The latest issue of Weekly Famitsu had an interesting technical article on the AI in Final Fantasy XV and in its demo Episode Duscae, including some rather intriguing screenshots.

First of all, we get to see the development tools that are used to determine the game's AI behavior. AnimGraph Editor and AI Graph Editor.

The first tool is used to set animations like "walk," "run," "turn," "change direction" and so forth in response to certain conditions. The second tool allows to set three different types of AI Behavior: "thinking as a team," "thinking as an individual" or "select animation as a result of thinking."

The following screenshots showcase a battle against a Behemoth.

On the left, you can see the clean screenshot, on the right is the terrain analysis by the AI. The spots in red represent the danger zone in which there's a high probability of being attacked by the Behemoth. The spots in green are the candidate as possible targets for movement, and the blue spot is the optimal target, resulting from the "thinking" made by the AI.

The following screenshots showcase something even more interesting, showcasing the inverse kinematics used to let the characters interact naturally with the world.

The first screenshots shows how Noctis places his hand on the wall of the cave. The AI recognizes the environment and triggers the resulting inverse kinematics animation.

The second screenshot shows Noctis as he puts a hand on the ground to avoid falling due to the sloping terrain. While it has no direct influence on the progress of the game, it makes movement more convincing.

The third screenshot showcases our pretty boy protagonist as he pushes aside a shrub while he walks close to it.

Those are definitely some sweet features, and they'll probably contribute to make the game feel much more natural and realistic. I don't know about you, but I can't wait to play Episode Duscae.