Do all 300+ of these games listed here really have an AI companion? I've played some of the ones listed and don't remember there being one. It's too bad this list wasn't instead populated with games that have a significant AI companion, where significant implies present for most of the game and having a serious impact on the game. Such a list would be smaller than this, and could actually be useful to people; a list with hundreds of titles, however, starts to become essentially useless.

When I read the thread title, I thought you meant, "what are some games that had an Artificial Intelligence type character who was a companion to the player character?" like Cortana and the such.

On your main topic, I have to imagine that people just put any game that had even the tiniest amount of some NPC companion that walked around with the player for even the smallest amount of time.

The concept is just A.I. Companion. Nothing about them being "significant" is in the description, and that's probably a good thing because that term means something different to everybody. A list with hundreds of titles isn't useless if it's accurate.

If you do see some games in there that don't have A.I. Companions, however, by all means take 'em off!

Disagree. What good is a list with hundreds of items, if one cannot really use it for anything? Who wants to go through hundreds of items to try to find a good game with a great AI companion? There is a point where a list's increased length begins to hinder its utility.

The good of it is the way that data can be parsed. If you want to find a game with a great AI companion, it's probably better to ask on the forums. I think that the more relevant data that Giant Bomb has, the better, and hopefully the tools to cross-reference that data etc get even better over time. The fact that Giant Bomb makes it so easy to find out how many World War II FPS games came out in 2004, for example (survey says seven!) is really cool and having massive amounts of categorisation etc is what facilitates that. In this case, you could certainly argue that the concept itself is one so inherent to most games that it could do with being more specific. I see your point on that.

I agree that inflated pages like "Earth" and "Health", and anything that has a bajillion items to include any tiny mention of the concept, is fucking broken and stupid.

We're all speaking the same language here, we know what people want when they go lookin for "AI Companion", and it's not every version of MGS3 (?)

Wiki pages should strive to list all examples of the given concept. The problem with what you're proposing is that it's impossible to define exactly what 'significant' entails. How long does an AI companion need to spend with the protagonist for it to be considered significant? That depends on the player's perception.

Unfortunately, the inherent issue with lists is that not all list items are created equal - not everything will necessarily be relevant to your needs. Basically, I believe it's better to be more inclusive than exclusive. If you're including as many relevant games as possible, then the worst case scenario is that you just have to spend a little extra time looking over the list. If you start removing items, then the connection between certain games and the concept becomes completely lost; consider a person that wants a complete list of all games that have AI companions - it would no longer be possible if information is removed.

Having said that, I definitely do think there is validity to your comments. Maybe there could be more detail added to the article's text. Also, perhaps there needs to be another concept page that focuses specifically on "significant" AI companions. However, with all wiki pages, it should be something that is clearly definable. So, if you are able to put together an objective measure of what constitutes "significant", then by all means, feel free to create that concept page.

The greatness of an AI companion is subjective, not objective, and therefore an inappropriate topic within the context of a wiki.