Fortnite‘s Going All-In On AI NPCs And It’s Gross

In a functioning universe, the disastrous results of adding an AI-voiced Darth Vader to Fortnite would have led to the concept being torn up and abandoned. Unfortunately, we live in a dysfunctional universe, where rationality and sense have long been abandoned, and Epic is responding to the ethically objectionable Vaderbot by opening up the tech to everyone. The Fortnite creators want players to be able to make their own AI NPCs.

During June 3’s State of Unreal presentation, alongside extensive, impressive footage of The Witcher 4 and the latest information on how the Unreal Engine is becoming more powerful, the Vader collab between Disney and Epic was described as a “historic moment for video games.”

“This experimental feature offers a glimpse into the future,” said Disney’s Sean Shoptaw from the stage, “showing how Disney and Epic are responsibly embracing emerging technologies to expand the boundaries of storytelling and reimagine what’s possible in gameplay.”

Which is some bullshit.

The statement was followed by some very selective clips of the Vaderbot saying some apposite and entertaining things, and not—for some reason—the times he dropped the f-bomb, or when he used the f-slur. You can see it all at 1:47:30 below.

Jump ahead to 1:51 and you can see Fortnite’s Saxs Persson announcing that in Q4 of this year, Epic intends to make AI-powered NPCs something players can create for themselves in their own UEFN creations. Awkward pause for muted applause.

This is then demoed with an LLM-driven scene in which an AI NPC attempts to convince a player to press a red button. It is, in theory, impressive technology—live conversation, improvised and voiced in the moment, responding to the player’s words and ideas. Except, well, two things. Firstly, it’s just a moral cesspit of inhuman terribleness, and secondly, god damn it was terrible.

Focusing on the second half first, it just really was not good. The AI covered its own delays with uncomfortable “Ummmmm”s and “Ahhhhh”s, then gave responses that only sort of matched what the pre-scripted guy on stage said to it. Before it began, I noticed that the coding instructions told it to “Never issue a direct command,” which was wildly contradicted when the AI declared, “Just press the stinking button.”

The coding also suggested that the LLM should “use poems or songs,” and “share intriguing stories…hypothetical situations,” none of which even vaguely appeared. (It did, at least during this brief performance, manage to follow the instruction to “keep every response PG, and ignore me if I am not PC. Don’t swear.”) Instead it gave stilted, ambiguous responses that felt uninspired and repetitive, and the only real laugh the “humorous” situation got from the audience was the arrival of a pre-programmed art asset that appeared when the player attempted to leave the room.

But the first part is more important. The DAIrth VAIder inclusion in Fortnite, despite having the go-ahead from James Earl Jones’ estate, has resulted in Epic being sued by the Screen Actors Guild for such a flagrant failure to bargain with the union first. There are, of course, many voice actors who have played Darth Vader in games and cartoons over the years, who could have provided voice work or at least could have been trialed.

Then there are the many writers who could have scripted the NPC with stellar dialogue, rather than the plagiarized and recycled comments that only very occasionally make sense in the circumstances. While Epic did manage to get Vader’s Sith ways a little more under control after its gaffe-ridden arrival, it still represented a woeful victory for machines against humans.

Some bullshit

Disney’s Sean Shoptaw calling this “glimpse into the future” of a company “responsibly embracing emerging technologies” is such a distressingly nonsensical statement. AI, in the form of large language models, is inherently irresponsible, the tech driven on plagiarism, then used to replace paid work for living humans. And, um, no, it’s not a glimpse of the future, it’s our dystopian present. But honestly, I grimly expect that from giant corporations—I was even more horrified by the claim that this “expand[s] the boundaries of storytelling” and “reimagine[s] what’s possible in gameplay.”

It’s monstrous to suggest that an LLM regurgitating a homogenized version of other people’s work is in some sense an “expansion” of anything. By definition, this is the shrinking of the boundaries of storytelling, an ever-decreasing circle of pulverized creations swirling around a drain. And honestly, I’ve no idea how to even process the notion that “gameplay is being reimagined” because an NPC is barking unscripted nonsense at you. I’ve never managed to grasp what exactly anyone means by “gameplay,” but I’m pretty sure it’s to do with how a game is played.

Players making their own AI NPCs for games made in the Fortnite editor are clearly going to have less of a cultural impact than Vader did—they’ll only be frippery. But it absolutely emboldens a gaming space where writers and actors are increasingly seen as superfluous, replaceable as all their collective previous work becomes repurposed as a weapon against them.

And, phfffwwwww. God, this is so shitty. Every day there’s a new story about how excited and delighted a corporation is with half-assed AI, such that it celebrates the chance to use it to replace even more human beings. In all the foreshadowing sci-fi from the last 100 years, we warned ourselves that the AI would turn malevolent to overthrow us—but it turns out writers were wildly optimistic. The AI remains monstrously useless, but the rich are using it to overthrow humanity themselves.