I wanted to convince Iron to come to the pub.
She is one of Ubisoft's NEO NPCs that we got to meet during GDC last month. Her task was to work with me in devising a plan to break into a building. In the game, we had a big white board in front of us with a map of the building… but I thought we'd have more fun if we did this down the pub.
"We would be more relaxed if we were down the pub," she admitted. "It's a good idea. But we need to focus."
Earlier, I met a different NEO NPC called Bloom. I liked his shirt and told him so. He explained how he bought it in a thrift shop for $8. I was now eager to stop talking about our mission and to head to that store. We ended up discussing how the thrift shop might be a cover for our enemies and that we ought to investigate.
In other words, despite my efforts to derail the game, the NEO NPCs were having none of it. They may as well have said: "Stop your nonsense, we have a game to play."
"It's between total freedom and total control," begins Virginie Mosser, narrative director on Ubisoft's NEO NPC project.
"If we say [this table] is total freedom. We have designed within this area [a smaller portion of the table]. In this area [the NEO NPCs] can go everywhere they want, but they can't go outside it, because that's not interesting for us. This frame is created by the narrative designer and game designer. If you try to take Iron out of the area, she will say 'it's time to be focused'. Maybe we will enlarge that frame… we are scratching the surface of the possibilities. For these NEO NPCs, we wanted them to be limited framed.
"But in a full game, maybe you could go to the pub to discuss the mission."
The use of generative AI is a hotly debated topic from a legal, ethical and artistic point-of-view. Our very own managing editor Brendan Sinclair discussed this very thing last week. In the piece he talked about how text created by gen AI means there is nobody 'human' behind the words, no conscious thought for players to engage with.
But with
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GDC 2024
Brendan Sinclair