When the average person imagines the ideal execution of AI-generated dialogue, I know what they’re picturing. They want to ask their favourite video game character about anything under the sun and have them come back with an in-character response that makes sense in the context of the game. For example, if you asked an early-game Shadowheart what she thinks about a certain character or activity and she mentions Shar in her response, or you sat by the campfire as Arthur Morgan and asked Dutch why he chose to do certain things. In a perfect world, AI-generated dialogue would add to a game’s immersiveness, not detract from it.
But the technology we have isn’t capable of that yet, and that’s particularly clear now. The Vergeposted a transcriptof a conversation between senior editor Sean Hollister and two characters from a demo of Nvidia and partner Convai’s Avatar Cloud Engine for Games, a suite of middleware used to deploy large language models and text-to-speech, among other things. Hollister could speak directly to these characters and have them respond in real time.
One character, Jin, was the owner of a ramen restaurant, and the other, Nova, was a regular there as well as a long-time friend of yours. Hollister said that the demo convinced him the tech coming to video games was “inevitable”, but also highlighted that there are many things still holding the technology back and making it seem unrealistic in comparison to hand-crafted voices, facial expressions, and body language. The characters make reference to the world outside and their respective lives and histories, but everything they say is trite and shallow. That’s because they’re drawing from backend programming that gives them a character description, lists things they know, and personality traits - they aren’t real people, and never will be.
As we already know, AI can generate text fine, but it can’t reallywrite. You’re not going to get deep characters, moving prose, or surprising philosophical insights from this tech. Sure, it can answer your questions within the parameters of its ‘personality’, but they’re not going to be well-thought out replies, because AI is just an algorithm. Artificial intelligence is a misnomer – AI isn’t intelligent at all, and with the technology we have now, it simply cannot be creative enough to produce a truly compelling character. Human writing can. The reason you care about Shadowheart or Dutch is because someone took the time to craft that dialogue for you, over many rewrites and with deep thought.
Another thing to consider is: do you even want to be able to talk to video game characters if they have nothing substantial to say? I can’t help but think about Starfield’s procedurally generated planets, which people were excited about… until they actually landed on them and found that there was absolutely nothing of interest to see or do. It’s the exact same thing with AI – if these characters have nothing of substance or interest to say, what use do they have in a video game? Are they just there to prove they can be? Does this tech add any value to a game at all?
It’s possible that one day, generative AI will be so good that players can communicate with it seamlessly and feel like they’re really talking to an intelligent being. In other words, AI characters will pass the Turing test. But if that happens, games will be an entirely different beast altogether. Right now, writers are crafting your entire gaming experience, from the things you do, to the places you go, and the characters you meet. The dialogue options writers signpost what you need to know, guiding you through the game. Taking away the carefully made decisions of what to share and what not to share will change the experience of the game completely.
The things you say and do and the scripted reactions you get are all part of experiencing a story. If you want to run amok in a fictional world and create your own story, that’s fine – but that’s not what modern gaming is, and I don’t think that would be nearly as much fun. For me, experiencing a great story with compelling characters is always the best part of playing a game, and talking to a program is not going to give us that.
