Traditionally enemies in certain genres of games have been static and predictable in their behaviour. Specific enemies will act and behave identical to their copies, making combat repetitive and predictable. Further more, quite often these games treat combat with these enemies as quick endeavours with little to no overall change ion the players approach to them, beyond different types of enemies occasionally requiring a different tactic.
The goal of this project is to remedy both these issues, and attempt to create combat in which enemies are not only varied in their behaviour but also making each instance of combat more challenging. Not by making enemies hit harder or taking more hits to bring down, but to mimic - but not copy - combat one would have against another player.
“A fight with a bear should feel like a fight, and not as a task to complete your rotation.”
I want the player to pay attention to how the bear acts, and be unable to predict how its going to act next. It would be easy to make some bears more aggressive and others more tactical, but without the ability for them to behave outside their personality I fear combat would again feel predictable once the player recognizes “how an aggressive bear behaves” as opposed to a defensive one. Simply put an aggressive bear may just as well run away to heal, as a defensive one might suddenly pounce.