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Smart games challenge wits

By Glenn Chapman AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE | Wednesday, July 23, 2008

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LOS ANGELES — Video games are getting smarter, with virtual enemies improvising during battles, story lines shifting on moral choices and in-game characters sending players text messages for help.

Titles unveiled at the just-concluded Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles feature artificial intelligence (AI) making in-game worlds more realistic and less predictable.

"There was a lot we had to do," said Peter Hines of Bethesda Softworks LLC as Agence France-Presse tried the studio's eagerly awaited Fallout 3 shooter game, set in a post-nuclear-war Washington.

AI software in Fallout 3 lets enemies change tactics depending on what players do.

"They are being smart about being in a combat situation," Mr. Hines said.

The game also is designed so that players' choices affect which computer-controlled factions become their allies or enemies.

Project Origin, an action-horror game built by Monolith Productions Inc. for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Inc. boasts "vastly enhanced" AI that makes enemies act realistically and use environments to their advantage.

"See, he threw the car door open because it was the smartest way to take cover," a Monolith developer said of an on-screen adversary while showing AFP the game.

"That isn't scripted. He is figuring it out as he goes."

Custom software built by Gearbox Software LLC for Borderlands video game generates a "near-endless" array of missions, enemies, environments and weapons.