IAnim – Assassin’s Creed (again)
Aug 30th, 2010 by Ninja Dodo
A series of posts on the use of interactive animation in games…
Last time I wrote one of these I believe I said something about weekly entries… Well, so much for that, but I’ve got a couple of new ones:
… starting with Assassin’s Creed 2.
I’ve talked about Assassin’s Creed before, but the sequel takes things a step further…
Where AC1 had you tagging along automatically with groups of monks at the press of a button, AC2 is all about proximity*. ANY gathering of NPCs can shield you from the eyes of the guards. Just standing close enough to or walking with a small group will make you effectively disappear. Your enemies are looking for a lone assassin. Blend into the crowd and you can travel freely.
Straying too close to the guards when they’re on edge will blow your cover. Like AC1, their state of alertness is communicated through posture.
Moving from group to group, pretending to chat with random pedestrians, weaving through the crowd, you can approach unseen – strike – and be gone…
[Incidentally, there was an interesting talk at the Paris AI Conference about how groups form in conversation, adapting to new arrivals, etc. They don't go quite that far here, but you could layer these systems on top of each other to great effect.]
Hiding in plain sight and adhering to social norms to avoid drawing attention to yourself is not something games experiment with a lot and it’s good to see someone taking this on.
Speaking of which, Spy Party continues to look interesting as well…
* more AI than animation, but it is body language.
