Ubisoft's Generative AI Powered NPCs - Luke Reacts

👉🏼 LINKS: linktr.ee/lukestephens 👈🏼
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Luke Stephens is a Content-Creator and Streamer that co-streams on KZbin and Twitch. This channel has Live Stream clips and highlights in addition to the streams themselves. Check out Luke's main channel & other content by going to: linktr.ee/lukestephens !!
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#gaming #LukeStephens #ps5 #xbox

[@Pacifista629]

All I want is for player created characters to be properly addressed during dialogue with any name you choose, currently most game npc’s seem to talk at you instead of to you

[@TheCephalon]

Why is that all you want? I can think of 20 things more important in games than my name being spoken correctly

[@grape_sama]

so real

[@NiohArcadia]

At some point Ubisoft will be entirely run by AI

[@Lil_Twiggy69]

They aren’t already?

[@frightenedmule194]

@@Lil_Twiggy69damn it…i was gonna say thay

[@Tedi652]

They'll go under then

[@Sparticulous]

Will we even notice?

[@Lil_Twiggy69]

@@frightenedmule194 you still can, I won’t press charges

[@KingRavenJ]

For a brief period in the 2010's, it seemed like Ubisoft was the only big name publisher willing to take creative risks. But they just fell in line with the rest and tried to turn franchises like AC into annual releases like COD or Madden, or tried to turn Ghost Recon into a looter shooter. Which is weird considering they already had The Division to fill that void but whatever. But yeah I'd like to seem them try something new outside of their patented mediocre open world filled with repetitive side quests.

[@ewjiml]

Once companies go public and necessitate quarterly earnings, everything goes downhill. Look at Rockstar, look at BioWare, look at Blizzard, look at Ubisoft. Greed is the downfall of all of them.

[@XRevMaynardX]

What’s wrong with Rockstar? Their last game was amazing. And GTA6 looks mind blowing.

[@SecundaMFX]

@@XRevMaynardX GTA Online

[@knoepfler34]

@@SecundaMFX yeah, but it's pretty successful. A lot of people play it.

[@SecundaMFX]

@@knoepfler34 Oh yeah no doubt it’s successful, never said it wasn’t. Just saying because of GTA Online, they’ve pretty much have been neglecting their other games because in their eyes it wouldn’t be as profitable to sell their other titles as much as GTA Online

[@whatasaverl6456]

Ubisoft can't even make a pirate game. I doubt they have this tech on point

[@Hexenkind1]

Oh they did. With Black Flag.

[@sivartb7273]

​@@Hexenkind1Aye. So they did, but it was a different time then. The seas were open, the rum was cheap, and coin was plenty.

[@whatasaverl6456]

Indeed they hit it out of the park with black flag a decade ago. Even more reason to make a better game now.

[@korinogaro]

Well that pirate game was made by Ubisoft Singapore and not main studio.

[@whatasaverl6456]

@korinogaro it was made by like 8 Ubisoft studios. It literally had the entire company involved because it was taking so long to make.

[@Im_helpless]

I’d rather have a concrete story/stories and dialogue options that’re well voiced acted, if I wanted to talk to an ai I’d just open Snapchat and talk to their ai

[@benstanfill363]

As cool as this sounds, I'd prefer to have text as an option. I don't want to talk out loud to npcs.

[@Ploskkky]

To me it does not sound cool at all.

[@pneumonoultramicroscopicsi4065]

I agree, i think it's better to have dialogue options that are ai generated, because it makes me put less effort and it's also easier to keep the conversations on track and not go off script as well and break fourth wall

[@pneumonoultramicroscopicsi4065]

​@Ploskkky it's the future of games, the true rpg requires ai, because then you'll have infinite consequences, then you can role play for real.

[@Ronuk1996]

I would rather see something more like RDR2 NPC interaction but uses these new Ai to take to the next level. Hopefully GTA6 does that.

[@acev3521]

@@Ronuk1996they already said gta will not have any ai

[@ryhanon7]

We've already seen this sort of thing multiple times in various tech demos and indie games on PC. Spoiler alert - it's really cool to play with for about a day, just to test the limits and get a laugh or two... but it's kind of pointless and boring after that. Also, there aren't many people who actually want to sit around talking out loud to their video games for hours on end.

[@stickstickstick8331]

Bold of them to assume gamers know how to talk to people

[@fat4eyes]

You know what will kill this? Consoles not having keyboards, and voice recognition still being trash.

[@numberonedad]

also AI not existing

[@CyberSpaceFilms]

What "voice recognition" are you referring to? My experience is that they are pretty awesome these days, and I have kind of a broken Norwegian accent, and OpenAI's "phone mode" recognizes every broken word coming out of my mouth, even in environments with loud background noises. This is one of many voice-to-text services that I find really good. Also, most consoles support keyboards and have USB inputs, just sayin'.

[@ex0stasis72]

​@@numberonedadNot existing? All you need is internet access, and you'd have generative AI.

[@numberonedad]

@@ex0stasis72 yes i'm disputing the notion that a human-authored diffusion model is actually an "intelligence"

[@ex0stasis72]

@@numberonedad Fine. Keep your head in the sand.

[@PoloMoney]

we NEED a AAA RPG with something like Skyrims AI chat mod. Especially with how they mention actual towns in the game and give accurate information like what town is more active at night, etc.

[@EyefyourGf]

Skyrim yes pinacle of rpg games😁🤡

[@TheCandyGamingChannel]

@@EyefyourGfyes it’s a staple for the time

[@shippy1001]

@@EyefyourGfYes it is, unfortunately or fortunately, with mods and extensions, it can be whatever you want, and I have an ultra modded version of Skyrim (1027 mods) that became a completely different game, akin to a Witcher/Dark Souls/Dragon Age mixture, where you have a party of 4 companions, a single dragon is actually a 20 minutes battle because of how hard and complex it is, I actually have to dodge fire, I need to heal my party members, I need to provide backup and fill the role of a Tank, Healer, Range and Melee DPS...

[@Sevren_]

@@shippy1001 It’s still janky af

[@3314ashley]

Iron and Blume are both references to Ubisoft properties. Iron is one of the main characters of Mythic Quest and Bloom is a corporation in watchdogs.

[@JC-ex3gp]

Splinter cell physics , lights and shadows was so mind blowing coooool

[@SyllaAria]

As a professional voice actor, the potential of companies relying on AI is TERRIFYING. It's both mine and my husband's bread and butter. Our work and all our colleagues jobs are at risk if it's not applied respectfully. Which, it isn't. It already isn't. AI technology COULD be used to HELP us in the field, but it is instead being used to bypass things etc. I am highly skeptical about it, and pretty against it until it can be properly regulated. My voice, and many other actors voices have already been stolen for "harmless" AI covers and the like. It's a very uncertain and uncomfortable time for those of us in this field of work.

[@rexvonzombie]

I think in ~5-10 years we'll land where regulation covers AI voice models, and VAs are paid to train a voice model for a game (instead of voice all that characters lines like they do now) that covers a set number of characters in that game that the model can be applied to. Then if they want to reuse the model on a future project they'll need to negotiate a new licensing deal with the VA whose voice trained the model. Overall I think it'll definitely increase immersion and character development in gaming, but will be a huge paradigm shift for the entire VA industry as far as what the job actually entails.

[@KenLinx]

Not just voice actors. AI is replacing us all. Just a week or so ago, Devin AI showed that it could build programs and run it by itself and do so over and over and over again until it achieves its goal. This effectively replaces programmers entirely. When the intellectual jobs are taken over, next will be the physical labor jobs. When robots powered by AI are created, next will be the social jobs. Then after that, it will truly be over for us all. Human ambition will be over-either at our extinction or at a paradise where AI takes care of every one of our needs.

[@shippy1001]

I use plenty of voiceovers for the ads that we do in many different languages, the issue is when we want to add or change some sections of the voiceover, we have to pay the voice actor to go to the studio (or send me a new voice from their own home studio) with the adjustments, which is not "great" so we end up asking to do the whole video again for consistent and a straight message for each different voices and languages. We started using AI voices for a "trial", and it`s just as good, the only difference is that if I want to change something, it`s instant, and I can mix and match words, our GMs can hear and change things on the fly at will, it makes our jobs a lot easier, faster and for the same price, sometimes less, than before. I completely agree with your point that it might/will take people's jobs, but it`s a lot easier for the professionals that require voice-overs/voice-actors, to add to the text "excitement in this sentence", "less excitement on this sentence" than have to write on the script and figure stuff out before sending for recording. Plus the consistency, e.g.: In a game like Starfield where voice actors do everything, there`s no redoing, no changing, whatever is there needs to be re-recorded for new lines or replacement for old lines, it prevents and restricts reworks/updates. Now imagine that Indie games can now have voices in their games simply because it`s a lot cheaper using AI. Unfortunately, it is what it is, companies that use AI voices will have a clear advantage over the ones that don`t, so it will be a leap across the industry, and it will happen quick.

[@korinogaro]

Well guess what... you will be just another one in hundreds of millions that lost their jobs to technological change throughout the ages and just like all these millions you will need to find something else.

[@silashenderson1300]

Well... As a game player, I really, really, really hate this idea. I don't want to vocally make words to my video game. So please keep your voice acting job. I don't want to do it.

[@DayLight_Era]

As somebody who absolutely sucks at talking to people.. I would hate this. But also, in a weird way, I think it would help you get better at talking to somebody lol. It would allow you to practice talking about the right things, asking the right questions and giving answers. So, it's a grey area for me, personally. I think if it were just regular NPCs that you normally don't talk to, sure, I think that would be cool. I would not like it to be for everyone, though. But I would prefer they keep it traditional. I think a good use for AI dialogue would be for NPC's conversations with each other, and that is it. It would make the world feel more alive, if NPCs were just talking. It could also help with repetitive dialogue.

[@iamtis]

One thing that would really suck about AI characters is the LLM rejecting the prompt because it doesn't like the way you said something bad about mugs to the character muggy and the game gives a canned "As a AI character powered by OpenAI, I can't answer that"

[@lcmiracle]

Why yes, they can totally run the llms locally, if they choose to. A pruned 7 billion parameter LLM like Mistral at 4 bit precision is something like 6GB in size, the whole library to inference that model would add up to no more than 10 GB. Sure, not small but with AAA games sized at 100+ GB these days, those are just overhead. I can inference with Mistral using the text-generation-webui locally using a 4060TI GPU to generate ~1000 tokens within 5 seconds; I can get it to do about the same tokens with my i9 CPU within 15. If you just have an AI-driven NPC generate lines succinctly (say on average less than 100 words (tokens)) they can likely offload inferencing to the CPU and they would generate a response within 3-5 seconds (that's plus AI Text-To-Speech inference). They probably won't, however.

[@lukestephenslive]

You sound very knowledgeable about all this! Reach out to me and the team if you have time and I can pick your brain about what is and isn’t possible! I’d love to do a follow up to this with more info. [e-mail]

[@ex0stasis72]

Ya but the bigger issue isn't how long it takes to generate a response. It's that it would need to sit in the background using up 6+ GB of VRAM ready to go in case it gets a prompt. That's valuable VRAM that could go towards higher resolution textures in-game. Maybe, it might make sense to use system RAM and CPU cycles instead since system RAM is cheap and expandable and NPC dialogue is probably much shorter than the average ChatGPT response, but then, like you said, you may have to around to 15 seconds for a response reducing the immersion in the game.

[@Yodi_Bear]

One thing to note, large language models (LLM) are already available on local computers. So theoretically you could link up a locally running model it would just need to be packaged with the game. The only downside to this is it would take a lot more vram which games already need and every time you send prompts it may cause a performance spike. I wouldn’t be surprised if soon game engines start implementing their own LLM into their engine with all the optimizations they can make. The other caveat is the longer the ai conversation goes the more vram is needed to remember everything that was said. But very exciting to say the least. Maybe gpus will have a dedicated ai module or something. The other really cool thing is you could have ai dynamically react to decisions the player has made. You killed the big bad evil guy, now every villager knows your name and thanks you as you walk by. It’s much more than a gimic more like an evolution. Then again it could also funnel all sorts of ads. “Hey hero have you had the latest Mountain Dew Dusty Trail.” If you actually read all this congrats you’ve made it further than most.

[@TRUEMIXEDBLOOD]

Ubisoft: "So we homogenized our games' gameplay. Time to take it to the next level."

[@m0ose0909]

Incoming future where dedicated AI acceleration hardware becomes as required as GPUs for gaming on PCs and consoles. Its the solution to avoid needing to use cloud ai which, aside from being annoying for requiring always online, would introduce horrible lag

[@offcenterideas]

My brain immediately went to two MAJOR issues (beyond the added costs already mentioned): 1. Accessibility issues for people with thick accents or speech impediments that AIs struggle to understand. 2. Virtually every game using the tech would likely need to be Rated M to account for troll players teaching the AIs slurs and hate speech.

[@brodieorr5393]

Idk about anyone else, but the majority of dialog in a game coming from a chatbot seems like a nightmare. The idea of talking to npcs in a realistic sense seems like a good idea on paper.. But chatbots rarely spit out anything compelling. The whole point of hearing the random bits of dialog in games is that the devs wrote that line and put it there. It means something.. Chatbot dialog is just filler

[@shippy1001]

If you use the latest AI-based voice-overs (which is the one Luke is talking about in the video) you literally can`t distinguish from an actual human, the sentence is very believable, it has the same pauses, the fumble of wording, and mouth sounds that we do when we speak, it will fall upon the script be well written, not the voice to be human-like.

[@Daniel-wh9kb]

i was going to say the same exact thing and you beat me to it. I don't care if the NPCs sound believable and coherent. In the end it's the product of a LLM, it's not authentic. Writers already have enough trouble writing meaningful, fun, worthy dialogue as it is, for the limited amount of lines that are necessary in a typical game. Imagine the mediocrity of the dialogue once they leave it up to AI.

[@areshaider8378]

"It is a good life we live brother may it never change, and may it never change us" this line hurts now more than ever

[@1lham_edits]

This could actually be good if controlled and done right. Of course, there would be negatives too. This is new tech, and it's in the experimental/testing phase. They could also just have the AI built into the game files.

[@JamescMichel]

There is already a mod for Skyrim that you can have a conversation with NPCs. There is also an AI game where you have to convince the NPCs that you, the player, is not a vampire and to invite you in their house. Ubisoft is already behind the curve.

[@outland2874]

At this point i think skyrim modders could make a better game than anyone in the industry rn

[@megaplexXxHD]

That mod is so insane. Love that one video where he accuses someone of beeing a traitor, said traitor is banned from the city and then they plan to murder that guy on the road. He basically created his own quest purely trough roleplaying. And i really hope this is the future of gaming, where the workd and npcs react and interact with what we say and do.

[@Exzimius]

Yeah, but they have the tech and money to advance it

[@JamescMichel]

I’d agree with you in any other year but with so many Triple A and the new Quadruple A game releases being mediocre at best, I’d argue innovation will come from necessity and not opulent spending.

[@knoepfler34]

Oh, do you know the name of the game with the vampire stuff?

[@santobell]

Shroud of the Avatar tried to implement a system like this and it was not pretty.

[@ex0stasis72]

Using generative AI? And wasn't this like 5+ years before ChatGPT was even a thing?

[@santobell]

yes it old now@@ex0stasis72

[@ArcangelGamingEntertainment]

Ive thought for years that we have great graphics, we have great gameplay loops. We need better/smarter/faster ai npcs. Forget the issues with voice actors etc. But adding in ai decision making for npcs is the way forward.

[@1000whispering]

Having freeform conversations with NPCs in most games would be immersion breaking. Their purpose is generally as set dressing like the rest of the environment. When it comes to named NPCs where we gain information, the freeform conversation would overextend what their purpose is, to give us clues and guidance towards our goal. However, games that are made with the sole intention of freeform conversations with NPCs could be a whole new genre, similar to the walking simulator. Games where character interaction, relationship building, complex conversations to extract information, dynamic levels of rapport etc. could be very interesting. Although this would not be mainstream.

[@HowardVega]

There’s already games that require an online connection to work. Some of the most popular ones.

[@Davidium84]

Hi! Long time viewer and supporter of you Luke. I would like for you to understand that path-tracing IS a fundamental part of the future as most of us are reading and learning about from GDC and it's not even about the insane quality difference although that definitely helps. Why the whole industry are shifting towards using more and more ray tracing and even path tracing in their games and software is because, when it's all said and done, ray tracing in games takes a lot less time to implement especially when the games will use ONLY ray or path-tracing instead of having to draw the light and configure the light and try to optimize your light maps, cube maps, planar reflections, shadow maps, shadow resolution, screen spaced lighting and shadow effects, ambient occlusion etc etc. Instead of all that you just turn on path tracing in an engine like UE 5.4 and it just works! AMD has been the single most destructive force when it comes to ray tracing and good enough up-scalers since they were building the GPU for the consoles and just couldn't deliver what PSX and Microsoft actually wanted. That has led to Sony making their own proprietary hardware for ps5-pro and both Sony and Microsoft might even go with NVidia for the full on next generation of consoles, just as Nintendo are doing.

[@Ganderlow]

I think many games could benefit from AI npc dialogue. Allowing the player to speak in their mic and get a verbal response would be huge.

[@ex0stasis72]

I agree. I remember my first time getting put on the spot in an in-person D&D campaign and the DM had an NPC turn to me and ask me an open ended question. I didn't know what to say. I felt like I wanted multiple choice options like I had in my video games. I'd love the opportunity to practice my improvisation skills with some generative AI in a game.

[@exnozgaming5657]

To run the LLMs huge resource is needed. If they integrate it in the game then you need a top of the line PC to run the llm and the game at the same time and even with that it may not play smoothly. If they make it online and run the LLM in their servers, then its a bad idea for both gamers and also their company.

[@lyudvig_]

It feels like it will be the same as with the games that support VR, like ETS2, but you also have an option to play without VR if you can’t afford to buy a VR headset.

[@johnpen269]

If you where gaming on a low end rig you would maybe appreciate how huge FSR and DLSS are for gaming

[@jacksisco1]

I'd be ok with it for unnamed npcs. But story characters should be written and voice acted.

[@Mrkalm007]

They allready did this on a skyrim mod, it was pretty cool

[@thanos43infinity]

Im guessing this is why the budget for GTA 6 is so huge as Strauss has said many times in interviews they intend to introduce this is a big way for the game.

[@kingofnara]

I like AI NPCs played a mod in Skyrim VR where your companion is basically ChatGPT, it will take time to get right

[@aru5117]

It’s gonna be a real long time until full on AI NPCs become a thing. Not only does AI tech itself need some improving before it gets implemented, it’s gonna be so prohibitively expensive to implement not even considering how you’re gonna effectively monetize it.

[@bewee]

I'm all got Ai in video games. If it makes it better I'm happy. AI npc sounds like the perfect way to never have pawns repeat the same line over and over again.

[@orbakun]

The only interesting utility for this that I wouldn't find morally dubious is if they made it so that you can name you horse or your character whatever you want and have an AI say it. Like just imagine if in RDR2 instead of constantly hearing "You're a good boah" (though that has a lot of charm in itself) Arthur said the name of the horse that you named at the stable. But of course this could run into problems if someone named their horse stinky poop balls or something

[@ZGamingGuy]

Chances are an Xbox exclusive will have the first impressive AI npc. Since Microsoft is leading the AI market, alongside Google. That or some random indie game

[@melissakampers]

Local AI is much better. That way you can determine what dataset the AI will use in game. If it's like ChatGPT then it will completely break the game.

[@pneumonoultramicroscopicsi4065]

It doesn't use chatgpt, it uses inworld ai and they use a multitude of large language models depending on their needs, sadly the youtuber is talking about something he doesn't really understand

[@Dysanii]

@@pneumonoultramicroscopicsi4065 i was about to say…wouldn’t it be infinitely more better to run on its own script? Feed it the in-game lore/dialogue to be more accurate. ChatGPT accesses the internet, why would an medieval times NPC need to know about whats on the Taco Bell Menu? Lol

[@ex0stasis72]

I could maybe understand how local could work for the text generation. But for the AI text-to-speech, I've never heard of any local TTS that sounded good. Perhaps it's just the case that there are no good sounding open source TTS AI voices yet. Maybe there are proprietary AI TTS systems that could run locally with a AAA game simultaneously?

[@melissakampers]

@@ex0stasis72 check out Brian Roemmele. He is an expert on local AI.

[@chrgeorgeson]

Eh I think Luke is a bit off base. As LLMs get more sophisticated what these companies (openai included) are trying to do is get a micro LLM small enough to run on ohones natively. The reason is they can make money on a license fee for a LLM and save a crap ton on infrastructure cost. Yes there will always be money made in running it as a service in the cloud but it's two very different markets. The enterprise and the consumer side.

[@michaelh4227]

Based on what I know about how companies like Ubisoft operate, I imagine they will most likely abuse the tech at the expense of the quality of the product, everybody will hate what they will do, but they will continue using it anyways because it's cheaper.

[@yonko7401]

Making a payment fee where you have to pay for the AI in a game is a terrible idea that basically is limiting the AI so greatly to the point that there just an add on in the game and so people who don’t pay for the AI are playing the same game

[@stevenjohnson4122]

Now we know why sony added a mic in every controller 😂

[@PongoDaMan]

every time other then cyberpunk. Ray traces often does very little for me graphics wise. I'm also only rocking a 3070 ti so its not like i have a ton of real-estate anyway. DLSS on the other hand has been a fucking life saver

[@eon5323]

Have you played any games that use AI for NPCs? Modded Skyrim or that indie vampire game? You should try it and see how it feels.

[@Urboyyycarlos]

Interesting to see the name bloom when in watchdogs 2 it's supposed to be Blume

[@jojocasimir1118]

If it’s Optional then it’s fine by me cause you got some real gamers who will pay that 15-25 dollars a month an it does sound interesting and i wouldnt mind checking it out to see if I prefer to play the game that way but its either a success or a fail

[@ShawnnyPerkins]

If we don't technically own our digital purchases then it's not stealing when you pirate it

[@seniorfiance]

AI is going to have a rude awakening when it is asked to socialize with gamers.

[@davidfaustino4476]

Honestly this is one of the only uses of AI that makes sense and will genuinely improve the experience.. except if it requires you to be online.

[@lcmiracle]

Yes, yes, long have I been aware of this Also, eternal glory to the machine

[@manganiaco]

Watch games become progressively unstable, as playthrough and savegames become ever convulated with npc decisions. It's already a problem on relatively simple open world or procedural games. Watch it become the norm.

[@Bacbi]

So essentially Ubisoft has made Milo a reality 😅

[@anuvette]

be cool if they somehow dropped an update or a dlc for watch dogs legion to using ai

[@DB-wg1tz]

Never playing a single player game where it’s always online…nope

[@LovePeaceandKindness95]

oh boy! looking forward to getting banned for shouting abuse at an npc that is blocking a doorway!

[@Jeff-ne1lh]

Talking about those other gamers "swimming in money" in a room with 5K of Lego Models...

[@polowbornfly3862]

Most single player games are always online anyway so it’s no different

[@DB-wg1tz]

Not the good ones

[@ex0stasis72]

Even to get the quality of ChatGPT, not even the RTX 4090's 16 GB of VRAM is anywhere close to enough to run the kinds of LLMs required to power these generative-AI-controlled NPCs.

[@spoots1234]

A lot of People love the idea of old Assassin's Creed but Odyssey is the most popular Assassin's Creed game for a reason. Ubisoft needs to make a good game that people will buy, and Odyssey is that blueprint. Fun setting, not too serious, good lead character and fun pickup and play gameplay. With Bethesda releasing meh games like Starfield, there's room for a new Odyssey. Doesn't have to be in Greece, but somewhere interesting and not beaten with a stick, like Peru, Mexico. Where are the Mayans?

[@zf3873]

So, Ubisoft is taking what modders did with Skyrim and pitching it as their own idea?

[@trovestove6886]

It was aliens👀

[@noamias4897]

Still like that will need to be extremely well put in games for it to work as well as normal written dialogue. Imagine in Uncharted 4 you could make Nate verbally abuse Elana so much that she should never want to be near him again, or making Sam confess to lying when you first meet him? Imagine ruining a quest or a relationship in a game with a character you like because you forgot to mute your mic and said some dumb shit to a friend?

[@reshypoo9447]

Seems really cool. And it's something that would be completely infeasible for a person to make. On-board AI would be great. Server-cloud based, not so much. Adding even a few seconds to response times while trying to 'interrogate' would make an already potentially tedious task all the more irritating. And I doubt they'll allow for any R-rated content. Weird concern on the theoretical "premium" experience. Arguably we already have that with the varying platforms, how big your screen is etc. Someone on down-scaled 1080-30 low settings gets a pretty poor experience compared to 4k-120 maxed out everything. I know there's a lot of push-back against AI for it's potential to replace human workers. Yet at the same time we're scolding studios for having bloated budgets, massive staff numbers, and taking up to a decade to make. Maybe AI could get them back to situation where it only takes 100 people to make a large game, and free up the other 900 people to make 9 other interesting "riskier" games. Just hope AI doesn't become the next stem-cell issue, with all the potential in the world, but banned because of knee-jerk backlash.

[@mickeycee8559]

Man I would love a great AC game. I loved odyssey. Hot take I guess but I got so lost in that game. I loved the quests and the characters and the world omg

[@terrelltolson3217]

You can’t do it with a story mode yet. Why? Because we can’t make games with millions of story outcomes based off of what we say. In telltale the wolf among us. You start the game (but know the ending). “_______ did the crime” immediately. Now what. Or “(insert innocent person’a name) did it” boom. Game is over. Wasn’t even solved correctly.

[@kojiro133]

If having an actual reason to be always online was implemented into a game, then I can't be too mad at being always online for it. Unless it was implemented poorly. But, we already have that, so we may as well take a crack at something new. And as always, we're free to just not buy it, if the AI is a garbage gimmick and only a thinly veiled excuse to keep us connected. Take a chance on it being good, and dump it if it's not. Honestly, I've been wondering why AI isn't being used for more projects like this. An idea I've had is to have games with open mic's or proximity chat to use AI voice changing technology to make it sound like what you're saying is being said by your in game character. An MMORPG where you can customize your character's voice to your liking and then other people get to hear your character speak your words sounds really interesting and immersive.

[@ExitonD]

Sure, I fully believe that the company that struggles to come up with even half a decent main quest is capable of creating a myriad of nuanced and interesting AI NPCs, spending hundreds of hours on each to troubleshoot and tune their behavior.

[@averygm9728]

I wonder who will be doing all these animations?

[@ex0stasis72]

Who said anything about animations? Lip sync is all automatic anyway. And we're just talking about generative AI for improvised dialogue. Humans can still do the animations, and the generative AI can bake in queues in the dialogue responses, which can be parsed later with human written code to trigger human developed animations for things like hand gestures or facial expressions.

[@hayabusa09]

Ideas come from people. The people that made Assassins Creed 2 are long gone.

[@thecheeze9001]

I'd rather have handcrafted, well-written dialogue that makes sense in the universe. We've had procedurally generated worlds before, & they're hit or miss. Mostly misses in recent games.

[@Drstrange3000]

Same. I want more focused games but it seems like the industry is movibg further and further away from that. Not a fan of procedurally generated games mostly.

[@goatcoffee]

They need to revisit Avatar with this tech.. the npcs were trash.

[@ducoboeschoten]

When is Skyrim AI 50th edition coming out?

[@mrgauth]

I really believe that in the future, NPC's will react in real time. No scripts. Imagine that. AI will change everything. I am old and will not see it, but you younguns probably will.

[@godamnyouall]

I absolutely hate that idea. I hope I won't live to see that either.

[@bigmyke2008]

The real AI bots are running the company

[@bigfootisreal_]

Negate piracy? Their games aren't even worth pirating lol. 😂

[@fffx2]

Anything that leads actors to getting paid less is based

[@splitpierre]

Obviously AI is going to get integrated into our hardware. Its not feasible to charge players to talk to NPCs, non-sense. I dont know if you've tested locally running LLMs, a 4GB gpu can get you timely results for things like this (7b models), near real-time NPC chat, and I'm pretty sure they can fine-tune and work around making this work well on our own GPUs, PROBLEM is, LLMs take quiet some VRAM from your GPU, meaning, gaming requirements will basically double, and that is PROFIT for NVIDIA and alike. Dont mistake yourself thinking this is going to require on-line, likely not. If Ubisoft decides to add inference costs in a monthly subscription, first they might be shooting themselves in the foot, and if they delegate (BYOK, bring your own keys), then players might have a hefty surprise in their bills. There is loads of profit to be made from doubling gpu requirements.

[@ColdFuego-]

Ubisoft should focus on making a better game instead

[@knoepfler34]

I think it would be ironic if the technology would make Ubisoft games actually better again.😂

[@chasehudson5881]

As long as people don't lose their jobs due to it then I am fine with AI being used.

[@Accuracy158]

I was so excited for AC3... And then it was my last Ubisoft game. But how much of it's problems came down to horrid main character and lack of solid writing?

[@MrNavidad]

I think it's too much to build generative Ai into a game. Especially with how much power and processing is required and how lackluster the Ai's currently are. Studios can't even ship fully functioning games and now they want to plug Ai into this. Nah I'm good for a few more decades.

[@secondcut3138]

Hope they don’t F up the black flag remake

[@theKonfusion]

I just feel, everything AI, while a creative tool, will sound very boring. Can't give much personality, and very fun tones to auto generated sentences. But maybe they can pull it off, I've heard some very funny Text to speech voices.

[@jessicaheller3076]

Look up a video titled "I spent $400 to bring my AI companion to life in VR herika Follower". The AI companion sounds great, snappy and not boring at all. AI NPCs like Herika would make RPGs 10 times better. Also this example is an older model. Appare tly the modder has a. Ew update with more features abd a more advanced and realistic Herika

[@Warmaker01]

Gaming has become increasingly anti-consumer as the years have gone on since the mid-2000s. I expect this to be implemented by game companies in the most anti-consumer ways possible. Ways that make what we've seen them do prior tame in comparison.

[@Primetimefleegunner]

Can I just get a game that works lol

[@blairowens8912]

Yeah but like how close are we to 8ug8ear

[@walczak9862]

Im gonna he honest i think they tanked the ac Francise so hard that even if a good ac game came out nobody would care or buy it. They need to do something completely new instead of endlessly pumping out sequels to existing ips

[@Jay-ko9lv]

Always online = no buy

[@akeemmorrison2589]

You could’ve convinced me half of ubisoft games and starfield was made by ai. Even tho starfield did use Ai. It’s clear companies think the creative process can be automated and they are sorely mistaken.

[@ex0stasis72]

Sounds like you didn't listen to the video here. We're talking about strictly generative AI controlled NPC dialogue with the player. The article even explicitly stated that the NPCs in-question are designed and developed by humans and that the generative AI is for improvising dialogue for topics that the player brings up that don't have a scripted response to.

[@ex0stasis72]

And what do you mean when you said Starfield used AI, and how do you define AI. Because if your definition is not generative AI powered by an LLM, then that AI is a completely different technology unrelated to anything in this video.

[@ex0stasis72]

Don't get me wrong. I'm as much of a Ubisoft hater as the next person, but I actually think that more AI generated content in games could make for better content that what Ubisoft has been putting out for over a decade.

[@akeemmorrison2589]

yea sorry for your loss or congratulations I'm not reading that@@ex0stasis72

[@knoepfler34]

@@ex0stasis72 you know that a lot of people are not smart enough to distinguish between AI and procedural generation.and hating the current thing (now it's AI) gives you Internet points.

[@Fa113n94]

Been saying this since last year like a LA noire style game with AI NPC's would be amazing.

[@sivartb7273]

With a " nemesis system "

[@christopherklepadlo1426]

I'd be worried that ai dialog would be an excuse for poor writing or, in the case of the protagonist; no dialog. Why bother writing an ezio when you can shift that to the player?

[@MartimusEins]

then again ubisoft says and shows many things and it allways ends up beeing a lie or something else so i will only believe their elleged KI reconising voices... i am not so sure! also will they reconise voices like scottish where even other programs and other technologies had problems with... with extra pay stuff i think this will fail faster than crypto games

[@Drstrange3000]

I would just rather have a much more focused games with less emphasis on world size and how many NPCs I can talk to. I would rather have a smaller game with more unique NPCs with actual personalities and livelier animations. Nothing takes me more out of a game than a robotic feel interaction. Sure, the AI NPC can share a lot more, but the way they behave and talk is very stiff and doesn't convey any feeling or personality.

[@benstanfill363]

It'd just be part of PlayStation plus and Xbox live. They'd be dumb to do it any other way.

[@gabrielabbott2854]

Uncharted 2 snow was better and came out before AC3. At least thats how I remember it.

[@getrym4805]

this is cool and i don't understand the hate at all I just would rather type than talk out loud