Dark Souls Franchise AI Analysis Reece Gordon Harvin

Dark Souls Franchise AI Analysis Reece Gordon & Harvin Singh

Dark Souls Franchise Dark Souls is a series of action role playing games where the player is required to get past many enemies of a high difficulty to reach the end, each having unique techniques and attacks that the player is required to adapt to in order to defeat each enemy presented to them. The game is progressively more difficult, with the earlier bosses having more straight forward attack pattern AI and as the player progresses the enemy AI seems to progress alongside them and become more intricate and difficult.

Boss AI In Depth Analysis Evolution throughout the fight – During Boss fights in the game once certain events are triggered the boss state will change, this will alter the mechanics of the boss which requires the player to relearn the new AI patterns. One of the mechanics of the bosses is to bait the player into thinking there is an opening for the player to attack, this would lure the player into attacking at a bad time during AI attack patterns. They do this by having misleading attack patterns, which will have a irregularly long pause in between strikes or an animation that leads the player into thinking the attack pattern is over when in reality its not.

The Good The AI attack patterns are hard to deal with when first encountered forcing the players to adapt to each sequence of attacks to defeat them. The AI always makes the game feel challenging, even the weaker enemies can be quite difficult to defeat especially for newer players familiar with traditional rpg game design. The variety in the different AI’s make the game feel more unpredictable, due to the various attack patterns in the game which all require a different response to deal with.

The Bad There are ways to cheat the AI by the player positioning themselves in a way that the AI cannot attack them, allowing the player to kill the common AI with no trouble. The margin of error is very small when fighting the AI, death can be infuriating especially if caused by technology getting in the way or glitches in the game.

Conclusion The Dark Souls franchise has a very intricate and challenging AI that at times feel too difficult however the player is always able to adapt to the states and patterns of the AI to defeat the enemies. The AI serves its purpose of making the game challenging but not so much that it would discourage players from playing again, rather it encourages them to keep trying until they succeed.