Square Enix Unearths Old Crime Puzzler - The Portopia Serial Murder Case, Remaster Features AI Interaction

[T0@st]

At the turn of the 1980s, most PC adventure games were played using only the keyboard. In those days, adventure games didn't use action menus like more modern games, but simply presented the player with a command line where they could freely input text to decide the actions that characters would take and proceed through the story. Free text input systems like these allowed players to feel a great deal of freedom. However, they did come with one common source of frustration: players knowing what action they wanted to perform but being unable to do so because they could not find the right wording. This problem was caused by the limitations of PC performance and NLP technology of the time.

40 years have passed since then, and PC performance has drastically improved, as have the capabilities of NLP technology. Using "The Portopia Serial Murder Case" as a test case, we'd like to show you the capabilities of modern NLP and the impact it can have on adventure games, as well as deepen your understanding of NLP technologies.



Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Natural Language Processing is a technology that allows computers to glean meaning from natural language—the kind of language that we use in daily communication. Deep learning conducted on a large set of text data makes it possible for the system to understand complex text input (NLU) and to generate responses comparable to those written by human beings (NLG).

Natural Language Understanding (NLU)
In order to interact with computers using natural language, the computer needs to understand what its human partner is trying to tell it, regardless of the wording they choose. Natural Language Understanding is an area of NLP research that aims to make computers correctly understand natural language, where the meaning can often be ambiguous. In this tech preview, NLU is used to help the junior detective understand the player's instructions.

Speech To Text (STT)
Speech-to-Text, or Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), makes it possible to convert voice input to written text. Using this technology, players can give instructions using their own voices rather than a keyboard. Please note that a CUDA-capable GPU and a large amount of VRAM are required for a satisfactory experience.

Natural Language Generation (NLG)
Automatically generating natural text is one of the most important research topics in the NLP field. For example, research is underway on AI engines that can answer questions in place of human operators, as well as AI-powered chatbots, both of which are expected to have a wide variety of applications in the real world. This tech preview originally included a function based on Natural Language Generation technology, where the system would generate natural replies to questions that did not have a pre-written response. However, the NLG function is omitted in this release because there remains a risk of the AI generating unethical replies. We thank you for your understanding. We will consider reintroducing this function as soon as our research succeeds in creating an environment in which players can enjoy the experience with peace of mind.



This tech preview will be available on Steam as a free download from April 24th, 2023. Please check the system requirements on the Steam page before downloading.

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[KrazyT]

That's a good concept !
Curious to hear about if some people of the forum test it !

 

[Verpal]

Good change of direction, I hope SQEX spend more time on AI instead of crappy NFTs.

 

[QuietBob]

Nice to see new gameplay ideas and ways to interact with the medium! It's great that some developers are trying to innovate, rather than to simply outdo the competition in graphics.

Likewise, the original Portopia was a ground-breaking title in many aspects. When it came out in 1983 it was the first graphic adventure game with non-linear gameplay, that took place in an open world. It had branching dialogue and offered multiple endings, and it introduced the concept of a sidekick.

Fundamentally, this game established the visual novel genre. It's a shame it was only ever released in Japan. Looking forward to trying out the remake!

 

[TechLurker]

This is actually a great idea, and it would be quite useful in making game worlds more authentic, such as having people react more favorably or warily of the main character in games with good/evil meters or morality systems (like Fallout, Prototype, and Infamous), or the occasional casual NPC dialogues about the main character as their fame rises, or even having more intelligent NPC teammates.

Naturally, the main caveat would be that it would make more single-player games rely on an always-online component, though there should always be an offline "dumb mode" option.

 

[SomeOne99h]

I mean, few years ago, they already used generated speech instead of recorded sound/dialogue. I waited long for them to implement this on games, where they don't have to store sound files for voice, and in the same time, characters would SAY YOUR NAME lol! Imagine the fun when everyone is calling your name, whether it is your actual name or silly name you have chosen lol.

 

[Camm]

Played it today, there's no AI here, not even a competent text parser.