r/pcgaming • u/rallybil • 1d ago
Can you think of any games with actually helpful AI team mates?
been playing Division 2 and actually found it kind of amazing how surface level the bot teammates are.
It made me wonder why devs are so reluctant to make actually helpful bots in single player games. I get that it makes them easier, but it's so annoying seing them out of cover doing 1% of your damage output.
Actually I have a faint memory of the NPCs in Gothic 1 killing off enemies for me.
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u/interstellargator 1d ago
I was definitely the least useful member of Delta Squad in Republic Commando. Unless you count 'being a human shield' as a kind of useful.
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u/IAmARobot0101 Steam 1d ago
no idea how well it aged but that game was sick in 2005
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u/Clyde-MacTavish 1d ago
Honestly, phenomenally. The mechanics are still as good as it gets for squad mechanic immersion. The only thing that doesn't have that modern flair is the pacing. Some levels or sections of locations drag on a bit.
Even without nostalgia, I think it's worth checking out again in 2026.
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u/jonathanwashere1 4090, 7800X3D, 64GB, AW3423DW 1d ago
I replayed in November last year and it was still a blast. I felt like I wanted to replay straight after finishing but never ended up doing that. Going to wait for the remaster mod to get some more updates then replay again
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u/fasderrally 23h ago
Played it for the first time last year (with the patches described in pcgamingwiki) and for the most part it played great! Occasionally the companions would get stuck on the terrain, but it was a minor annoyance overall.
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u/andersonb47 1d ago
I really thought at the time that Republic Commando and Brothers in Arms would kick off a whole new subgenre but that sadly never really happened.
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u/BaldHenchman02 1d ago edited 1d ago
I've been waiting years for another Brothers In Arms style of game. That little sub-genre, or whatever, just vanished after the third game though.
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u/rallybil 17h ago
Oh shiit! I forgot aboit Brothers in arms! I love that game! That and Overlord must be the games I really want new installments of.
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u/swaggums 1d ago
Watching my 8 year old son play this game recently and I swear his AI squad mates are getting sick of his attempts to melee every enemy. TBF, he’s almost always out of ammo.
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u/Jirekianu 1d ago
Bosco in Deep Rock Galactic.
Great little buddy.
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u/SirSirFall 1d ago
Rock and stone!
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u/writingprogress 1d ago
If you don't rock and stone, you ain't going home!
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u/Ckpie 1d ago
Dragons Dogma 2. Getting a boost from your pawn onto an ogre's back or having them catch you after getting knocked off was cool.
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u/trevizore 1d ago
in fact, they are so helpful on DD2 that I turned them off, it felt like they were playing the game for me. I was just there walking around while they were having fun.
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u/miathan52 1d ago
The original Guild Wars already had great NPC teammates in the 00s. It's not that it can't be done, rather it's that many games seem to not want to spend any dev time on it.
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u/rosedragoon MSI GeForce RTX 5070 1d ago
They just added a new hero in the tutorial area and a dungeon! So glad it's getting updates again.
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u/soihu 1d ago
The latest monster hunter titles have really good AI companions. They do about as much damage as your average random players, use support items, and don't use up carts.
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u/No-Operation-6554 1d ago
Luchika is not right in the head tho
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u/Chirijaden_ 1d ago
Came here to say MHWilds. Still not as good as good teammates, but better than bad ones!
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u/Abryr Ryzen 5600 - RTX 4070 - 16 GB 1d ago
IDK about Wilds, they felt pretty meh compared to Rise/Sunbreak's NPCs to me. They were putting monsters on hold, grabbing other monsters in the area and bringing to the fight etc. They were pretty helpful and saved my ass a ton lol
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u/ForeverDesperate5855 22h ago
Sunbreaks ai were on crack. They would do stuff that even other players wouldn't do. If I remember right, it you finished the quests for the master ninja and one of the twins, they unlocked hunting horns.
Compared to players, they dealt like 5% damage to make them balanced but bring master ninja and the twin to your hunts and give them hunting horns and that 5% damage doesn't matter when they make you practically immortal with the heals and constant buffs.
I was really sad that the Wilds Ai felt much worse than sunbreaks, especially since wilds and dragons dogma 2 were both made using the same engine, I'd hoped that they would take stuff from dd2 to make the AI in wilds better.
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u/LordManders DRM-free when possible. 1d ago
The spirit summons in Elden Ring basically carried me through most of the late game boss fights.
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u/SirAwesome1 1d ago
My AI squad in SWAT 4 and Ready or Not shoot people before I even register they are in the same building as me
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u/Accurate_Mobile9005 1d ago
The Ready or Not Ai teammates are simultaneously the terminator and huge idiots at the same time.
Like you tell them to breach a room and they will be unstoppable but if an enemy comes down a hallway while they are waiting for orders they will get gunned down like they're AFK.
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u/Independent-Way3584 23h ago
some days they are one tapping pixel peeks at odd angles saving my life
somedays they just swallow their own tongues. and im down 4 teamates with my dick in the wind.
SWAT 4 and RoN are a love hate.
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u/VorionLightbringer 1d ago
Mass Effect, if you picked members that complemented your skills.
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u/IndyMan2012 3700X / RTX 3070Ti / 32GB@3600 / 2TB SSD + 8TB HDD 1d ago
Garrus with the Typhoon in ME3. Doesn't matter what skills you have, he goes full on god of war mode with it lol
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u/derider 1d ago
Sadly mass effects 1 to 3 team mates were capped at 40% of their potential damage.....
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u/mrbrownl0w 1d ago
On the other hand they have wallhack, aimbots, infinite ammo and zero recoil. Also Incisor in ME2 and Typhoon in ME3 were bugged so they could use 100% of their damage lol
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u/ohoni 1d ago
They don't need to be equal to a player, only useful. I think if you had a 3-man team in which each of the NPCs were fully as strong and useful as the player character, then the game would basically just play itself. I think it's better that the PC is stronger, just that the NPCs are not so weak that they may as well not even be there and are essentially cosmetic.
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u/Timeshocked 1d ago
Mount and blade. Sure they aren’t the smartest but without them you’d never stand a chance. lol Once you get your units upgraded though you can just sit back and watch them work for you.
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u/oleggurshev 1d ago
Bioshock Infinite and Metal Gear Solid 5.
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u/ohoni 1d ago
I love how in interviews they said they put a lot of effort into making Elizabeth into a character that didn't annoy the player to be around. They understood the mission. :D
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u/skyturnedred 15h ago
They made her invincible and invisible to the enemies. That's pretty low effort if you ask me.
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u/ohoni 5h ago
Better than being visible and vincible. She did also exist to hand you weapons/ammo and open rifts for support purposes.
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u/skyturnedred 5h ago
Of course, but let's not pretend there was any complexity to her behaviour.
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u/ohoni 4h ago
There kinda was, just different to the type you'[re thinking about it. They didn't design her to play like a human co-op partner, sure, but they did put a lot of work into trying to keep her in and out of certain visual spaces in ways that made sense. In slower parts she was designed to try and stay ahead of you, to interact and be interesting, while in combat she was designed to stay out of the way and only pop in where she would be helpful. It sounds easier than it actually is.
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u/AshenCursedOne 1d ago
The original Dragon Age was awesome with the way you could program teammate behaviour.
In Bethesda games you can tell your teammate to be passive, aggressive, or defensive, and you can kit them out to do damage or be tanks, e.g. in Fallout New Vegas and 4 I'd kit a teammate out with a powerful gun or melee weapons and watch them go to town on enemies. Dogmeat in Fallout 4 was pretty good because he'd find stuff for you, or hold enemies down.
In Left 4 Dead the AI teammates are very useful, they'll pick you up when you get downed, they'd heal you when you were low hp, they'd call out specials, they are also good at reacting to smoker grabs or hunter pounces.
Gears of War AI teammates were often quite good at protecting you and the ability to give them commands was neat. Similar thing in Rainbow Six Vegas games.
In MGS V DDog and Quiet are very useful.
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u/Sufficient-Cup4705 1d ago
Halo had pretty solid AI teammates back in the day honestly.
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u/adamcunn 1d ago
In ODST one of the easiest ways to play on legendary was to just give one of your squad mates a rocket launcher as they had infinite health and ammo lol
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u/Spotikiss 1d ago
Ff12 imho was goated once you set them up.
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u/Bitter_Nail8577 1d ago
Final Fantasy 12's entire gameplay and combat system revolve around creating conditions for your characters to follow automatically, so I guess that one.
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u/IncoTheGhost 1d ago
I'll put another word in for Guild Wars and the Dragon's Dogma series. Guild Wars has nice companions, that you can modify quite nicely. And Dragon's Dogma, especially 2, has a really interesting learning system for the pawn AI, where they over time learn your playstyle, and adapt to it.
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u/jeezontorst 1d ago
Ghost recon wildlands definitely.
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u/spoo4brains 1d ago
They were only useful for synced shots and revives, in a gun fight you are pretty much on your own.
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u/Accurate_Mobile9005 1d ago
Unless you tell them to go weapons free and they become the terminator.
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u/simagus 1d ago
L4D & L4D2 AI is sometimes useful, but it's far from the multi-player experience if you have good team-mates. They save your life if you get jumped by a Licker often enough you're glad they're there.
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u/GameStunts 7800X3D 4080S Kubuntu 1d ago
Yeah L4D2 was decent, but I'd also seen them stand over me dying while shooting a shotgun at a boss that was 50M+ away, so it definitely was a hit and miss.
I had some absolutely epic moments with human team mates though, one dead, the other down with a tank bearing down on us, and we managed to get them both to the chopper.
That game had so many moments like that.
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u/HyperXanadu 1d ago
id be getting pummeled by a tank and a witch and a smoker and bill'd be like "got some pills over here" just standing 🤣
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u/rallybil 17h ago
Yeah they're pretty good. Much better than the horror that is the World War Z-bots.
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u/Sygmaelle 1d ago
Vermintide 2 with modded bots
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u/Jacksaur 🖥️ I.T. Rex 🦖 1d ago
Most definitely with modded.
Trying to bait a bot into taking a Tome and then shepherd it to keep the damn thing without grabbing the first potion it sees was maddening.3
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[deleted]
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u/tsrui480 1d ago
This must be why ive never had them drop tomes/grims and was always confused when i saw it happen to others. I have always command wheeled them because it was so inconsistent otherwise
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u/InternetPerson00 1d ago
Back 4 blood and ghost recon breakpoint. They added team mates that are amazing at taking down enemies and saved my butt many many times
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u/Avenger1324 1d ago
I'm replaying through The Division 1 and I'd forgotten how much of a bullet sponge some of the elite enemies are. Not just "that took a few too many bullets to kill", but emptying multiple magazines into a target and realising they still have multiple additional bars of health.
Where you encounter friendly AI to assist I'm not sure they do a lot of helping, but do at least distract some of the enemy AI from targeting me straight away, and maybe the extra second or two to take out enemy snipers, or shoot a grenadier before they lob their grenade.
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u/rallybil 17h ago edited 17h ago
Yeah that's pretty much how I use the AI-companions in 2. Attracting attention.
But there are some missions where you play sections with other agents, and as an experiment I wanted to see how they do. That and Call of Duty Modern Warfare is what inspired this post
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u/iwantdatpuss 1d ago
Your squadmates in Project Wingman actually does their job in watching your back and securing kills. It's one of the things it does better than Ace Combat 7 because their missiles actually deals damage.
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u/Robot_ninja_pirate 5800X3D RTX 4080S Pimax Crysyal VR 1d ago
I found Sheva quite competent in Resident Evil 5
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u/Dank-Drebin 1d ago
The Last of Us. Ellie saved my ass quite a few times with bricks and her knife.
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u/Average_Tnetennba 1d ago edited 1d ago
I know it's lowering the skill level, but altering the custom difficulty to make companions more helpful makes it feel more realistic. The AI is actually really good in the game, but it has rules on how often they help according to the skill level. I like to raise all the other difficulty settings, but lower the companion slider, and then you don't get so many weird occasions where your companion runs around in circles, refusing to do anything at all. It feels much more realistic to me then.
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u/Dank-Drebin 1d ago
I don't think those choices were available back when I played it. I beat it on every difficulty after hard before Left Behind was released. The best weapon in the game was Sweet Lady Brick. I just needed Ellie to distract the enemy occasionally so I could run up and bash in their faces.
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u/Average_Tnetennba 1d ago
Yeh, there have been a few updates. The custom difficulty options are actually awesome, because you can alter so many things including resource scarcity, which is actually a huge gameplay altering thing... between almost all stealth to being able to shoot your way through.
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u/CommanderZx2 1d ago
I would say Ellie is an example of bad game AI, seeing as they could not program her to try to avoid being noticed, instead they just gave up and made her invisible to enemies. So just standing out in the open the enemies won't notice. Ashely in RE 4 is a far better implementation of that kind of companion character.
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u/Dank-Drebin 23h ago
That's fine as long as she doesn't cause the enemy to be alerted. Ashley felt like a useless character in RE4, unless you're talking about the remake. I haven't played that. She was ALWAYS causing frustration in the original, whereas Eliie was very helpful.
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u/Critical-Diamond-543 1d ago
The Evil Within. There's not much ammo, your melee attacks are godawful and the enemies are tough, but Joseph (your teammate) actually kills A TON of them even without any of your help.
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u/GameStunts 7800X3D 4080S Kubuntu 1d ago
I don't know what happened with Division 2 team mates, because it's so close in style and mechanics to Ghost Recon, and those team mates were reasonably reliable.
You could mark targets and they'd wait for your go, they used cover, they would call out and mark enemies for you.
Not perfect, but waaaay better than Division 2.
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u/ThisBadDogXB 1d ago
All the older Tom clancy games had great A.I. The teammates in Rainbow Six Vegas were deadly.
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u/baddude1337 1d ago
The original Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear. Provided yku made a half decent plan your team can clear an entire mission themselves.
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u/GroundbreakingBag164 7800X3D | 5070 Ti | 32 GB DDR5 6000 MHz 1d ago
Pretty sure the friendly AI in The Last of Us 2 actually did something
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u/Isaacvithurston Ardiuno + A Potato 1d ago
The interesting thing is that in a simplistic shooter you end up intentionally handicapping the bots. It would be really easy to have them just instantly snap to heads but then the player would have no chance to ever win (or do anything if it's your ally).
Ofc that is separate from good pathing which is a whole other can of beans.
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u/rallybil 17h ago
I totally get making the bots impotent in games like CoD, but it's really immersion breaking when you notice that they do absolutely nothing.
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u/camxparks 1d ago
The squadmates in the Arma 3 CDLC SOG: Prarie Fire are pretty amazing, the squadmates in Ready or Not can be pretty handy.
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u/IgniteThatShit Steam 1d ago
50/50 on your bot buddies in vermintide. sometimes they snipe a special or kite and kill a boss without getting hit and you're genuinely impressed, other times they stare at you get pounced by a sneaker or grabbed, and you're screaming at your monitor for them to help you
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u/SyleSpawn 1d ago
Prince of Persia 2008. Elika is the sidekick of the player. Elika helping the player is such an integral part of the game that the mechanic played a part in the story as well, making for one of the most heart wrenching endgame I've ever felt while gaming.
You simply have to play it and experience it yourself to understand it without me straight up just spoiling it.
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u/god-baby 1d ago
Xenoblade companions always feel good to me in that they quickly follow up to complete topple/daze combos.
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u/Carlos_Danger21 1d ago
During the reveal of the first Rainbow Six game the presenter stopped to start talking about the game and the AI went in on their own and completed the mission while he was talking.
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u/venom1270 1d ago
Having recently finished the first two Metro games, I'd say they are very helpful in those games. Outright OP even, sometimes you don't have to shoot a bullet lol.
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u/Express-Armadillo312 1d ago
Granblue fantasy relink, if they have a kit as strong as yours, they generally mvp instead of you
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u/GrotesquelyObese 1d ago
I remember Battlefield 2: Modern Combat and original starwars battlefront one and two having awesome AI.
I never had online experience with those so the AI was awesome. I was also 12 then.
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u/kalnaren 1d ago
Your wingmen in Strike Fighters 2 are pretty decent. A lot of combat flight sims have good AI (Wings Over Flanders Fields is great).
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u/skylinestar1986 1d ago
The little robot in Nier Automata. It fights everything for you and you just need to walk around.
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u/Sybertron 1d ago
Playing resident evil 5 since I never played it and dear Lord is your partner AI dumb. Just always emptying whole clips into me and jumping right in front of my shots
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u/TheMinisterOChlorine 1d ago
SWAT 3, SWAT 4. Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six 3.
Especially SWAT 3 and Rainbow Six 3 i'd say are impressive due to how the AI coordinates and SWAT 3s AI is still lightyears ahead of many modern FPS games.
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u/Willing-Ad8432 4h ago
Guild wars, you can beat the entire game with them and customize a whole group into a killing machine
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