I like single player rpgs.

I very much care, i would love good npc ai.

Havent we been making jokes about dumb ai in games for literal decades before llms came along?

The thing is i want my npcs to be a curated combination of things: environmental awareness, be aware of the dragon in the room, still have scripted interactions but triggered by detecting more complex environmental changes.

More dynamic dialogue options like tone of voice changing depending on wether earlier dialogue made them angry.

Reacting to the player fighting in a sensible way.

Still all coded and developed with human passion but to appropriately incorporate ai into more complex detecting/reacting/interacting mechanics.

Instead what nvidia (who dictates the game industry now) cares about is a “chatbot module” that they can sell to game engines (like unreal) so lazy developers can turn digital objects into a character ai persona.

Somehow the moment llms became able to impress we stopped caring about all the other 99% that is ai that isn’t a conversation simulator.