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Interactive Drama Prototype 'Facade' Released

Posted by timothy on from the calculon-approves dept.

rafg writes "In most story-based games where you get to talk to characters, interaction is limited to selecting conversation options from a menu. Facade calls itself a one-act interactive drama, and is an attempt to create realistic 3D AI characters acting in a real-time interactive story, where you can talk to them via a natural language text interface. The player is cast as a visiting longtime friend of Grace and Trip, a couple in their early thirties, and ends up in a verbal crossfire resulting from their failing marriage. More info in the press release, an older conveniently mirrored NYT article and an Idle Thumbs review. It's available in the form of a rather chunky 800MB torrent."

4 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. That's an interesting concept by ReformedExCon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It is clever in that it uses a "real" AI which does its best to draw the player into the game world. However, it seems like it would suffer from the same type of problems that any AI suffers from, that is it can't understand everything the user types.

    It also suffers from cutscene-mania. The game itself is a series of cutscenes that progresses even without user interaction. Though cutscenes have their place in games, building a game around them is a surefire way to limit replayability.

    I would love to try the game, personally.

    --
    Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
  2. I don't get it... by autophile · · Score: 2, Interesting
    So they put all this time and effort into AI-powered interactive fiction. And then they go and make it a story about fighting about a failed marriage. Do you think the developers had some issues here?

    --Rob

    --
    Towards the Singularity.
  3. Re:This is a game??? by TrippTDF · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At the center of any story is conflict. That's what leads to drama. Video Games at this point primarily focus on the conflict between two characters in a violent sense... you can take Gordon Freeman Vs. the Combine, or even Mario Vs. King Koopa. The root is always the same- if you don't kill them, they will kill you.

    This is the first time I've seen that conflict be able to move away from the violent, and that's a big step for video games. This has the chance to change the nature of gaming away from the shoot-em-up mentality into something larger.

    You know how ever blockbuster action movie has a game to go along with it? We could potentially have games that are tied to something like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or American Beauty.

  4. Er, hasn't this been done before by Shawn+Parr · · Score: 2, Interesting
    And not just the Infocom text adventures either.

    Anyone else remember Starship Titanic by Digital Village, Douglas Adam's game company?

    3d rendered characters (which looked much better IMHO that the pictures for this game) that used a system called Spookitalk so that you could type in what to say to the characters and they could pretty intelligently attempt to reply.

    I haven't played this game yet, but I did play ST and enjoyed it. Hopefully this takes that concept of AI and expands it farther as if you have played ST for a while you eventually can figure out what kind of responses you will get from the different characters.

    My point being that this concept is not nearly new at all, even with the audio element which is what people seem to be claiming is different.

    --
    Shawn's Tech Articles