Part 2:  Impressive Game AI

    There is a visceral crunch, the sound of metal connecting with bone, as the Hunter strikes down Rathalos with her greatsword. The wyvern recoils in pain, its eyes bloodshot, its lizard brain screaming with the unfamiliar sensation of fear. The Hunter has shattered its scales and broken its wings. Overcome with pain and weariness it turns tail and limps into the jungle.    From its ragged breathing the Hunter knows victory is close. She quietly follows it to its lair, and waits as the wyvern nurses its wounds, drinks from a running stream, and falls asleep in its nest. The Hunter strikes, and claims her trophy.

    This is a scene from Monster Hunter, an action game where players defeat giant monsters with giant weapons. It features a wide variety of monsters, environments to fight them in, and the monsters themselves move and can interact with both the players and environments in different ways. They can be blinded with the bright light of flash grenades, stunned by loud sounds, or simply from being hit on the head with a large blunt object. Monsters also display visually the damage they have taken, or if they are enraged, and have body parts that can be climbed on or severed. They may swing from tree to tree, or If they are badly injured may limp, or lose the ability to fly. All these behaviours turn Monster Hunter’s monsters into believable and animated opponents for the player.

    Monster Hunter may be a game where the whole is perceived to be greater than the sum of its parts. To make monsters react to attacks, each attack in monster hunter has several properties, including possibly parameters hidden to the player such as physical force. These may be used to calculate and trigger reactions from the AI when it is hit, causing reactions such as recoiling. Monsters behaviour is also consistent and this may be due to the use of a list of predefined behaviours, such as “go to the nesting area when remaining monster health reaches a certain amount.” However, the large number of these behaviours and the interplay between their trigger conditions and other objects in the environment lead to an AI that is interesting for the player because it responds to a multitude of situations.