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Nemesis Has Pathfinding For Areas He’s Not Supposed To Enter

A recent mod video has exposed some pathfinding AI for Nemesis that allows him to walk around and navigate areas that he’s never meant to enter. Slight spoilers for Resident Evil 3 Remake are ahead, so either leave or get ready to have the first 20 minutes of the game ruined. With that said, it’s the opening, there’s nothing to spoil, unless you didn’t know that Nemesis was in the game.

What Is Pathfinding AI?

First, let’s make sure that everyone is on the same page here. Pathfinding AI is what a game uses to determine how characters can move around a level in a game. Often this is really complex, since there are various behaviours for NPCs in a game. For example, in The Last Of Us, there is pathfinding AI for NPCs while they’re just going about their usual business, a whole new set for the NPCs when they know that you’re in the area somewhere, and yet more when they know your location.

Nemesis is no different. The giant hunk of meat held together with bin bags always knows where Jill Valentine is, because that’s how the events of the opening in the game pan out. He chases her through a huge chunk of the game, all the way back to the subway where she tries to escape him. The pathfinding AI allows him to quickly pursue Jill through the alleys of Raccoon City, but there’s a particular house that he isn’t meant to enter, the one in the video above.

Instead, Nemesis is meant to arrive in the next section of the streets by falling from the sky, giving the impression that he jumped the buildings.

Why Is There Pathfinding AI Here?

What we see in the video above is a mod that allows Nemesis to enter the house, and even the save room. It’s not unusual for Nemesis to enter certain save rooms, and you can see that he has animations for that exact purpose, but this save room is meant to be off limits.

There are two reasons that Capcom put pathfinding AI for Nemesis in this building. The first is very dull. They may have anticipated that modders would try to do something like this with Nemesis, having seen some of the mods for Resident Evil 2 Remake and Mr X. By putting pathfinding AI in the area for the colossal creature, they make it easier for the mod creator to both develop and release their mod. As I said, it’s dull, but it could just be a helping hand from Capcom to try to foster a modding community for their game. It would also prevent the game from crashing if the mod really broke it.

The second reason is far more interesting. The pathfinding AI might be there for a new difficulty mode, one that Capcom is still working on. This new difficulty mode could be released later this year as part of a free update, and it would make sense because that’s how Capcom get more players back in their game. Games like Resident Evil 3 Remake live and die on their difficulty modes on streaming platforms like Twitch, so it would also give the game a revival when viewership dies down.

I have no idea what else that more challenging difficulty mode would bring, but from what we can see above, it would make Nemesis an even more annoying enemy than he already is. I’d like to see a game mode in which he never stops chasing you, from start to finish. It would be the most stressful game mode ever made, but it would also be a lot of fun, for a while at least.

Let us know what you think of this discovery in the comments. 

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