The Outer Worlds 2 doesn't use generative AI "at all," despite its game director predicting its rise six years ago

Generative AI is taking over the conversation when it comes to new games. From Arc Raiders and Where Winds Meet's uncanny voice acting 'spoken' by text-to-speech algorithms, to Call of Duty Black Ops 7's 'artwork', I worry for the jobs lost as major studios embrace the flawed technology. I also worry for the quality of games: Anno 117 Pax Romana's recent AI art was particularly egregious. Thankfully, Obsidian has confirmed that no AI was used in The Outer Worlds 2, despite the fact that its game director predicted the current corporate obsession six years ago.

Yes, The Outer Worlds 2 game director Leonard Boyarsky predicted the gen AI boom on the Gamemaker's Notebook podcast back in 2019. He didn't come up with the plagiarism machine we know today, but instead predicted an LLM that could be trained on about 200 lines of character dialogue written by human characters. Then, he theorized that the player could say whatever they wanted, and the advanced AI would craft an appropriate response.

It sounds cool when you put it like that. But that's not the functionality of the generative AI we see today, which threatens to replace writers instead of work with them, and introduce basic errors instead of creating cool gameplay opportunities. Simply put, I'm glad that Obsidian's spacefaring title, which has the potential to be one of the best RPGs to release this year, didn't utilize the technology "at all" during development.

Writer Stephen Totilo touches on the subject with Boyarsky in an interview for GameFile. Referencing the podcast, Boyarsky starts by saying that his 2019 idea was "literally just me doing a thought experiment," and that he had every mind to smack his former self in the head because such a system would be "very unwieldly."

Totilo also asks Obsidian writers Josh Sawyer and Kate Dollarhyde if AI had been used in production of The Outer Worlds 2. "I don't know anything at the studio level, but yeah, it's not something we've used," Sawyer says. When Totilo tried to confirm this with Microsoft and Obsidian's PR, he got a response from Boyarsky four minutes later to say, "We haven't been using it at all."

It's unclear whether Obsidian has eschewed the technology for ethical reasons or just practical ones, but it's clear to see that its human-written dialogue has struck a chord with players. The Outer Worlds 2 has 77% positive feedback on Steam, so if you want more old-school Fallout vibes made entirely by real humans, it's worth checking out.