Todd Howard agrees that it was a bit of a pain to get right, as he said in a recent interview with the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. “[Space combat] was way harder than we thought … We see a lot of space games where you’re gonna have like, derelict ships or other things to fly around, just to get a sense of motion, so the smallest thing like ‘what does the dust in space look like?’ so you feel like you’re moving and it’s not too much, not too little.”
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For Bethesda, the snags started happening when it came to designing enemy AI: “It’s very easy … to make the enemies really really smart, forever we were just jousting [with them]. It turns out you have to make the AI really stupid. You have to have them fly, then they need to turn, basically like ‘hey player, why don’t you just shoot me for a while?’ … [once we’d] settled on our pace, and how the enemies are gonna move, that’s where it came together.”
I’d argue that’s the case in most games. The AI in Assassin’s Creed games is usually borderline brain dead, because if it wasn’t even a small guard patrol would have a decent shot at taking out the player.
On the one hand I would love to see a game with realistic opponents. Take away the perfect and instant aim and knowledge of the entire map and make them communicate and behave tactically instead.
On the other hand a game is supposed to be fun and that also tends to include a bit of power fantasy. I don’t think getting wiped repeatedly sounds particularly fun.