# Animals are boring (in games)



## sunandshadow (Feb 19, 2011)

So, I can only assume there are lots of people on this forum who like animals.  Have you ever noticed how lame animals (whether they are pet monsters or farm animals or virtual kittens and puppies) are in games?  What is the most interesting thing you've seen an animal do in a game?  Now what kinds of more interesting things could animals theoretically do in games?


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## Schwimmwagen (Feb 19, 2011)

The most interesting animal I've probably seen in a game is the zombie dog in resident evil. Otherwise, they just follow you around, bite people you don't like and fetch random shit for you.


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## Stratelier (Feb 19, 2011)

Animals tend to be more interesting if you get to play as one, but that doesn't happen very often.  Take Okami Amaterasu; sure, she can wield a deadly disc, BFS, and shoot off beads like bullets, but she can also _pee on enemies_ in combat.


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## Willow (Feb 19, 2011)

Chocobos are just generally awesome.


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## Ixtu (Feb 19, 2011)

Do...Pokemon count?
Most of them are animal-based.
How about Crash Bandicoot? He kicks ass despite being a derpwad (I've only played the old series)
I could make a list of these guys, furry/animal characters.


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## sunandshadow (Feb 19, 2011)

Ixtu said:


> Do...Pokemon count?
> Most of them are animal-based.
> How about Crash Bandicoot? He kicks ass despite being a derpwad (I've only played the old series)
> I could make a list of these guys, furry/animal characters.


 Pokemon and fantasy creatures count but, what do they do outside of combat?  The pokemon characters in the anime are awesome, but I don't recall them doing much in the games.


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## Willow (Feb 19, 2011)

sunandshadow said:


> Pokemon and fantasy creatures count but, what do they do outside of combat?  The pokemon characters in the anime are awesome, but I don't recall them doing much in the games.


The HMs seemed to be pretty useful things to use during the game.


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## Schwimmwagen (Feb 19, 2011)

Stratadrake said:


> Animals tend to be more interesting if you get to play as one,


 
There was a game called "A Dog's Life" or something and it lets you play as a dog and do all the things dogs do. :3c (except yiff :V) 

I don't know why the hell I bought it though. I shouldn't be allowed near the bargain bins ever again.


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## Heliophobic (Feb 19, 2011)

I seriously can't think of a good game with any animals in it, aside from Quake... which had those zombie dogs occasionally.


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## Stargazer Bleu (Feb 19, 2011)

Fable 2 and 3 but the dog didn't do a whole lot there either.
Did point out treasure spots, and attack enemies and chase a ball if you threw it.


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## Ixtu (Feb 19, 2011)

Very true, i mean, pokemon is an RPG.
And the other characters like Crash actually aren't combat-based.


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## Maisuki (Feb 19, 2011)

I once saw a rabbit bite some guy's head off. I'm not sure this was in a game, though.


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## Braux (Feb 20, 2011)

Maisuki said:


> I once saw a rabbit bite some guy's head off. I'm not sure this was in a game, though.


 





Its just a rabbit!


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## Xenke (Feb 20, 2011)

Hey You Pikachu.

Look it up, it's adorable.


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## Stratelier (Feb 20, 2011)

Gibby said:


> There was a game called "A Dog's Life" or something and it lets you play as a dog and do all the things dogs do. :3c (except yiff :V)


I saw it once in a used-games store.  The blurb on the back explicitly emphasizes that you play as an _actual_ dog as opposed to a bipedal/anthropomorphic character.

Speaking of PokÃ©mon, in the main series you're just a Trainer and the creatures are your fighters.  The _Mystery Dungeon_ spinoffs are a little more interesting in the sense that you play _as_ the pokÃ©mon themselves.  Dungeon crawling can get a little tedious, combat doesn't have the same feel as the main series, but the storyline (_Explorers of Sky_ especially) actually gets quite good as you go along.


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## Kit H. Ruppell (Feb 20, 2011)

Stargazer Bleu said:


> Fable 2 and 3 but the dog didn't do a whole lot there either.
> Did point out treasure spots, and attack enemies and chase a ball if you threw it.


So basically the dog was Tricky with fur.


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## Daisy La Liebre (Feb 20, 2011)

Gibby said:


> There was a game called "A Dog's Life" or something and it lets you play as a dog and do all the things dogs do. :3c (except yiff :V)
> 
> I don't know why the hell I bought it though. I shouldn't be allowed near the bargain bins ever again.


 
I played that once. You could piss, shit, eat of of garbage cans, smell stuff... It sucked, tbh.


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## Volkodav (Feb 20, 2011)

Harvest Moon animals dont really do fuck all even though the game is kinda based around a farm


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## Zanzi (Feb 20, 2011)

Most animals in games are boring, but the  Ã¼ber kittie in D&D is absolute rape.

Also, if they count, moogles are awesome.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Über
*


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## Daniel Kay (Feb 20, 2011)

YES, so seconded.

Animals usually only have 3 functions, attack on sight, stand around and do nothing or run away.
What they need is actual behaviors and strategies. A dog would not repeatedly jump up and down and bite, it would get a solid bite and hold it. Territorial animals should actually try to scare you away instead of attacking right away, do threatening poses as a warning.

As for "strategies" I commonly bring up Komodo Dragons, they have a "hit and run" strategy. They make a fast attack on their prey, take a hard bite that is either lethal to smaller animals or severely injures bigger ones and then retreat. The bleeding wound they rip with their teeth combined with their poisonous/infectious saliva usually acts severely weakening or lethal within a few days, until that time they simply stalk the injured animal from a distance.
In game it would translate to a KD attacking you once, making a solid bite and then stalk you over the cause of a few days making it hard to rest outside since they'd likely use nights when you sleep for attacks before calling it quits either after a few days or when they have other prey (killing something big and leaving it in your path might help). While that wouldn't work in a fast paced action title it could work for RPGs and open world games.


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## Heliophobic (Feb 20, 2011)

Daniel Kay said:


> YES, so seconded.
> 
> Animals usually only have 3 functions, attack on sight, stand around and do nothing or run away.
> What they need is actual behaviors and strategies. A dog would not repeatedly jump up and down and bite, it would get a solid bite and hold it. Territorial animals should actually try to scare you away instead of attacking right away, do threatening poses as a warning.
> ...


 
Okay.


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## ShÃ nwÃ ng (Feb 20, 2011)

Solution:

http://www.noahware.us/Noahware/Images/HamsterFightingMachine.JPG


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## BRN (Feb 20, 2011)

There was this pretty cool white wolf I saw in one game. I think the coolest thing it did was save the world.


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## Daniel Kay (Feb 20, 2011)

Grycho said:


> Okay.


 
I think this should be nominated as "most useless reply of the year", at least as an honorable mention


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## Ibuuyk (Feb 20, 2011)

OP fails and/or was trolling.


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## Digitalpotato (Feb 20, 2011)

Repede would steal stuff for me in Tales of Vesperia - and you could get him to juggle opponents in the air as he used his dagger. XD He even had a Mystic Arte, too. (Impressive for a wolf)


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## Calemeyr (Feb 22, 2011)

Not in minecraft. They can suddenly appear inside enclosed spaces with adequate lighting and dirt, and you can take stuff from them that is conviently and easily processible. You can also kill them if they start to annoy you too. They will sometimes jump off cliffs to their deaths or walk into walls of fire. They even jump into lava occasionally! Sounds like a cool party to me. Oh and there's squids too. They live in water and can appear in cave waterfalls. Isn't that cool?


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## Nepmen (Feb 22, 2011)

I HATE cows in Minecraft. I once made the mistake of lighting up a grass patch directly outside my house and nothing else. Hordes of freindly mobs spawned, including around 5 cows. Also, sheep spawned in a two block grass area under skylights. I hate the cows moo. Needless to say, I went slaughtering the following morning.


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## Fox Fang (Feb 22, 2011)

Red 13(Nanaki) is my favorite character from Final Fantasy 7.

Amaterasu from Okami is also awesome.

Felicia from Dark Stalkers.

There is a boat load of badass furrys in the gaming world, you just gotta know where to look.


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## sunandshadow (Feb 23, 2011)

Red 13 is a character though, a person rather than an animal.  I believe Felicia is too?  This thread is about, basically, ferals - doesn't matter what they look like but they can't talk and don't have human level intelligence.


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## Stratelier (Feb 23, 2011)

sunandshadow said:


> Red 13 is a character though, a person rather than an animal.  I believe Felicia is too?  This thread is about, basically, ferals - doesn't matter what they look like but they can't talk and don't have human level intelligence.


I hear people talk about "ferals" as meaning simply "quadrupedal" usually.  If you're implying that they have to be non-personified _creatures_ then you have slimmer pickings to choose from.


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## sunandshadow (Feb 23, 2011)

From a design and programming perspective we just don't have the AI to make flexible automated creatures capable of intelligent speech.  So for a game designer there are two really different categories - "characters" which have dialogue lines written for them, and "monsters" which are AI state machines that act procedurally within the game world, and thus can be much more responsive to the player's actions than characters.  It really doesn't matter what they look like - Sims look human but they are definitely "monsters", while Red XIII looks like a cat but is definitely a "character".  For the purposes of this thread I'm only interested in monsters, because I'm brainstorming a pet monster/animal breeding game.


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## NA3LKER (Feb 23, 2011)

if pokemon count as animals.....
but yeah, there was a very old NES game in which squirrels threw nuts at you. there where also lions. at one point a squirrel threw a nut, knocked out a lion, moved and got knocked out by his own nut. on the same cartridge was also a game based off noahs ark, and you played as noah chasing after animals, and it was amusing when noah tried to grab the monkeys cos they would freak out and jump all over the screen.
and of course there is OKAMI. i sooo badly want that game!


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## Stratelier (Feb 23, 2011)

sunandshadow said:


> From a design and programming perspective we just don't have the AI to make flexible automated creatures capable of intelligent speech.  So for a game designer there are two really different categories - "characters" which have dialogue lines written for them, and "monsters" which are AI state machines that act procedurally within the game world, and thus can be much more responsive to the player's actions than characters.


I'm getting conflicting vibes off that post, specifically the first sentence, but I do understand the underlying point -- monster interaction is based primarily on real-time AI tactics, while NPC interaction is largely pre-scripted.


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## StriderAuerion (Feb 23, 2011)

Hm, well in Samurai Showdown my character of choice has always been Galford. When you play as him his dog, Poppy, is always at his side and helps during the fight. I remember thinking that it was pretty cool controlling two characters at the same time in a game like that.


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## TwilightV (Feb 23, 2011)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV2cDdiugsM&nofeather=True

Imma just leave this here. :V


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## Lemoncholic (Feb 23, 2011)

Well Koromaru was just like any other member of your party in Persona 3, except he didn't seem to fit into the story much. Aigis could understand him though.

I don't know, it bugged me how useless he seemed as a character, but as a party member I thought he was fun to have.


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## sunandshadow (Feb 23, 2011)

Stratadrake said:


> I'm getting conflicting vibes off that post, specifically the first sentence, but I do understand the underlying point -- monster interaction is based primarily on real-time AI tactics, while NPC interaction is largely pre-scripted.


 Vibes?  *confused*  But yes, that was the distinction I was trying to get across.


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## sunandshadow (Feb 23, 2011)

NA3LKER said:


> if pokemon count as animals.....
> but yeah, there was a very old NES game in which squirrels threw nuts at you. there where also lions. at one point a squirrel threw a nut, knocked out a lion, moved and got knocked out by his own nut. on the same cartridge was also a game based off noahs ark, and you played as noah chasing after animals, and it was amusing when noah tried to grab the monkeys cos they would freak out and jump all over the screen.
> and of course there is OKAMI. i sooo badly want that game!


Haha yeah I remember that noah's ark game.  There were rams that knocked you on your ass and eagles that grabbed you and carried you away too.


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## Sigma (Feb 23, 2011)

In monster hunter freedom unite you can have a felyne fighter helping you take on beasts hundreds times his size.
He was pretty crap in terms of damage but you can give them buffs such as status effects or making them lay traps every now and then.


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## Billythe44th (Feb 24, 2011)

Ah, Monster Hunter; the videogame made entirely out of boss battles.  I always liked how the Queropeco (fictional word spelling fail) behaved; imitating the cries of other bosses to tip the scales in its favor, healing them by... doing a little dance I guess, and using this ridiculous flint mechanism to fake having fire breath, kind of like that butterfly that imitates the Monarch.


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## Kaamos (Feb 24, 2011)

Shadow of The Colossus would probably be a lot more boring and difficult if you didn't have your awesome horse Agro to ride around on. 

There's also Epona from Zelda, another horse that would make the game a lot different if she wasn't there. 

The police attack dog from Dead to Rights that can bite dudes in the junk, I haven't played the game but he sounds pretty useful.


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## ShÃ nwÃ ng (Feb 24, 2011)

Kaamos said:


> The police attack dog from Dead to Rights that can bite dudes in the junk, I haven't played the game but he sounds pretty useful.


 
That was only good thing about that game.


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## Twylyght (Feb 24, 2011)

Well, you do have the Wii game, Deadly Creatures.  No cute and fuzzy animals here.  You play as a spider or scorpion.  I haven't played this myself, so I don't know how interesting it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_CKpvDvfBU


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## ShÃ nwÃ ng (Feb 24, 2011)

Twylyght said:


> Well, you do have the Wii game, Deadly Creatures.  No cute and fuzzy animals here.  You play as a spider or scorpion.  I haven't played this myself, so I don't know how interesting it is.
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_CKpvDvfBU


 
It was an ambitious game that was underwhelming, unrefined and often frustrating to play.


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## Stratelier (Feb 25, 2011)

Kaamos said:


> Shadow of The Colossus would probably be a lot more boring and difficult if you didn't have your awesome horse Agro to ride around on.


Not only that, but Agro weasn't just an "automoton horse".  The devs occasionally tossed in little things like him veering a little bit to the side once in a while, or the fact that you can't make him jump off a cliff to your deaths.  In fact, riding around the scenery got a whole lot easier when you realized Agro does some basic pathfinding on his own, navigating around rocks and small obstacles with no need for any input from you.  And there's something heartwarming that as much as Agro might throw you off in a Colossus battle and start running, he'd never just run off, call him and he comes running right back.

Brave horse.


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