Games with dogs (pets)

[Colourful Stuff]

Do they have super hearing and super smell? Those would actually be really useful.

I'm not sure, I don't think the dog simulation is that high fidelity. The dog is actually used in a few Arms mission types. I believe there is one in which patrols search for mass graves using sniffer dogs. Having a mute player with a different information set is probably quite close to a human/animal interaction.

[youmeyou]

Can I just second the Fable 2 dog? In the end I chose the option to save the dog. Sorry wife and kids. That dog was my BRO. We played catch, I saved him from bandits, he was by my side from pleasant mountain paths to creepy ghoul-filled swamps. I don't think any other animal in a game has come close to feeling like an actual companion. SOTC horse comes close.

[clyde]

I would like to see this done with AI that learns and is persistent. I've mentioned it is another thread, but from what I've read, I think Mew-Genics is going to make progress in this area. My hope is that the AI will react to my decisions in unexpected yet logical ways that I can understand in retrospect. Then as the behaviors change over time, as a player, I will have some ownership over the history and causes of their behaviors (knowing them on a personal basis). Of course this is nothing like looking in your dog's eyes and knowing that there is a person in there who has instinctual, species dependent ancestral tendencies, but it's is closer. 
I'm kinda wacky into Futurology and my thoughts about how we will eventual interact with personified AI can get kinda creepy. Once technology begins making artificial personalities that can wholly convince us that they are sentient persons, deserving of compassion; innovation will start going towards fetishizing the artificial personality by creating them with symbolic authenticity. An example would be this: An android is made and people are like "Wow, it's just like a real person, if you hadn't told me it was an android, I wouldn't have known." Once that happens, the innovation will be like "We have analyzed John's lifetime's worth of Facebook status updates, likes, and his credit card purchases and found some elegant algorithms. These algorithms have been put into the Johndroid." So then the Johndroid will be just like John from a social influence perspective. How much longer would it be that science determines the "spark" of life that allows us consciousness? It will then be put into the androids. Hypothetically.
All of this because people like you want believable dogs in computer games. Great, thanks. 
No, I'm kinda excited about it too.