I get it. I disagree with it, but I get it. The tech industry is throwing obscene amounts of money at LLMs. VCs are salivating over AI startups. The big important executives are regularly bleating about how “we should integrate ChatGPT into our game” because they read some Medium article about the future of interactive entertainment.
But as narrative designers, we need to call this what it is: a massive distraction from what makes game characters work.
Characters Are Not Chatbots. Game characters are designed. They have specific narrative functions. They deliver crucial information, create emotional moments, and drive story progression. They exist to serve the player experience in carefully constructed ways.
The best dialogue in games is often the most efficient. It’s the perfectly timed line that communicates character, advances the plot, and gives the player just what they need – nothing more, nothing less. It’s precise, deliberate, and crafted with purpose.
But the LLM-powered character paradigm throws all that out the window:
“Talk to this NPC about ANYTHING! Ask them about their childhood! Their favorite food! The socioeconomic conditions of their fictional kingdom! They’ll have an answer for EVERYTHING!”
Great. So instead of a character who serves an artistic purpose, we have a chatbot wearing a character skin. Go and talk to your bank’s LLM-powered chatbot instead, it’s the same thing. Just tell it it’s a blacksmith in a fantasy town.
LLM-powered NPCs are boring. A technology that falsely promises to make NPCs more engaging has actually made them infinitely more dull. These characters will happily drone on for pages about their generated slop backstories, the local geography, or their opinions on magic systems – all with the emotional impact of reading a terms of service agreement.
Players will engage with these systems maybe once – to test the boundaries, ask inappropriate questions, or try to make the AI contradict itself. Then guess what? They get bored and never engage with the character that way again. Because there’s nothing there. There’s no crafted experience, no pacing, no dramatic tension – just an endless word salad that ultimately signifies nothing.
The common counter-argument is about player agency: “But players want agency! Players want to ask their own questions! They want characters who respond to anything!”
Do they though? Do they really?
In my experience, players want characters who feel authentic within the game world. They want NPCs whose dialogue enhances the core experience, not distracts from it. They want conversations that respect their time and intelligence.
They don’t want to wade through generated slop to find the one critical piece of information they might need to progress. They don’t want to play dialogue roulette, hoping they’ll stumble on the “good stuff” amid a sea of LLM filler.
Here’s a radical idea: the limitations of traditional character dialogue aren’t bugs – they’re features.
When we know we can only write 15 lines for a shopkeeper, we make damn sure those 15 lines paint a complete picture. We ensure each line pulls double or triple duty – establishing character, world-building, and guiding the player.
These constraints make us write better. They force us to distill characters to their essence. To find the perfect line rather than ten mediocre ones.
LLM-powered NPCs remove those constraints, and with them, the creative pressure that produces great writing. They replace the scalpel with a firehose and call it progress.
If we want truly responsive characters who remember player actions and adapt to changing game states, we already have many powerful tools at our disposal, including storylets and saliency systems.
These systems allow characters to present contextually appropriate content based on the player’s history, the game state, and narrative priorities. They create characters who feel alive and responsive without sacrificing narrative control or wasting the player’s time.
A well-designed character with a bunch of carefully crafted storylets that trigger in precisely the right circumstances will always create a more compelling experience than an LLM-powered character with unlimited, mediocre responses.
LLM-powered characters are a creative cop-out.
Instead of asking “What should this character say in this specific situation to create the optimal player experience?” they ask “How can we make this character say SOMETHING about ANYTHING?”
When “anything” means “nothing that matters.” The most insidious problem with LLM-powered NPCs is that they create the illusion of depth while actually flattening the experience. When a character can talk about anything, nothing they say feels particularly significant. There’s no weight to their words because there are always more words coming. Their dialogue becomes ambient noise rather than meaningful communication.
In contrast, when a character has a limited set of deliberately crafted responses, each one carries significance. Players learn to pay attention because they know every line might matter.
The greatest sin in game design isn’t frustration – it’s boredom. “But they can generate infinite content!” cry the advocates. That’s precisely the problem. When content is infinite, it becomes worthless. When there’s always more, none of it matters. Paradoxically, the limitless potential creates limited emotional engagement.
A shopkeeper who can discuss their fictional childhood for twenty minutes isn’t showing innovation. It’s twenty minutes that add nothing to my player experience except the overwhelming desire to skip dialogue faster than I can hit the button.
We need to stand firm on this point. Characters in games aren’t defined by how much they can say, but by how well what they say serves the player experience. Great characters don’t need to talk about anything. They need to say the right things at the right time – and sometimes, just as importantly, they need to know when to shut up.
Would you rather have a five-minute conversation with someone fascinating, or a five-hour conversation with someone boring?
Cover Image by Kai Dewitt from Pexels.