The Low-Tech AI Of Elden Ring
Summary
The article analyzes Elden Ring's AI as a low-tech, GOAL-based system that uses a pushdown stack of goals rather than a traditional FSM. It explains how top-level goals push sub-goals, how activation, interrupts, and timeouts shape behavior, and how animation events drive actions with Lua and C++ implementations. The piece argues that this GOAL framework offers readability and designer control while maintaining performance.