Ready or Not made its 1.0 debut late in 2023 and established itself as a fairly decent, if sometimes flawed attempt at bringing the classic SWAT gameplay formula back into the limelight. One of its biggest problems was the twitchy, trigger-happy AI, and this is being reigned in very soon.
While it is to be expected that some of the perpetrators present in Ready or Not‘s many missions would, indeed, be hyper-aggressive, the issue was that they all behaved like highly trained, laser-focused super-mercenaries rather than nervous armed civilians, which they often were. As the developer Void Interactive explains in its recent Steam blog, this problem is being curtailed through the implementation of a “cone” visibility feature, which should make the whole thing feel much more believable and organic in gameplay.
Ready or Not’s AI is getting a much-needed detection upgrade
One of the things that often played a role in making the AI feel downright unfair is Ready or Not‘s current viewing model: the parallel model. Here, RoN‘s AI tracks invisible traces from the NPCs’ eyes to the player character’s top and bottom of the head, the lower left arm, and the lower right arm. Whenever any of an armed AI’s traces would connect with two of the aforementioned player hotspots without any geometry blocking its field of vision, the AI would immediately react and be prepared for the player’s entry. This is particularly egregious when the AI “spots” the player through minute gaps in map geometry, leading to unfair encounters and deaths.
The new cone model, on the other hand, solves this problem through a more granular handling of map geometry and the player vs AI positioning. Further, it also allows for a far more in-depth visibility system during gas grenade deployments. This, combined with a few notable aggression tweaks, such as the AI firing at the player’s last known location rather than tracking them through map geometry, makes for a substantially improved gameplay experience. At least, in theory, as all of these changes will only be implemented into Ready or Not with one of the future updates. Possibly the upcoming Home Invasion DLC, perhaps.
On top of discussing AI improvements, Void Interactive also used this opportunity to highlight the fact that May is the month of mental health awareness. The studio is going to be “bringing attention to Mental Health Awareness month by uploading videos which explore various concepts of mental health related to the themes present in Ready or Not.” The first video, titled PTSD, can be found below:
Ready or Not‘s Commander Mode is meant to illustrate some of the problems that arise from dealing with SWAT situations in the real world. While the specifics of its handling of the subject matter are open to interpretation, Void Interactive’s intention is clear and pointed, and bringing more attention to mental health awareness is always a good thing.
