F.E.A.R was a different game in many categories; they didn’t just made a new resident evil, they went further that. Yesterday I posted at the GameDev community (highly recommended community for any developer!) about what was the “WOW!” factor on some game they played; maybe can be the first time you jumped out a chair when a level at Doom turned off all lights and a door behind you opened with a big, fat Cacodemon spiting fire balls or when you suddenly realized at the first level of Condemned Criminals Origins that you just were thrown out of the window and landed on the roof of a car.

That’s the WOW! Factor to me; when you see something different happen; when you realize this will be a totally new experience from now on and you just don’t need to go killing everything that moves: it creates expectative, it makes you wonder what’s next.

Monolith fully integrated this system with the enemy’s dialogue and game environments in an effort to create the illusion that the AI was smarter than it actually is. F.E.A.R. was […]

Some people at the GameDev community posted on the thread I opened about that little moment during a game, some of them talked about Resident Evil, Zelda, Ned for Speed; but one of them (KulSeran) talked about F.E.A.R, a very recent game and how the AI (Artificial Intelligence) made his WOW! moment. Now the best part; someone (skittleo) posted a link to a GameSpy article written by William Harms; Monolith gave away some of their secrets on how they coded the AI on the F.E.A.R game; and it’s truly something clever that any level designer or game designer should read. He wrote:

Monolith fully integrated this system with the enemy’s dialogue and game environments in an effort to create the illusion that the AI was smarter than it actually is. F.E.A.R. was widely lauded for the ability of its soldiers (both singly and in squads) to flank the player. In reality, the AI wasn’t flanking at all — it was moving from one cover area to another cover area. Because of the skill exhibited by the level designers, that next cover area was to the side of the player’s location (or where the designers assumed the player would be), so when the AI moved to that location, it created a seamless illusion of the enemy flanking you.

Adding a final layer to the illusion was the notion that the AI called for reinforcements. As the player slugged it out with the game’s bad guys, one of them would call out for reinforcements. Then, when the player moved forward, they would come across an enemy squad rushing toward them. The squad was always there, regardless of whether or not reinforcements were actually “summoned,” but because of the dialogue, the player creates a connection that really isn’t there.

That’s really something! games doesn’t need hard work, just “smart” work and you will get this kind of gameplay. F.E.A.R was inspired in japanese horror films (The Grudge, for example) where the sound is not trigger by events but it’s always present room by room. It’s fairly difficult to make a game, we are all aware of that. But what is more difficult is to be able to connect with the player, that’s actually something that can be seen as impossible at some levels. It can be done! WOW!

What was your WOW! moment during a game?