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
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.
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