Summary
Mecha BREAK, an upcoming Gundam-esque mech-style multiplayer action console &PC game, will be introducing AI into the title thanks to NVIDIA ACE, a new technology that aims to replace human voice actors with AI text-to-speech. In essence, this equates to NPCs in the world being able to talk to the player directly and respond to commands and requests that people want, adapting to different scenarios.
Mecha BREAKreached out toScreen Rantto assure fans that the release ofMecha BREAKwill have a full cast of human voice actors.
That said, the technology is still in the very early stages of development, andNVIDIA has revealed a recent video of the actual execution of the AI-generated dialogue atGamescom 2024, with the end result being underwhelming at best. That said, this marks one of the first games to embrace AI fully in dialogue, besidesUbisoft’s NEO NPC, which hopes to leverage generative AI to create a world of living, speaking NPCs.
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How Does Mecha BREAK’s AI Work?
Utilizes NVIDIA NIM For Basic Conversation
The technology that fuelsMecha BREAK’s generative dialogue is a specific part of the NVIDIA ACE suite calledNVIDIA NIM and is built particularly for role-playing games. According toNVIDIAthe tech hopes to bring “digital humans to life with generative AI.” Using a small language model known as Nemotron-4 4B Instruct, this framework can be applied to a variety of other titles in the future. As a result of its application inMecha BREAK, it’s possible to talk to Martel, an engineer in charge of customizing mechs in the game.
Achieving these results isn’t as complex as some may think, however. In fact, in a global economy inundated with AI around every corner, the logic of the model will probably make a lot of sense to most people. The player’s dialogue is fed into a speech recognition software called Riva ASR, evaluated and processed; then an answer is made using Nemotron and spit back out using text-to-speech along with Nvidia’s Audio2Face-3D, which creates animations on the character model’s face.
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The Issues With Using AI-Generated Dialogue
Video Game Actors Are On Strike
Though generally, AI-voiced characters in games are controversial and a looming existential threat to voice actors, it reached its boiling point earlier in the year when,on July 26, actors part of the Screen Actors Guild went on strike against the video game industry.
According to reporting byThe Verge,160,000 SAG-AFTRA members went on strike after negotiations around actor protection from AI technology broke down. A total of 30 studios were involved in negotiations, and the range was from massive studios like Activision, Take-Two, and WB Games to smaller and mid-sized studios.
The current video game voice actor strike is nuanced and complex and involves the rights of actors that contribute movement performances to games.
The Studio Behind Mecha Break Has Interesting Origins
Mecha Break Developers Are Not An Indie Studio
Mecha BREAKis being developed by Amazing Seasun Games — which may seem like an indie studio, but its origins are much more interesting. In reality, the development company is a subsidiary of a larger company known as Kingsoft, a Chinese software company based in Beijing with a market value of $4.48 billion. Although Amazing Seasun Games seemingly doesn’t have a lot of titles under its belt, it was founded in 2015 and has created successful games for the Chinese market.
Although the company’sLinkedInstates it’s an “international online games developer” located in Redwood City, California, its use of NVIDIA NIM would seem to indicate that the organization seems unconcerned with the recent Screen Actors Guild strike, which — also interesting, has its headquarters located in the same state of California. That said, not allMecha BREAKcharacters will be driven by this AI technology, as there will also be a cast of human voice actors in the game.
AI Dialogue Is Not Good For Games
Some Games Are Art
As demonstrated by disturbing AI videos of Will Smith eating spaghetti or the abominations created and entered into local art shows, it’s been pretty well-proven that the strength of theunderlying technology currently limits the state of AI generation in terms of artistic endeavors. That’s not to say that one day, AI art couldn’t become a popularized form of media, but to say that “the tech isn’t there yet” would be an understatement.
Although cutting-edge software updates and improvements do make it more of a reality every patch, the question people should be asking themselves is whether it’ll be worth it or whether games will be better for it overall, and that’s not even taking into account valid ethical concerns. AI, as it is currently defined, lacks any sort of life, vibrance, or, well — humanity that often makes or breaks iconic videogame performances. Imagine aBaldur’s Gate 3where Shadowheart and Lae’zel were replaced with generative AI and small-language models.
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There Could Be Case Uses For AI Dialogue
AI Has A Long History In Gaming
That said, to be fair toMecha Break’s developers, it seems as if,at least in this limited application, AI might work. The engineer responds with what sounds like pretty canned, generic responses that don’t interfere with the story or narrative. There is no monologue or intense conversation, so while it does come off as wooden and robotic, it could be okay in these sorts of scenarios. The issue is how much its usage can and will expand outside of these niche cases and how much that could affect thebest narratives in video games.
AI in gaming is a complicated topic because, in a sense,many games, especially early RTS and strategy games, stand as some of the foundational building blocks of what we call AI today. After all, the most rudimentary early games were built on simple and-if statements, and iconic games likeStarcraft 2were and still are touted for their advanced AI. Still, other genres that require procedural generation, likeStarfieldorNo Man’s Sky, must rely on some form of AI to build out their generative worlds.
This is all to say that artificial intelligence — even outside of the scope of gaming — does have its uses and can help humans and their efficiency as well as help them create awesome things. However, its limitations are apparent, and the solution isn’t great for every problem. In certain situations that call for the human element, nothing will replace a good old-fashioned homosapian. While its application inMecha Breakseems limited, at least for now, there will be a large contingent that would probably rather see the feature not included in the final release.
