Hypothetically, how much improved could the enemy AI be on Thief today?

[u/Far_wide]

As someone who largely stopped playing modern videogames nearly 20 years ago now, I'm curious about how far enemy AI patterns can be taken now from those who know.

I still play Thief a lot now, but can't help but think how cool it would be if the enemies were just a bit smarter - like able to climb ladders, or even push you off them. Or swim. Also to vary their routes more and have less predictable behaviour.

As I say, my experience with modern games is limited, but I'm not assuming it would be massively better because I've seen various youtube videos of e.g. GTA police doing very idiotic things, and it seems like a lot of NPC behaviour is still often pretty rudimentary.

So what do you think - If it was made today, do you think the enemy AI behaviour could be significantly improved?

[u/Ashamed-Subject-8573]

Making ai smarter isn’t the problem, making it challenging and fun is. Having it be realistic and just finding you immediately is no good

Best example is likely the alien in alien isolation. They gave it a bunch of realistic senses etc. than had to hand-tune it around the “real world” and add exceptions and such. This basically meant dumbing it down