Bringing Ambient Animals to Life in Psychonauts 2

Animals are one of the most common ambient AI characters added to the background of various environments in games. They can help set the vibes of particular areas. By adding some interactive behaviours to the animals, they can feel a lot more animated and be a delight for players to play around with. In Psychonauts 2 , the desire was to populate the world with different kinds of animals for the player to interact with to make it livelier and reward the player for exploration of the world more. This chapter discusses the custom game AI and gameplay tech interwoven together and developed to craft a variety of animal behaviours to make them come to life in Psychonauts 2 .