So picture this. You’re in a big open world RPG, and instead of choosing from fixed dialogue options, you just type what you want to say. Like actually talk. You could say something kind, sarcastic, creepy, emotional, whatever. And the NPCs get it. They respond like real people based on your tone, your choices, the situation, and their own personality.

No pre-written paths. Real conversations. One player might befriend a guard, another might piss him off and get thrown in jail. It’s all up to what you say and how you say it.

We’re experimenting with this using AI that understands your message and builds a response in real time that fits the game world.

Would this kind of system make you more immersed? Or do you think it would get weird or break the game flow?

Curious what you all think.

I would say the certain amount of AI has a chance to make some product even better, but there should be the line, where AI help to make the game, and where AI is the game itself

Oh, you assume players are not too lazy to really type questions? Or speak them into voice recognition.

For experimental games, yeah, seen that. People fool around with the AI and make a meta game out of it.

As a mechanic for established game genres, it would bring some benefits and some disadvantages. Probably you would introduce game breaking bugs or the AI would be so shallow that people lose interest in that new feature and prefer the quick way of preselected options.

An rpg means that the player will not have the skills, that the character has. Like having a high charsima and Speech 100. If you make conversations freestyle, like befriending a guard, you shift the in-game conversation to real world skills of the player.

NPCs in a game usually have a purpose and a scope. If you can define that purpose and scope with AI and let the player find out with freestyle options, ok, that might be interesting. Or distracting.

I'm kinda split about this. I understand the benefits of having smart AI for NPCs in open world game but at the same time, I know the disadvantages of that.

I'll start with this: stupid AI although, as the name implies, is stupid, is actually a smart way for players to help player telling which NPCs are important and which aren't. NPCs who talk like a robot is not interesting and usually not important and players would avoid them. With so many NPCs, figuring which ones are important and which aren't, players have less NPCs to consider.  That's an advantage with stupid AI.

That being said, that advantage is for games in which NPCs aren't the main focus. If you are making game in which NPCs are the main focus and talking to them is the main gameplay, then yes, smart AI is essential.