In one of the stranger stories of the day, Atelier developer Gust has announced a partnership with Tokyo-based artificial intelligence company Spiral to develop a game based on the Atelier Ryza subseries (thanks, Automaton).
RyzaChat: Your Midsummer Dream Story with AI Ryza is an AI-powered 'chat RPG' where the player progresses by interacting with an LLM trained on the personality of the eponymous character Ryza.
There are core quests, such as helping RyzaChat build a boat to unlock exploration, and also personalised quests that the limited language model (LLM) can generate for 'infinite fun', or that's the pitch anyway.
There's also a mode where you can speak freely to Ryza, with illustrations and facial features that change depending on the topic of conversation.
It seems a cynical way to entrap particular fans of the Ryza character into a monetisable loop, but that's hardly a new development in the gaming industry. However, an LLM encouraging people to spend money unwisely is a disquieting thought.
Gust and SpiralAI also seem determined not to get on the bad side of anti-AI fans of the character, despite the entire premise being a conversation with an LLM.
As the old saying goes......
