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
you can also read all the tablets on the 7000 steps to get this:
True, but it only last an in-game day and requires looking at every tablet every time, so I think it's just a novelty and not a mechanic worth ever actually using unless you have a specific quest or something where it's especially pertinent. Once you have Shouts unlocked, it's way better to just get Animal Allegiance imo if you don't want to use Illusion magic for whatever reason. Even just one word of it is more than fine for most purposes, and two words are pretty easily accessible (the third can only be found in a tomb unlocked in the last Companion quest).