Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs Discussion Topic Part 1

[Diz]

I have watched a couple of Let's Plays where AI glitches unfortunately do happen, but I never felt the sense of being unimmersive, though that probably also depends on the severity of the glitch. As Kman described, both parties have to come to an agreement. A game has to allow the players to be immersed, but not least, the players themselves have to let them be immersed. I know some people who do not fool around in the game, but they simply fail to immerse themselves. The way of playing should not always take the blame, rather some people simply lack the ability to do so however hard they might try.

A certain glitch was brought up regarding holding an object infront of you would sometimes result in a monster not noticing your presence. Has this really even been confirmed as a glitch, though? Even so, if I am to be brutally honest, I do not really see it as a glitch myself, and not at all less immersive. Why would it be that unrealistic? All we know about the gatherers that roam the world of Amnesia is the saying that they are known to be spirits of another world placed in malformed bodies with faces that do not express having the best of eye sight, and the gatherers are not said to be anything but featherbrained servants, by our dearest Agrippa, when it comes to intelligence. When you see something that obviously looks heavily malformed and dead, it is not a given that all of its senses are top notch. They are not from this world, so they may not even be too used to the concept of gravity. They may attack when they see a human face or something that resembles a body, but if they only see a floating barrel or a dark partial silhouette standing completely still, well yeah.

Now, I have not tried this all too much, but I did once, out of panic, in the corner of a room with nothing else to resort to, grab a barrel, covering me up as much as possible, and the unspeakable thing missed me. If this was reality, having something otherwordly chasing me, and if I was really in a corner of a room with nothing much to hide behind, if I could think straight, it is not unreasonable if I would try to grab something nearby to cover, or partially cover myself.

For other AI glitches, I believe that Amnesia does a very good job at making immersed players forget or not focus on them. Immersed players would and will still be terrified of the gatherers. At the most, I believe an immersed player feels less terrified if they found a safe place to stay where gatherers could not reach them, but I am pretty sure that safety would up and vanish once they left that place, bringing back the terror. On the first playthrough, anyway.

During my own playthrough, I did not notice any AI glitches, and I like to think that it does not really happen that much either. If it does happen, I further like to think that players do not notice it so much since they should not be tempted to pay much visual attention to the gatherers either way. In my opinion, if noticing an AI glitch makes it considerably easier for them to complete the game, they were probably not all that immersed in the first place.

I agree with you that deliberately playing with the game won't get you immersed, but being de-immersed (hmm) because of a bug is 100% the developer's fault.

Although it may not always de-immerse the player, I very much do agree. When playing the game for our first time, an AI glitch may have the benefit of the doubt since we know next to nothing about the strange silhouettes roaming the place, but naturally, it can only go so much wrong before we pick up on it and, in worse cases, do become de-immersed and have the barrier between the player and the game grow stronger. =)

Edit: What was I doing posting this, I was not finished, hahaha! I forgot to bring forth the most interesting point of all: A Machine For Pigs!

It was confirmed that the AI in A Machine For Pigs would be much smarter and much more frightening, was it not? So! What can we expect? Does this mean that the creatures actually will be more intelligent by nature and when hunting down players, become silent when closing in, try to block the exit, or will it just mean less glitches and more smooth encounters? I think we can expect a slightly smarter creature. Perhaps one that does not hunt, capture and kill because they are ordered to do so (gatherers), but because they need to feed, and pigs are said to eat just about anything, right?

Hey! Imagine if we are chased down by one of the creatures, we hide in a room, and the creature plays the weak card and pretends that it is unable to break down the door, then wanders off, but then comes very silently sneaking back and hides in a dark corner near the door. The music and atmosphere easens, changes or becomes completely still and silent. The unspeakable has gone away. You open the door, take a step or two, and you hear a big squeel, steps closing in, and you run right back into the room and close the door. I am sure I saw someone make a similar suggestion in another topic here at some point. Would make you think twice, and certainly would make things much less predictable. Discuss!