion allows them to do.
Frankly, I don't care about WD2 story because I'm not a 20+ years old hacker guy, but I do care about Legion story, because I could find a NPC who looks almost like me, dresses almost like me, has a similar job and hobby, and then find NPCs like my friends and acquaintances and make them join DedSec. So Legion narrative is way more personal to me.
After that famous The Last of Us review I thought that Chris is the same kind of players, judging by his Legion review, he's obviously not. But as I said earlier, I give him credit for playing the game the right way.
Aight so this AI implementation has me intrigued, ill be purchasing it this evening in anticipation of the ai!
You need to make a video on the disaster Ai that is present in Cyberpunk 2077. It is easily some of if not the worst ai seen in a triple a game in the last 15 years.
Mate you should make a video on Cyberpunk 2077 and its AI, or the lackthereof...It would be a hilarious videos to contract the older games you've presented with what's supposed to be a
living breathing revolutionary open world" that took 8 years and 300 million to make.
Hey if your looking ideas? For more vids. I WOULD love to hear your TAKE on Metal gear solid guard Ai.
And Killzone Bot AI.
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Legion sounded interesting but it's not that good sadly :(
My issue was it never felt like the recruitment was justified. Why not just have one character that you can build the way you'd like instead of having to waste your time searching for someone closest to your vision...
In the real world, you can’t just build a person to what you like. The developers wanted to mimic the real world to make it more interesting and dynamic, that was part of their goal for the game.
"Play as Anyone" concept sort of exist all the way back in GTA V, although it's only part of the Director Mode, and the ability to possess NPCs in real-time is only possible with script mods. "Sort of" is the key word here, because once you possess an NPC with the mod, all associated AI logic are gone, except turning into a hostile enemy.
I think that's more like a character select though as opposed to seeing a random npc and being able to switch to them. Also there's no AI involved in generating the NPC for you to take control of.
Here a game for you, each time he says "Unique" take a shot.
I wish the character generation system was implemented in a different game. Watchdogs legion just does not give the mechanic any sort of justice. Gameplay is boring, repetitive,glitch filled,if it wasn't for the character creation mechanic this watchdogs would literally just be a carbon copy of 2.
It really wouldn’t be as it removes quite a lot of features from WD2
@@dachshund_gaming If you get rid of 'Play as Anyone' feature, you'll have the room for all those WD2 features they remove.
Aint nobody gonna mess with lil' aunt annie and her tommy gun
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how do you get these large studios to agree to get interviewed
I have to ask really nicely!
In all seriousness it takes a long time for this to go through, as we need to find time in everyone's schedules. But Ubisoft have been rather supportive of my work given they know I can talk to developers about technical stuff without needing to dumb it down.
@@AIandGames cool! Thanks for your reply.
Maybe I need to give this game a second chance. I just couldn't get passed the ai's voice
watching this after seeing free guy feels surreal
why do ubisoft still use windows 7 to develop on
Because lots of older tools programmers use usually run more reliably on win7.
Driver before watchdogs
Lol, all this and killing an npc doesn't remove them from the NPc pook except when recruited and playing on permadeath.
If it was on STEAM, I would buy it. No Steam no sale.
It would be interesting to see how many millions Ubisoft lost on this release ? Because the bulk of sales won't be until it's on Steam in 1 year.
28:58 watch dogs legion was made on roblox studio confirmed
this AI tech is streets ahead ngl
Owns an mp5
Banned from London Zoo
In reality this was an unnecessary gimmick. If you watch 100 videos of WDL gameplay, 90+% of the gamers will be using the same characters (spy, old person, Albion guard, beekeeper and a couple more). Most other characters are made boring intentionally to lead the gamer to pick the same characters from the marketing videos.
Once you pick a characters it doesn't mean much because you do the exact same things you do in any other open world game: walk, shoot, drive.
I much prefer WD2 which had an amazing living breathing world. I don't want to be the other people, I want the world around me be to be living breathing, and WDL was a huge letdown after WD2. If there is another game in the works, hopefully Ubisoft goes back to the drawing board and realizes what made WD2 so special.
Fun system, but despite the quantity there is no quality interpersonal relationship in the simulation. So yeah, another Ubisoft open world game, nothing less, nothing more.
All this effort for a really boring, ironically uninspired game
UBISOFT always do weird different SHIT that doesn't have any Heart and Depths. ALSO WATCH D3 IS BUGGY AS SHITTT
CDPR: Oof
There's nothing spectacular about this system from a programming standpoint. It's simple randomizing and data storing. Also, integration of this system was done poorly, it was almost unused to its full potential. Kudos to people who did the manual work to eliminate uncanny valley effect though.
Sorry but it's a joke
can I find a girlfriend in this game?
I love your videos, so I'm asking you to please upload on alternative platforms. I'm deleting my RUclips account, because of the free speech restrictions. We should fight and defend free speech!
I will miss your videos. I'm sorry for my unsubscribe!
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they slways mention it because its their main selling point albeit i tink its quite pathetic, they need to finally start innovating
@@alainchristian Apparently its you who is hurt little Ubi fanboy
I remember this concept. This version is newer. But the old-school Battlefield had this ability. Once you die you transported your characters consciousness into the closest Ai character near you. Sometimes you can float around and possess other characters of your choosing. Even tanks lol.