A tool developed in-house by Ubisoft LA Forge aims to assist its scriptwriters by creating AI-generated dialog. Ubisoft's new technology is said to further the immersion of its game worlds by creating a realistic variance of NPC speech, and its potential application could be a game-changer for the publisher's studios and its partners.

With eight planned releases so far for studios under Ubisoft, 2023 is set to be a landmark year for the publisher. Assassin's Creed Mirage will launch sometime in the latter half of the year, and its announcement came alongside the reveal of two additional titles from the franchise, including one set in fan's longtime most-wish-listed setting, feudal Japan. Long-awaited free-to-play multiplayer shooter, The Division Heartland will also land at some point in 2023, boasting PvE and PvEvP content in a much more rural setting than its predecessors.

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On March 21, Ubisoft released an announcement video for Ubisoft Ghostwriter, its cutting-edge AI tool for generating NPC barks. The one-off phrases and sounds uttered by NPCs as players interact or pass them by, barks have long been the responsibility of a studio's scriptwriting team. In open-world games with hundreds of unique NPCs, barks can balloon the size of a game script, and now Ubisoft LA Forge's new technology plans to delegate that task to AI. The basic input dialog will still be written by a scriptwriter, but Ghostwriter will take that initial dialog and create variations on it based on moods and motivations, cutting down on repetitive tasks for the studio and tapering identical speech in its games for a more believable world.

This is not the first time Ubisoft has innovated its games with systems designed to lessen the sense of reused material for its titles. 2020's Watch Dogs Legion boasted its ability to play as anyone with procedural character generation through simulation layers for different personality archetypes, making every player's experience differ and cutting down on the breaks in immersion caused by repeats in dialog and in-game assets. While the game had its limitations and criticisms, the technology remains impressive, and now coupled with Ghostwriter, Ubisoft's studios have some phenomenal tools for creating fully-realized worlds.

The application of Ubisoft's Ghostwriter is an enthralling prospect for the future of gaming, and fans will soon get to experience a wider array of NPC barks for its games as scriptwriting teams are able to focus their efforts on the more engaging aspects of a game's story. What role Ghostwriter will play in the future of Ubisoft and the game industry as a whole is uncertain, but its promise of enhancing immersion bodes well for fans of any genre.

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Source: Video Games Chronicle