• Please make sure you are familiar with the forum rules. You can find them here: https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/index.php?threads/forum-rules.2334636/

The most annoying NPC contest

Jokerman

Grizzled Veteran
Dec 18, 2006
754
0
Well, we all know them- blocking your way in tight corridors, looking at you sheepishly while behind them enemies are shooting, delievering ubelievably trite one-liners, voiced by Ronald-Reagan-class actors....
They were crafted to be liked but the only emotion they stir is the desire to see em ragdoll'ized.

So lets have fun- who'se the most annoying NPC you've ever played with (or against)?
Ill start-

My list is long but the #1, without real competitors, has got to be Far Cry's Val:
Horribly voiced, arrogant, unsexy and extremly stupid, Val is truly the anti-thesis for Alyx.
She appears as an active AI towards the end of the game, when it becomes absurdly hard and frustrating... you are growing to hate the game when you have to load your last check-point for the 25th time.. things are bad as they are when that stupid cow decides to appear.

One section I remember with a particular lack of fonding:- she has to arm a turd bomb or something and you have to protcet her from hordes of mercenaries who can take direct hits from your grenade launcher cos they have policeman's plastic shields...
The ***** sure is busy and it takes her quite a while to do her thing, yet she still got the time to watch the show and she'll always commend your oponnents- "damn, they're good" she'll mutter every now and again while their corpses are strewn in bundles, blocking the corridors.

To see her body-builder's-Lara-Croft-wannabe-polygon-of-a-body naked can drive a man gay.
 
I have to say ArmA's AI is pretty useless.
They get themselves killed way to much, suck in close quarters combat as they try to stay in formation when your walking in a road. meaning, they go into alleyways to stay in wedge formation instead of the road, you lose them, they walk into a waiting AK and die.
What i hate most about them though is that they try and use AT rockets against infantry. By the time they truely need those AT's their all spilled against soft targets.
Old OFP's AI was better.

A part of their clunkyness i blame on the controls though. I think its pretty much the same AI as in OFP, but instead of being programmed for the new set of controls, they try to use their old tactics fitting to their old controls, wich dont work anymore. Another part of it i blame on the grass. When they lie down, they cant see through the grass cause it blocks their view, so they allways stand up in open fields while trying to shoot, and thus make very easy targets.
 
Upvote 0
The princess from Prince of Persia:Sands of Time. The one who shoots you in the back during sword fights.

Delta Force:Black Hawk Down, where your highly trained Delta operative team mates did absolutely nothing, but the enemy seemed to know a trick or two. Namely omniscience. Same goes for that godawful FPS Commandos game.
 
Upvote 0
GRAW

AI teammates who unless you order their every move will only follow you from 20m back and not get involved in a firefight when the shooting starts unless you order them too or they directly see the enemy (which they can't because they're hanging so far back). Then when they are involved the joy of seeing your AI burn through about four magazines of rapid fire to hit a standing target 100m away, while the enemy slots you and your AI first shot.
 
Upvote 0
What I find really annoying in RTS games when you play against the NPC's is that they have one great advantage. They can do everything at the same time while you have to concentrate on one thing at a time. In games like Age of Empires where you still have to keep your base safe while fighting it can get very stressfull or in games like Cossacks and the Total War series when there is more than one fight on the battlefield.
 
Upvote 0
Your squad mates in Brothers in Arms. Ugh, every time they set up in FRONT of cover and get themselves shot, I can literally chew my way through the monitor. Bad bad bad bad pathfinding.

GRAW 2's AI is terrible too. I suppose your teammates have Parkinson's disease because they run slow as hell. You issue the "follow me" command, run through a street, and look back only to find that your teammates are still at the other side of the level. Also the continious "Sir? sir? sir? sir? sir? sir? sir" is annoying as hell.

The scientist in STALKER. When he said "Hello, hello?" for the 9023481th time, I really wanted to shoot him in the face.

Rainbow 6 Raven Shield. Your teammates can't shoot, can't properly find their way through the levels, and just get themselves killed. A good game ruined by terrible AI. Honestly I don't think I've ever seen "Squad based" gameplay work yet.

Armed Assault, teammate AI again (funny how enemy AI is usually better). You'd think they'd have no problem moving from A to B but they can't do it. And whenever you give them an order, they usually move into the opposite position first. Really, try navigating them through a small forest. It takes them about half an hour to do that.

Good AI is really difficult to program, apparently.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
Oh yeah, speaking of STALKER. I hate the one Duty member who patrols along the catwalk in the entrance to the city. He'll always say "Get out of here Stalker!" like that building is off-limits, despite the fact it's the only way into the town from the Garbage.

Then on the flipside you have that Zhela or whatever his name is who stands at the front of the bar like a bouncer and says "I said 'come in', don't just stand there!" even though he never ever just says "come in". And what's more, he always says it while you're coming down the stairs and obviously going into the bar. You'd think you'd have to pay him to get in, or he'd tell you to holster your weapons or something, but nope, he serves no purpose what-so-ever except to tell you to not just stand there, but to in fact come in.

That reminds me now of The Duty Captain guy Voronin who at least has two lines to bombard you with but one of them is grammatically incorrect and seeing as the voice actor is American and only faking a Russian accent, you'd think he'd at least read the line properly instead of how it was written for him haha.

"Hello Brother, why have you come?"
"What are you, deaf? What are you here?"

If you're going to scold me, at least use the right W.

Basically I hate all the English speaking NPC's in STALKER. Except for Sidrovich, cause he's cool no matter what. Oh, and the crazy sniper in the Army Warehouses - "Don't come any closer or I'll kill you! I'm insane, I belong in an asylum!"
 
Upvote 0
Like Nimsky and Bluehawk said, I really hate how most of the NPCs in Stalker have only 2 lines at most and like to repeat them every few seconds. This gets especially annoying in the 300 Rads Bar, where you got 8 or so NPCs in close confines. Every time I walk into the Bar I get out as fast as I can because crap like this really starts to annoy:

"Don't stand there, come in! I said don't stand there, come in!" (repeat)
"Still alive? That's good" (repeat)
"You can't go there!" (repeat)
"Hey Stalker, come here, I have something that might interest you." (repeat)
"Get out of here Stalker" (repeat)
And my personal favorite:
"Black raven, black raven, circling above the graves..." (maybe a fan of Poe?)

Same goes for TES4 Oblivion too. I know its tough to make every NPC in the game talk, especially since there's thousands of them, but hearing the same lines from different races and sexes makes you say wtf. You'll hear a Redguard man say "I saw a mudcrab today, steered clear though." and then a few moments later you'll hear a Kajiit female say the same thing! They're obviously 2 different recordings, so why have them be the same lines? C'mon Bethesda, making 10 different recordings of the same line is clearly a dumb move.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0