In the interview, Jacquier pronounced, ”AI has always been the real battleground. The challenge is that, if you see an AI coming, you’ve failed. And that’s a problem we have to overcome as we create the impression of flawless, seamless worlds.”
Jacquier added, ”In general the industry expects that graphics will not be a strong feature any more… Obviously, graphics are better for marketing purposes because you can show things. AI you can’t show.”
“Our challenge with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox (360) is that we’re extremely limited in what we can do. It’s a challenge for the engineers to provide nice graphics and nice AI and nice sound with a very small amount of memory and computation time.”
“We think that the next generation of consoles won’t have these limits any more. Games might have more realistic graphics and more on-screen, but what’s the value of making something more realistic and better animated if you have poor AI?”
History seems to back Jacquier. Half-Life had a dated modified Quake 2 engine, but was popular and immersive due to the innovative AI with the human and alien enemies.
