Lorka's blog says what I'm getting at and saves me typing.

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Original Blog by Lorka http://thetreesarenormalmapped.blogspot.com/2005_04_01_thetreesarenormalmapped_archive.html Sunday, April 17, 2005 I don't believe you. Look, lets try it again. I'll sneak out from under this pitchblack corner of the room, and you pretend to be a little more suprised at the site of a grizzled, elderly spy with a large gun and three green eyes. "Intruder!" just doesn't cut it, mate. Especially as you were asleep three frames ago. My statement a couple of posts ago suggesting that Irrational's Swat 4, like Act of War: Direct Action was childish, I'm finding my self regretting. [/Yoda] For the game actually has a more human feel to almost any other. There's still not much, but in a genre of game where humans are for shooting, there's a suprising amount of personality in the potential ragdolls. It's in the encounters. In fear of death, a room full of people with guns erupt into a shouting match. The masked policemen aggressively yelling 'put down your weapons!' and the hostage takers swearing hysterically over the top. Because as a function of gameplay the lives of every character is valuable, you regret a kill inherantly. I've deviated however. My point wasn't that Splinter Cell shouldn't disallow your guns on even more of its missions, what I'm saying is that at least in Swat 4 - NPC reactions have a degree of realism. Why don't enemies fumble with their weapons when sighting a completely unexpected enemy? Why don't they put their hands up, shout for help with wide eyed terror, simply run away, or freeze - as any real person may well do. Of course, when faced with an entirely expected enemy, NPCs will shoot on sight or react with conviction and resolve. ...Alright, that description turned into mechanics would make a game with challenges way too easy or hard. But how do you strike a balance? For a game like Splinter Cell, where the level structure needs enemies to be in certain places at certain times, with quite a strict limit on mobility and variation - what can you do with realistic responses? How about dialogues? Before they shoot shouting "Who are you? What are you doing here!" Perhaps with some Monkey Island style optional retorts. Yes, it's late.

So how about it, can we implement more of this 'realistic emotional reaction' to situations. The above post makes me think of the bit in Saving Private Ryan where the wall collapses and a team of American troops comes face to face with a team of German troops. They both start shouting "DROP YOUR WEAPONS!!, surrender" to each other (Okay, I'm only guessing what the Germans are saying but I reckon they must be saying the same kind of thing). Then another squad of Americans shoots the Germans. Imagine if this happened in a game, would the player shoot first? Duck for cover? Drop their weapons? It would be good to see more emotional responses to events.

If you ever play the Close Comabt series you will see that the units show emotion. Like if you tell and infantry squad to charge a tank they most likey won't do it, or if they get close enought they just surender. Sometimes units wil just not move if you tell them to because they are scared. A very good series, the most realistic and one of the oldest RTS games that I play.

This so reminds me of a incident in a wine cellar with a drunken Nazi in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The guy is facing away from you, singing and slurring his speech and I think wobbling. But as soon as you come into view, he snaps upright, screams "Halt!" and stars firing as good as any other soldier.

Chalk this up to two very vital issues: Limited tradeoff between other content choices (i.e., is it better to provide more enemies, or more detailed enemies); and maybe lack of creative design (they could have botched the AIs aim at least).

Certainly you can make them more realistic, but you must ask yourself whether it's worth it. That drunken soldier bit didn't ruin the whole game for me, so I'd say it's a minor blemish on an otherwise outstanding game.

I suspect you must refocus the entire game around emotion and relations for this to be worth the effort.