[Kenshi 2] Radiant AI and emergent storytelling

[Nesano]

The other night I went on a tangent about the potential for emergent storytelling in Kenshi 2 with a viewer and he suggested I pitch the suggestion to the devs, so here I am. It can be found in the first 10 minutes of this highlight. It's kind of rambly, so I'll do my best to summarize in text form.

It would make the world come to life more if each NPC in the world had their own life goal that they'd try to fulfill. Kind of like how the game tells you what each character is doing via the "Goal:" field, this would be a sort of hidden field that would contain their broad life goal that you would have to ask them in-game to figure out.

Radiant AI would essentially be the way that character goes about fulfilling said life goal. The character would go about their day, doing whatever they need to survive, but any extra time they have in addition to time spent surviving would be invested in whatever they need to fulfill their life goal. Aspiring shopkeepers would try to make money to buy property in town, aspiring tech hunters would go out and look for places to explore and loot, aspiring soldiers would invest all their free time in training their combat stats, etc.

Emergent storytelling would come from these characters keeping track of whatever happens to them in their "metadata." Basic data of any significant thing that happens to them is saved to their character and can be uncovered if the player ever bumps into them and gets them to tell them their life story. Imagine if you talked to a potential recruit in a bar, except that generic story they give you before you theoretically hire them actually happened.

You talk to a guy with a high toughness stat and discover that they're an escaped slave; so apparently they became tougher because of the hardship they endured while they were a slave because they got beaten up, left for dead, and captured by slavers while trying to fulfill their goal of being a merchant. You talk to a guy with high combat stats and a missing arm and you discover they used to be a soldier but retired after he became crippled. You talk to a guy with a high farming stat and discover he's a local farmer and that he doesn't want to join you - he's just there to get drunk.

It seems complicated, but Oblivion had something similar and it came out back in '06. Even if it'd be very hard to implement it'd be worth it because a system like this would be so impressive it'd make Kenshi 2 revolutionary. Most of the times I've been impressed with the depth of a video game it was at least indirectly related to AI.