I have commented on Todd's failure to deliver on such promises in skyrim before.
But this is definitely where generative ai will be a boon to games, once it's stabilised enough to trust.
I'd love exactly the same; the game should still tell a story or have a point (unless it's a complete sandbox), so key plot points can be included but otherwise it's a simulation and the player can do things with their agency, but so can the npcs.
Would be cool to come back to a village, and now the leader has changed because the previous one insulted someone at the tavern, who killed the leader in a fit of rage. The village then chose a replacement leader, the assailant was publicly executed for their crimes. But the villagers decided this was too brutal a punishment so they removed the leader, who resisted but got driven out of town. The ousted leader wants control of the village back so they've been planning to enter with a crew of mercenaries.
When you get to the village you get given a quest to go take care of the problem, based on the hearsay. Hell, when you get to whatever hideout they're holed up in maybe the npc has even decided to just give up and move somewhere else.
So many opportunities for awesome narratives. I've done experiments with this stuff in text, but not in engine with an actual game.
Oh I totally agree. More so I think the ability for AI to generate any kind of game you wish is in the not so distant future.
Dwarf Fortress has some wonderful world events and npc choice trees. For example in my biggest fortress, Ragnar was bored. Ragnar got really bored. Ragnar stared at a rock for almost 3 months game time. Then Ragnar got inspired so he ran over to the bowyer workstation, fetched a few gems and wood from the nearby piles, and started crafting a masterpiece crossbow. 6 months later, this thing comes out decked in jewels and gems, it’s got a +++ rating on the end. It’s wonderful. Then Ragnar loads a bolt. Pulls the trigger.
Won't spoil it for you but we did have a great discussion from that around how emergent gameplay can be amazing, but player agency means that you'd still need the "hand of God" to be involved in fixing things and making adjustments so that major plot points and still enabled and the player doesn't kill the entire world (unless that's the point of the game I suppose).
> But this is definitely where generative ai will be a boon to games, once it's stabilised enough to trust.
The problem is most deployments will likely be sloppy shovelware and every now and then we’ll get half decent games with it, maybe a great one every few years. Just like how we see now with garbage unedited LLM outputs flooding the internet and dominating searches as “articles” or “blogs.” It is just far too easy flood us with trash while any decent work gets buried in it and can’t be found.
Oh for sure, but remember when Steam opened the green light thing more and a flood of absolute trash started pouring in...I feel like there'll always be shovelware, poor implementations and scams regardless of AI or any other technology. Seems it's just something that comes along with human nature, inside and outside of games.
Shadow of Mordor (and the sequel) had something called the "Nemesis" system where some of the Orc Captains you kill (and the ones who kill you) might survive off screen and get stronger and come back with scars and buffs and new nicknames. It didn't do the village/town stuff you are talking about. They talked about doing it in future games but never did.
Didn't find any good technical write-ups. Although apparently it's "patented".
Here's a decent video overview. I hate that everything is video now but this is the world we live in I suppose.
Yes I agree that the patent system now exists for parasite businessmen and finance people rather than inventors.
But on a more positive note I loved SoM so much, played it on release - the nemesis system, movement and general open worldness of it was all so satisfying. I never got to the sequel but I'll have to check it out.
But this is definitely where generative ai will be a boon to games, once it's stabilised enough to trust.
I'd love exactly the same; the game should still tell a story or have a point (unless it's a complete sandbox), so key plot points can be included but otherwise it's a simulation and the player can do things with their agency, but so can the npcs.
Would be cool to come back to a village, and now the leader has changed because the previous one insulted someone at the tavern, who killed the leader in a fit of rage. The village then chose a replacement leader, the assailant was publicly executed for their crimes. But the villagers decided this was too brutal a punishment so they removed the leader, who resisted but got driven out of town. The ousted leader wants control of the village back so they've been planning to enter with a crew of mercenaries.
When you get to the village you get given a quest to go take care of the problem, based on the hearsay. Hell, when you get to whatever hideout they're holed up in maybe the npc has even decided to just give up and move somewhere else.
So many opportunities for awesome narratives. I've done experiments with this stuff in text, but not in engine with an actual game.