During the long development period, the creators of Sons of the Forest have repeatedly explained what makes the game so special. A major point: the behavior of the opponents. But the AI isn’t working at all, some fans now claim. What’s the truth?
What’s the deal with NPCs? One of the big features of Sons of the Forest are the NPCs, who should react differently to you and supposedly have their own personalities. This is intended to make them more dangerous and interesting as opponents.
The idea is quite simple: if you are friendly, opponents will not attack you at first. Cannibals also fight among themselves or have issues with mutants. On the other hand, it’s also true: if you are particularly cruel to opponents, they will take revenge.
You should be able to decide how you want to proceed – thoughtfully or aggressively? However, this apparently does not work well yet.
This is what players are saying now: In a huge thread on reddit, hundreds of players are currently discussing the artificial intelligence in Sons of the Forest. The accusations of the creator:
- Cannibals are not that intelligent, they do not patrol and just appear instead of actively coming out of their camps
- different tribes do not conduct any war
- there is no “reputation” system as promised
- deterrents like heads on sticks have no effect
- every encounter plays out the same way, the groups of opponents are also all similarly or identically structured
- mutants do not crawl out of caves, but simply spawn, sometimes in the camp
There are also some problems with Kelvin and Virginia, such as them getting stuck even though there are doors and passages right next to them that they can use. By the way: if you lose the two, you can respawn Kelvin and Virginia with a trick.
MeinMMO video producer Anna Alberg had a hard time with the opponents. You can see her first steps in Sons of the Forest here:
“I think the AI works”
The discussion has now resulted in over 413 comments. Some agree that the AI isn’t what was promised. However, Sons of the Forest is still unexpectedly in Early Access, instead of being in a finished state as initially announced.
Some users, who apparently have deeper expertise, disagree. boisteroushams says, for example: If you look at what is going on through the debug mode, much more is happening with NPC opponents than you would expect. A lot is happening in the background.
User ZeroaFH even tested it himself. After he completed the game, he loaded a saved game after 10 days because the aggressiveness was not as high there. He was indeed able to observe intelligent behavior in NPCs there. He says:
“I think the AI is in the game and works, but it takes several factors before that becomes obvious. Once more cannibal tribes come, I think it will grow much further.
The only opponent that feels out of place regarding AI behavior are the skinny mud men. At first, they observe from a distance and follow you from afar. But once the aggressiveness is high enough, it feels like they always notice you, no matter how high your stealth meter is.”
Other players compare the AI with that of the first part of The Forest. It also initially seemed very rudimentary but had many nuances. There are just too many factors that ultimately result in an opponent hitting you in the face.
The developers have already announced that Sons of the Forest will be further developed and will receive new content. At the moment, they are fixing bugs and regularly releasing hotfixes for that. A console version in the future is at least not ruled out:
