Thread by @MikkiHEL

Here's a little story about how gloriously dumb and interesting game AI can be. I've been playing Watch Dogs 2. (Way more interesting than the first game!)

So I go into a car dealership for the first time in the game. And things get... a little wonky, in the best possible way.

Now, I don't quite realize, at the time, how the car dealership works in the game. There's a couple of cars on the show floor, and I don't realize that in order to buy a car, I need to go talk to the salesman behind the counter. (There's a floating icon that I missed. I'm smart.)

So because I don't see the icon, I just decide that oh, these cars on the floor here are the cars for sale, I'll just get in one and drive off through their display window, that's how I buy it.

That's not how you buy a car, obviously. But that's my plan, because video games.

But the car's locked, and Marcus, the player character, just yanks on the door handle. I realize my mistake and let go, but at that point I trigger the car's alarm, which obviously makes a shit ton of noise. (I could've just stolen the car right then, but that wasn't the idea.)

The salesman comes out from behind the counter, freaking out. OH NO CAR ALARM HELP THIEF!!! But the thing is, presumably because I didn't actually enter the car, the game DOESN'T treat me as a car thief. So it's just an alarm going off for no reason.

So all the NPCs around me freak out, but they don't associate me with being freaked out. (This is very much intentional, because Watch Dogs 2 has a big element of you messing with the environment to manipulate events.)

(It's also the biggest fictional element in the game. I mean, people taking car alarms very seriously, and not just as a nuisance? Not on this planet. Anyway...)

The salesman uses his key fob to turn the alarm off...

...and this is where things get weird. Because for some reason, another NPC, a woman who was also browsing cars at the dealership, gets in the car. She can do it, because now the game considers the car to be unlocked.

I don't know why she does it. It might be that the AI considers it a dangerous situation (after all, an alarm just went off, oh nooooo), and this would be a fast way for her to escape, by driving away. I suppose that makes a certain kind of sense. Or maybe it's some other reason.

Game AI doesn't make the kind of connections or distinctions between things a human would, so in its eyes, it may make perfect sense to be freaked out by somebody trying to steal a car and then, because the car is empty, decide that the best way to leave is to get in that car.

Anyway! She enters the passenger seat and just... uh... sits there. The salesman gets hopping mad, because HE sees somebody get in HIS car. So he starts yelling at her. "Fuck you, and fuck you, and fuck you. Did you hear what I said? I said fuck you!" (Exact quote, pretty much.)

SHE, on the other hand, hears somebody swearing at her, and she gets mad. She gets out of the car, and starts giving him lip. I don't remember what she says, but she's super mad. She yells at him for a while, and then she's done being angry and leaves. Scene over, right?

Well...

When she leaves, she goes back in what she now considers to be HER car, because that was the car she got out of. (I'm sure her AI now considers it to be her vehicle, not one she just stole. It probably just remembers that she got out of this car and has no other context for it.)

But the salesman still considers it to be his car, too. And this time, when she enters the car, she enters the driver's seat, and the salesman won't have it. Goddamn thief! He'll show her! He runs to the car, and drags her out of it. Ha ha, that'll teach her to steal his car!

They're both yelling about how the other person shouldn't take their ride. They're literally both going "NOO DON'T TAKE MY CAAR." HE thinks she's taking his car. SHE thinks she's being carjacked. (The car hasn't actually moved an inch, it's still in the middle of the show floor.)

So they struggle for a moment. Then she pulls a gun on him. The salesman goes "oh shit" and runs away. She tries to run after him but there's some physics objects on the floor that distract her, so she ends up going around in circles, pointing the gun at everybody. Very American.

At that point I call the cops on her. I can't actually just call 911, because the game won't let me do that, but it WILL let me hack the police database and flag her profile as an arson suspect, so that's what I do. Why not? The cops show up, arrest her, and drive off with her.

I'm left in the middle of the now-empty car dealership. I can't buy the car anymore, because the salesman is long gone, possibly far enough that he's already despawned, so he's not likely to come back.

All of this just because I triggered the car alarm by accident.

Glorious.