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Player-Driven Emergence in LLM-Driven Game Narrative (and accompanying discussion on HN):
Recently there’s been increasing interest in the integration of LLMs and video games. With currently available models, creating an entire living virtual world with an unlimited number of realistic side quests, characters, and interactions is now a “mere” engineering challenge. No more pre-scripted dialogue trees; instead you can simply converse with NPCs in natural language with no limitations (or at least that’s the promise, as models become increasingly efficient).
This is another step towards what appears to be the natural endpoint of the technological development of video games: the recreation of life in replica, a replica at one’s mercy, an infinite horizon of choice without responsibility or constraint.
For a long time I thought that video games were the necessary next step in a development that could be described as “spiritual”. Games are largely an amalgamation of prior media - literature, painting, music, film - but they do introduce a new element (or at least they develop this element to previously undreamed of heights), and that is the element of interactivity, i.e. the ability to make a choice, to participate as the player in the creation of the art and to make the art be something other than what it would have been in your absence. I conceived of interactivity as the raw material out of which a new aesthetic language would be fashioned which would bring us closer to realizing the promise of art. But I have since begun to grow uneasy with this way of thinking.
In some sense I was too seduced by the possibility of finding something “new”, anything new, to detect the longstanding inconsistencies in my own thought. From a young age I always preferred linear, narrative-driven games as opposed to open world sandboxes. My favorite games were games that were devoid of choice, games that robbed you of the ability to make a choice. I found the idea of multiple endings for a story to be distasteful. Yes, you can choose to save this character or not, you can choose to join the bad guys or not - but now that we’ve had our fun imagining all the what-if scenarios, can you tell me what really happened? Do you have the courage to tell me? Do you have the strength of vision to see the truth, the singular truth?
Choice is antithetical to the aesthetic sacrifice. The artist sacrifices all alternate possibilities to distinguish one thing and one thing alone, to say - this one, and no others! No matter how lowly a thing it is - a dirtied article of clothing (as in Van Gogh’s A Pair of Shoes), a completely ordinary sequence of events on a day in Dublin in the year 1904 (as in Joyce’s Ulysses) - he is now stuck with it. This is where he signs his name and stakes his wager, for better or worse. It is this seemingly inexplicable devotion to one law, one vision, one truth, that makes possible any kind of experience that may be called aesthetic. An artist who hedges his bets and does not accept the risk that accompanies his act inspires no confidence in us.
The receiver of the message too enters into a sacrifice, insofar as the message may be incomprehensible or even dangerous to him. In this way an oath is forged between artist and audience. The failure to foreclose the horizon of possibility is the deferral of the signing of the bond.
Is there any great work that would be improved by the addition of choice, by the addition of alternate possibilities? Would Plato’s account of the trial and death of Socrates be better if there were a possibility of Socrates simply... not dying? If Callicles’s warning to Socrates, that his devotion to the “effeminate” subject of philosophy would be his downfall, might not come to pass? If Socrates might be able to eloquently defend himself at trial and avoid conviction? If he might escape from prison before his execution?
The deferral of the inevitable here would be nothing more than the refusal to establish the founding myth of philosophy, the myth that links philosophy with the sign of death. The internal law of Plato’s drama is clear (and the law of historical fidelity is irrelevant): Socrates must die. This is not to say that one is forbidden from creating new works in which new possibilities are imagined. Only that the unity of the original work should remain undisturbed in its repose.
Or you can just like, have fun with GTA6 when it integrates LLM-generated missions, I guess. Whatever.
Choice sucks. Most players in Bethesda or freeform character created open world games go for troll runs because the available choices end up sucking pretty hard and are inconsequential or inconsistent. Railroaded games don't offer choice beyond letting players play the game in different styles, and that has always lead to tighter narratives with greater emotional depth. The denouement of achievement is better savored when the outcome is amenable to the player.
LLM generated missions are unlikely to be any better than the standard algorithmically generated quests and maps of Roguelikes or Bethesda style radiant quests. By their very nature within a game a quest cannot significantly affect the world, otherwise other aspects of the game get broken. Unless the world is fully dynamically generated each playthrough and allows full destruction of not just the environment but the very engine itself, any LLM game quest will just be a high quality filler anime episode, inconsequential and distracting from the core experience players are actually intending to invest their time and effort in.
Tell me you haven't played Undertale without telling me you haven't played Undertale.
On that note, the problem with "evil" runs in video games is that it basically just handicaps you, removes content from the game, and slowly makes your experience worse with very little to actually show for it and very little external motivation other than "for the evilz". There's literally zero reason to (for example) explode Megaton other than "some character asked you to do it"; same thing with the slavery mechanics (it barely pays and nobody really cares or reacts anyway- you'd think companions would have a reaction to you enslaving a little kid, but they just stand around and watch) and doing what the President suggests you do at the end of the game. Fallout 4 had a DLC that let you do this sort of thing, but it's very surface level and confined to the settlements; basically nobody in the large areas reacts (and to my knowledge there aren't really any mods that make the townsfolk react).
At least Mass Effect's Renegade prompts were entertaining, but that was always conflated with the sub-optimal choices in the wider world and choosing them sometimes even locked you out of major plot points down the road (that you couldn't see).
I think the other problem with choice in video games is that sometimes, that's not actually the point. Someone mentioned HL2 and Mario as prime examples of "the journey, not the destination" thinking, where HL2 is designed to test your puzzle-solving abilities (and the fights themselves being puzzles- though admittedly HL1 did that better) and Mario is designed to test your reflexes and timing. Sure, you could just watch a playthrough of them to extract the whole movie-like experience- and many do- but the interactivity is kind of the point.
Good point re undertale. That game had a pretty decent core gameplay loop to underpin the experience, but the dialogue was actually decent and emotionally investible. My specific complaint about 'choice' is that Mass Effect, Fallouts and to a lesser extent Skyrim had really poor consequences for choices, they were just different coloured lights and minimal FMV cutscenes. Perhaps the challenge of working in a Universe means you can't have wild ranging consequences, any sequel requires certain base states to persist: I can't nuke the universe in ME3 or kill Preston Garvey in FO4, and that cheapens the 'freedom of choice' in the game.
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Yes. Most games get this wrong. They try to make good and evil completely equivalent options that only differ in flavour, rather than recognising the nature of evil as a temptation. The evil options need to be the ones that provide the most immediate material gain to the player, not just "you can be a jerk if you want to, I guess." Bioshock almost manages it, and then walks it back at the last moment; the per-choice resource reward for good vs evil has a difference of double the rate, 80 for good vs 160 for evil. This would be great, making the player make do with less resources for the satisfaction of doing the right thing, or forcing the player to commit evil acts if they are struggling... only the game then undermines its own choice system by having the good route provide the player with additional resource gifts such that the overall difference between playthroughs is a mere 280 as opposed to the 1680 it would otherwise have been. Plus some other (exclusive to good route!) goodies on top that more than account for that difference. Now there's basically no reason not to be good all the time.
To make evil options worth taking, imo, they need to provide immediate and overwhelmingly lucrative rewards that you can't get any other way. Taking the Megaton example, I struggle to think of what could be offered that would be enough to make me blow up the town; maybe something on the level of New Vegas' Euclid's C-Finder, plus ten thousand caps and a unique companion who is extremely good. But that would also undermine the point of the Tenpenny quest; he's destroying an entire town for a trivial reason, doesn't think it's a big deal, and therefore probably shouldn't reward you so highly. So one can argue that the point of the quest is not to be able to complete it in an evil way at all; you're supposed to refuse, it's all a vehicle to make you hate Tenpenny.
Personally, I've always found the "We now interrupt your regularly scheduled gameplay to ask: are you feeling evil today?" style of game morality systems a bit... disappointing? I'd rather something that tracks less interrupty choices (did you punch-out fluffy, or did you distract him with KFC?), and have those kinda accumulate to influence how the game perceives your character's personality over time. Ex, if you get into fights you could have avoided, or if you perform acts of altruism, or whatever, NPCs might treat you differently, different shops might be open or closed to you, etc.
The big, "we'll be right back after you tell us whether or not you're up for genocide this time" sorts of things feel like a choose-your-adventure story got mixed in with whatever the normal playstyle is, and how often do they effectively balance the character Vs the player's agency, or make it seem plausible that the character might choose either way, etc?
What you're describing is the trial sequence from Chrono Trigger. We used to have these things in games, back when they were still made by enthusiasts for enthusiasts, and not by massive megacorporations beholden to suits and shareholders for maximum profit. Sigh.
But yes I agree completely.
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