Crafting Scalable AI for a AAA Souls-Like Game in Unreal Engine | Unreal Fest Stockholm 2025

In ‘Lords of the Fallen’, CI Games Mediterranean Projects SL customized Unreal Engine’s AI systems to meet the demands of a fast-paced, modular, and scalable AI ecosystem—one that supports rapid iteration and is designed to extend across future titles in the franchise.

This talk recorded at Unreal Fest Stockholm takes a deep dive into key AI systems for combat: perception, targeting, aggro handling, and decision-making.

CI Games explores how they combined Unreal Engine’s classic Behavior Trees with the newer State Trees to build a scalable behavior selection system capable of handling both environmental and combat-driven reactions.

They also discuss the navigation challenges of a large-scale game world filled with diverse enemies of varying sizes and complexity.

Presented in a post-mortem style, they share real production issues and solutions from Lords of the Fallen, and how those solutions evolved for the next title.

Get practical insights on how they integrated the Gameplay Ability System with their AI tools to create a fully data-driven AI system, and how they built custom debug tools to help designers pinpoint and solve problems quickly.

Learn more about Unreal Engine here: unrealengine.com

If you or your team are building AI for action-focused games in Unreal Engine—and want proven, production-tested techniques—this is your talk.

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