Ubisoft announced Neo NPC, the company's first player-generated AI-powered character, at a game developer conference. This prototype allows players to interact with NPCs with unique personalities and memories, allowing conversations to drive gameplay. These Neo NPCs are enhanced with new neural features, allowing them to respond to players with unscripted dialogue, situational awareness, and real-time emotions and animations. This turns conversations into a unique gameplay format that involves information gathering and collaborative decision-making.
A team at Ubisoft's Paris studio led this research and development initiative with support from the production technology department. Unlike traditional NPCs, the team had to program every detail of these interactive Neo NPCs, including their personalities, backstories, agendas, and emotions. As a result, every conversation is unique and responds to the player's voice input and previous interactions while maintaining continuity.
“My creative work has become deeper since I started working on the psychology of them (neo-NPCs). We need to do so with sensitivity,” said Virginie Mosser, the project’s narrative director. „As a writer, seeing my characters come to life and actually have a conversation with me for the first time is one of the most fulfilling and moving moments of my career.“
How Neo NPCs drive new gameplay
Ubisoft showed off Neo NPCs at a private event at GDC. The three-part demo highlighted how player voice-to-chat input can drive unique and novel gameplay through conversation.
In the first part, players were able to introduce themselves to Neo NPCs that were emotionally adaptable and reacted in real-time based on the player's intentions. This will unlock new story elements and lore as players build relationships with this new generation of smart NPCs. This can affect future gameplay, as NPCs remember information relayed to them by players. For example, the same Neo NPC can leave a note that incorporates these player inputs. Eventually, Ubisoft plans to use this to generate quests on the fly.
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In the second part, we demonstrated context awareness that allows Neo NPCs to dynamically react to in-game events with unscripted responses. Ultimately, this context awareness allows quest providers, training partners, and companions to react to the player's actions, creating a more immersive world for the player to explore and shape.
Finally, the third section now allows players to plan heists with Neo NPCs. Players can work with these advanced NPCs to suggest alternative approaches, no matter how absurd. Neo NPCs work with players to share insights and ask questions.
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„This could be the beginning of a great paradigm shift,“ said Xavier Manzanares, director and producer of the project. “For the first time, the game world actually listens to you and responds dynamically. Social interaction and skill become part of the gameplay. Smart NPCs like NEO NPCs , could be a revolutionary addition to the traditional NPCs found in games today. They offer even more immersive worlds and the ability to create new stories.“
Ubisoft collaborates with Inworld AI and Nvidia
While Ubisoft is leading the project, Inworld AI and Nvidia bring Neo NPCs to life. Ubisoft's narrative team leveraged Inworld AI's character engine and his LLM technology to build neo-NPCs with complete backgrounds, knowledge bases, and conversational styles. meanwhile, Nvidia Audio2Face Enhance real-time facial animation for these characters.
John Spitzer, vice president of development and performance technologies at Nvidia, said: “He is excited to partner with Ubisoft on this project as he leverages Nvidia ACE to advance digital characters.”
Together, these companies are building tools that support Ubisoft's story-driven gameplay. The vast worlds of the company's series like Assassin's Creed, The Division, and Far Cry could benefit from this conversation-driven gameplay. While the technology looks promising, the team is currently developing the project with a specific game in mind.
“Generative AI opens up unprecedented creative opportunities for teams and players,” said Guillemette Picard, senior vice president of production technology at Ubisoft. “When they see the value in games, we begin to understand their true potential to change the way games are made and played.”
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