“I shall make weapons from your bones!” - The Smith, D2
It would be way more cool if instead of the regular static screen displayed on player’s death in HC, we would observe what the monster(s) do with the hero’s corpse (just as in a potential PvP server with corpse looting where we would observe the other player loot our items).
Such specialized monster AI achieves the following goals:
- It creates more immersion since the world continues to function without your hero alive with different monsters acting differently
- It allows for more monster identity due to different monster family AI
- It gives some unique mechanic to HC mode that isn’t present in other parts of the game which may provoke some players to try HC just to experience this by themselves
- It brings more fun by making your hero’s death a little less painful to take
- It serves for more viewer’s fun when their favorite streamer’s hero dies in HC
Some potential AI scenarios:
- The Smith obviously takes the hero’s corpse to his bench for weapon making and begins to skin it
- Greedy families will loot the corpse, maybe have a little fight among them for the more precious items immediately equipping these on first opportunity
- Angry and aggressive families may stomp on hero’s corpse taunting and raging
- High profile demons may take the hero’s appearance
- Deadly monsters may cut off the hero’s head/ear taking it as a souvenir
- Wild animals can “play” with the corpse’s parts between themselves
- Witches may command their servants to bring the corpse to their cauldron to cook it
Such specialized monster AI will be something to remember with the game camera dramatically following the monsters.
What do you think - should such animations be present in HC? If yes, what more would you like to see from particular monster families and bosses?
