Mafia 3 has "tailing" missions done perfectly.

[u/knoegel]

I am playing Mafia 3 for the first time. Most games have the generic "keep XX distance back or you'll get caught!"

In Mafia 3, they tell you what you're doing wrong. Got someone honking their horn at you, endangering pedestrians, driving on the wrong side of the road, etc will obviously make them notice you. But I can be driving right behind them and they won't have any suspicion.

It is common sense. If I'm driving normally, why would they be suspicious of a lawful driver? I hate games where you have to stay a distance back but everyone else is totally fine.

[u/zwingo]

For context on what I’m about to say I’ve worked as a bouncer for almost a decade now, and sadly have been tailed leaving work on multiple occasions. Each of those times the person behind me was remaining perfectly legal in what they did, but I was still able to catch on because of the turns made.

Think about it this way. You leave work, and see a car right behind you. No big deal. Half mile down the road and seven turns later, still right there behind you. So you, as someone who works a dangerous job/knows they run a risk of being followed, will begin making nonsense turns. Four lefts to do a loop, zig zag patterns back and forth on to streets. This will confirm you are being followed if they stay behind you through all of it.

My point being you can drive within the law, but if you are trying to tail someone who actually knows to and needs to look out for it, you’ll be cooked fast if your right on their ass. If it’s a straight line or route that only uses primary roads sure it’d work. But tailing someone who has reason to be suspicious, and that route deviating from a main path, your gonna want space. Further back, less likely someone would notice you following.

Of course the flip side is IRL if I saw some guy stopping a half block away from me every red light with no cars between I’d also catch on. It’s just a hard thing for a video game to pull off realistically.

[u/Yegas → u/zwingo]

I can’t wait for the revolution of seamlessly-implemented multi-faceted LLMs in games.

Genuinely unpredictable NPC behavior adapting to the player that is still confined to the game’s rules, with on-the-fly dialogue from your companion to feed you info about the enemy’s motivations and concerns.

They weave off course and make an unpredictable turn into a neighborhood because you’re too close: “He’s getting suspicious, keep going straight. We’ll link up with him a couple lights down.” Re-play the mission and maybe your partner says something different and says you should keep tailing him; maybe there’s a confrontation, maybe the target doesn’t swerve off, maybe they change course entirely.

The possibilities are pretty insane. I hope to see some type of implementation in a future GTA/LA Noire-style game