Atelier Ryza Is Getting An AI-Powered Chat RPG
Gust Announces AI-Powered Atelier Ryza RPG, But Promises No AI Was Used In Its Development
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.
RyzaChat Lets Players Interact With The Titular Character
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.
Spiral claims each of the illustrations, character portraits and promotional videos that appear in RyzaChat were handcrafted by artists under the supervision of Atelier Ryza's artist Toridamono. In other words, generative AI wasn't used in the development of RyzaChat outside of the core mechanic.
In addition, Ryza's voice actor Yuri Noguchi made recordings specifically for RyzaChat. These are used to power the chatbot's voice synthesis, which remains a controversial practice, regardless of consent.
The revenue generated by RyzaChat will be shared with actors, illustrators and other stakeholders involved in the development of the game, which is presumably another attempt by Gust and Koei Tecmo to soften the controversy surrounding the launch of an AI-powered RPG.
The question is, why bother? Unless Koei Tecmo and SpiralAI expect to make a lot of money on microtransactions, the negative public reception to releasing a game with AI interaction at the core of its gameplay loop doesn't seem worth it. It's clearly something Koei Tecmo cares about, or there wouldn't be so many safeguards in place regarding generated content.
RyzaChat: Your Midsummer Dream Story with AI Ryza is set to release later this month.