Dishonored and cheating ai

So I was playing some more Dishonored and noticed something annoying: the ai is cheating. I’ll explain how in a moment, but let me first say how that effects me (and probably others).

Primarily, I’d say, the problem is it breaks immersion. The game is basically breaking the established rules, and the rules are the laws of that universe. Couldn’t happen in real life (rules can be broken but not natural laws — e.g. an army can’t materialize out of thin air just to make reality more challenging to someone.) But it’s not that it feels unfair like it would if a human cheats in some game your playing, but more that the game is revealing that it is player-centric, i.e. that the game world doesn’t exist as its own entity but as something to entertain you. Ultimately that is what it is of course, but (paradoxically?) it’s a lot more entertaining and interesting when it doesn’t seem and feel that way.

This cheating also adds a tiny bit of hopelessness. Even if you play perfectly it’ll still get you if the developers want and there’s nothing you can do about it, and you don’t know when it will happen again. It’s like playing chess with someone who’s occasionally allowed to make an illegal move. How would you strategize with that element thrown into the game?

I say tiny bit because I trust the developers won’t overuse this trick, at least not as blatantly as was the case this time.

So let me describe what happened.

I cleared out one level of a big area and started to go up one level using the stairs, sneaking as to not be discovered. Then I heard a shout behind me, turned around a saw two guards coming at me. Where the heck did they come from? Guess I missed clearing out a room or something. I reloaded (possibly after a chase and a fight) to the moment right before taking to the stairs. This time I waited to see where they would come from. I waited and waited, no one came. Okay, so I’ve come upon a triggering event that isn’t triggered when I just stood waiting.

This is not the cheating, but let me add that triggered events too break immersion to some extent, they too feel gamey. That’s a topic for another day though, but the reason is very similar to why cheating breaks immersion.

Okay, so I needed to trigger the event, I went up the stairs once more, but this time I walked backwards so that I could look in the direction of the expected guards, and at a certain point I hit the trigger and two guards appeared out of thin air in the middle of the stairs. I was like… really?

I get that they’re trying to create some excitement, but preferably they should do that while staying within the laid down rules, and I don’t think that includes creating guards out of thin air right behind you.

This is tiny example of cheating (and triggering) and one that by itself doesn’t matter much (which may even be just a bug), but it’s a good example of something bigger, the immersion-breaking effect of “gamey” tricks that make the world feel inauthentic. 

This is a topic I will write a lot more about.