this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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https://x.com/TNOQuoProQuid/status/2015872269482946858

Kudos to the STALKER games (at least the original X-Ray engine ones, haven't played STALKER 2 yet) for actually having wild animals that behave at least somewhat like living creatures and not killbots. Dogs (the regular, not pseudodog variety) will swarm you when in packs, but if you take a few of them out they'll start giving up and running away, and lone dogs encountered in the wild are pretty cowardly. Fleshes, being just mutated pigs, are generally pretty chill unless you get right up in their face. Boars are wilder, but it's kind of the boar stereotype that they're very aggressive.

Even among the more dedicated enemy mutants, like bloodsuckers, you still see them actually take advantage of their cloaking ability to maneuver around you and try to get good angles of attack rather than just charging in, and retreat when wounded (Call of Pripyat added a really nasty attack where if they catch you from the back they'll just latch on and straight up drink you like a vampire for massive damage, potentially instakilling on higher difficulties, so fighting them becomes this really cool dance where you have to somehow make sure you're always facing frontward an opponent that can become invisible).

I also hear good things about Rain World and its NPC AI

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[–] huf@hexbear.net 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

is it a boar stereotype that they're very aggressive? it's pretty much the only dangerous wild animal around here and yeah, if you startle it and ignore its warnings, it'll fuck you up. especially if it's got piglets.

but normally you just dont walk straight towards it and everyone stays safe. they dont want to attack you, like any sane herbivore, they just wanna get away.

if they were aggressive, surely we'd see lots of disemboweled people, but that really only happened to medieval kings who went out to deliberately hunt boars. retaliating to being hunted is not really aggressive behavior.

edit: couldnt find the stats, but i'd say we easily kill thousands of boars per year by hitting them with cars, while they cause maybe a couple of injuries per year. deaths from boars seem super rare.

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

idk about boars but I hear there's a real issue with encountering dozens of feral hogs in your backyard.

[–] godisidog@hexbear.net 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How many feral hogs are a problem exactly? Could you give an estimate?

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 16 points 1 day ago

I think the median was 40, but they didn't give a weighting on the numbers so that's just conjecture.

[–] SerialExperimentsGay@hexbear.net 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, the danger from boars is actually overstated a lot. They do happen to be just the right size to puncture the femoral artery with their tusks when they topple somebody, but that's just not something that happens a lot. If you've ever encountered boars with piglets, it's really really obvious that they are setting up a defensive formation where they shelter the piglets in the middle between the mother sows and the big guys trot out to the frontline and get ready to charge you, it's very obvious what they are doing there and you have to be extremely reckless, stupid or both to not to back off when they do this.

[–] huf@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago

i genuinely think they got a bad reputation because of all the kings and nobles they killed during hunts.

ordinary people were familiar with domesticated pigs, i doubt they would've been mystified or terrified of the wild version

[–] doublepepperoni@hexbear.net 8 points 1 day ago

It actually threw me off in RDR2 that boars are completely passive aside from one scripted encounter with a legendary giant boar in a mission late in the game. With all the shit I've heard about how dangerous they are I expected to get charged but they just run away no matter how many of their buddies you turn into bacon

[–] la_tasalana_intissari_mata@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] huf@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

eh, yeah they're omnivores but i expect most of the stuff they eat is plant material because there's just so much more of it and it doesnt run away. they're definitely not gonna predate a whole ass human. they will probably eat a corpse, no problem though.