Like in Stalker where the mutant dogs will turn tail and flee if they take too much damage or if you kill enough of their pack members. Red Dead Redemption's animals also ran away if a fight wasn't going their way.

Actually, Rockstar games are pretty good with this sort of stuff in general. I'm pretty sure you could shoot guns of of people's hands in RDR to make them put their hands up, or cause a fatal gunshot wound that would make them crawl around on their belly and call for help. Both GTA 4 and 5's enemies have injury states where they will take potshots at you with a pistol while bleeding on the ground or just passively clutch their wounds until they die.

I guess it wouldn't work in arcadey or linear games where the point is to kill everything on screen, but for anything more open-ended that tries to go for something approaching realism it'd be nice if the enemies you faced felt more alive and/or showed some basic survival instincts.

  • WoofWoof91 [comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    kevin crawford games (stars without number, worlds without number, whatever the cyberpunk one is called... without number) have enemy morale as an explicit mechanic
    once their health drops low enough, the gm rolls a morale check and if they fail they get themselves out of danger in whatever way seems most fitting to the gm (and it's a kevin crawford game so there are also roll tables if you can't decide lol)

    • barrbaric [he/him]
      ·
      11 months ago

      whatever the cyberpunk one is called... without number)

      Cities Without Number

      • WoofWoof91 [comrade/them]
        ·
        11 months ago

        thanks!

        i vaguely remembered "nets without number" but i think that was a working title