Square Enix releases "AI tech preview" that instantly becomes its worst-rated game on Steam

gamesradar.com:

Square Enix has launched its AI-driven reboot of arguably its most influential game, but it's an unbelievable failure as both a classic revival and an AI experiment.

Last week, the publisher announced the impending release of Square Enix AI Tech Preview: The Portopia Serial Murder Case. The original Portopia, a text-driven adventure game about solving a murder, is one of the most influential titles in the Japanese gaming canon, yet despite that it had never officially been released in English. The idea of getting an official translation alongside an innovative use for an AI language model to replace the old text parser seemed potentially exciting.

That excitement fell to pieces pretty much the instant I started typing into the new Portopia's text box. As with the original game, you don't directly control your character, instead giving instructions to your assistant, who carries them out on your behalf. So you might say "ask around" to have him question local passers-by, or say "tell me about the victim" to get some details on the character.

The issue is that the AI is barely capable of responding to all but the most narrow of questions and commands. If you've ever played an old-school text adventure and had to fight to figure out what vocabulary the computer would actually understand, you're starting to understand the frustration here. It's just about a thousand times worse in the new Portopia, because instead of needing to learn a handful of specific commands the game recognizes, you've got to work around the vagaries of the algorithm trying to understand your words.

If you type something the AI doesn't recognize - which is going to be about 95% of what you input - you're going to get one of a tiny handful of canned