Unless it’s fed to them via their context window (text) no. Likely they’ll get randomly assigned one of few template personalities, maybe can remark on things that happen in the immediate area around them (game events that can be read and fed to them via text) and that’d be it. I’ve seen similar mods (though a while ago) for other open world games. It become pretty clear quickly that they’re only giving generic responses outside their pre-supplied info. The only exception could be story important NPCs that you could create a unique personality for that the LLM could reference for responses.
Like asking a random shopkeeper in Skyrim if they know about a specific character you’re looking for. The NPCs have their essential status, schedules, their dialogue options and inventory. They don’t have any stat for “knows this character” or “is former X guild member” for example. If they’re married it’d be made apparent through dialogue to the player only.
Yeah that’s pretty much how I was thinking it worked. But couldn’t you also record a file of sorts that tracks your game progress that all the NPC personas could access? I feel like that’s all it would really take for them to be able to comment somewhat on your narrative as a player. “Hey hero, I heard you killed that nasty dragon” kind of thing that’s traditionally been scripted, but the convo could be more dynamic. “Did it really take over 700 arrows to do the job?”. Probably not super hard if you track weapon type and number of strikes.
It’s potentially possible but becomes way more complex for the modder. They would also still have to write some sort of text/prompt addition for every quest end flag that was triggered. You’d also have to determine which flags would be “global” game world knowledge. Like you assisinate a specific gang leader for the FIB undetected in a covert mission. It would be weird for a random NPC to then be like “good job sniping John McCrimeboss in that job for the government”.
Did it really take over 700 arrows to do the job?". Probably not super hard if you track weapon type and number of strikes.
Again on paper, sounds easy but unless the game tracks that already, the modder would have to build these systems themselves which would potentially be beyond the ability/effort of vibe coders. Skyrim for example, why would the devs code in tracking how many weapon strikes, and of which particularly weapon it took to kill something if it doesn’t serve a game mechanic? So that would have to be built.
The only game I’ve seen it somewhat work for is stalker, because of the game already having the PDA mechanic in it. So a lot of the game world events/triggers had corresponding text entries/details so they could be printed to the screen as message. E.g. when you shoot and kill a bandit with a SPAS12; “I just saw Joe stalker shoot a bandit with a shotgun, that guy owed me money” would sometimes be printed in the game global chat from an NPC. The only part that comes the game world/events is <player Name> and <Weapon type>, the rest is a template. So all the the modder to had to code was the LLM to be fed the printed message and occasionally generate a response based on it. All of which is simpler than being asked questions by the player. Which you could also do but was very limited (I think the PDA message history was included in prompts so the response could have basic knowledge of recent events if asked).
Unless it’s fed to them via their context window (text) no. Likely they’ll get randomly assigned one of few template personalities, maybe can remark on things that happen in the immediate area around them (game events that can be read and fed to them via text) and that’d be it. I’ve seen similar mods (though a while ago) for other open world games. It become pretty clear quickly that they’re only giving generic responses outside their pre-supplied info. The only exception could be story important NPCs that you could create a unique personality for that the LLM could reference for responses.
Like asking a random shopkeeper in Skyrim if they know about a specific character you’re looking for. The NPCs have their essential status, schedules, their dialogue options and inventory. They don’t have any stat for “knows this character” or “is former X guild member” for example. If they’re married it’d be made apparent through dialogue to the player only.
Yeah that’s pretty much how I was thinking it worked. But couldn’t you also record a file of sorts that tracks your game progress that all the NPC personas could access? I feel like that’s all it would really take for them to be able to comment somewhat on your narrative as a player. “Hey hero, I heard you killed that nasty dragon” kind of thing that’s traditionally been scripted, but the convo could be more dynamic. “Did it really take over 700 arrows to do the job?”. Probably not super hard if you track weapon type and number of strikes.
It’s potentially possible but becomes way more complex for the modder. They would also still have to write some sort of text/prompt addition for every quest end flag that was triggered. You’d also have to determine which flags would be “global” game world knowledge. Like you assisinate a specific gang leader for the FIB undetected in a covert mission. It would be weird for a random NPC to then be like “good job sniping John McCrimeboss in that job for the government”.
Again on paper, sounds easy but unless the game tracks that already, the modder would have to build these systems themselves which would potentially be beyond the ability/effort of vibe coders. Skyrim for example, why would the devs code in tracking how many weapon strikes, and of which particularly weapon it took to kill something if it doesn’t serve a game mechanic? So that would have to be built.
The only game I’ve seen it somewhat work for is stalker, because of the game already having the PDA mechanic in it. So a lot of the game world events/triggers had corresponding text entries/details so they could be printed to the screen as message. E.g. when you shoot and kill a bandit with a SPAS12; “I just saw Joe stalker shoot a bandit with a shotgun, that guy owed me money” would sometimes be printed in the game global chat from an NPC. The only part that comes the game world/events is <player Name> and <Weapon type>, the rest is a template. So all the the modder to had to code was the LLM to be fed the printed message and occasionally generate a response based on it. All of which is simpler than being asked questions by the player. Which you could also do but was very limited (I think the PDA message history was included in prompts so the response could have basic knowledge of recent events if asked).