Obsidian Entertainment's been responsible for some of the best RPGs in the biz (Fallout: New Vegas, Star Wars KOTOR 2, Pillars of Eternity, to name a few), so the director behind The Outer Worlds 2 sees no reason why the developer should outsource its best qualities to AI.
Speaking to the My Perfect Console podcast, Brandon Adler said one of the things he realized while directing the studio's latest sci-fi satire was that "Obsidian should never outsource the things that it's amazing at, like our quests and ours characters and our stories - those are the things we should keep internal." And he views AI use in game development in a similar way: "You don't outsource the things you're good at to AI."
As for the studio as a whole, according to Adler, Obsidian doesn't have a mandate, echoing Microsoft Gaming boss Phil Spencer's comments from last month. Developers aren't strictly forbidden from AI nor are they forced to use it either, but Adler was pretty adamant the team "definitely do not use it for content creation" as "that's just not really even on the table."
Giving a personal example, Adler explained he sometimes asks AI for meeting summaries or assistance with research to, say, provide him with a reading list of books. But it sounds like the developer's AI usage broadly ends with things of that nature.
"You focus [on] those, you put the human element, you put the storytelling you want to put into that," he continued. "And, I think, as long as we keep that moving forward, we'll probably be okay."
"I hope it's not under threat," Adler said when asked if story-driven, single-player games are in danger thanks to the recent tech. "As of right now, we pride ourselves at Obsidian on our storytelling, we pride ourselves on our characters, in our world building, and it would be a damn shame for that to go away."
The Outer Worlds 2 director bravely says Chrono Trigger is "the best JRPG ever and it's not even close" - and that it doesn't get enough credit for being one of the only ones where "you don't actually have to grind."
