Overview:

In many games, the "boss battles" are meant to be the pinnacles of the player's experience. It is important for these encounters to stand out in many ways. In fact, creating an epic, enjoyable boss battle is a challenge that pulls in many different factors of game development. Because they often incorporate enemies with unique capabilities, novel attacks, and more elaborate interactions, crafting the AI for bosses often involves unique challenges that are not often encountered when working on AI for the rest of the NPCs. By analyzing some examples from the popular free-to-play game, Warframe, we explore some of typical challenges faced when crafting AI for boss battles and offer design and engineering advice for pulling all the disparate elements together to produce a spectacular, memorable encounter for players.

