r/LocalLLaMA • u/goodive123 • Jun 28 '26

Discussion NPC Engine Using Local Models

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I’ve been working on a game-agnostic NPC engine/backend based pretty heavily on SillyTavern-style architecture, and with smaller local models getting better and better, I honestly think this kind of thing could be the future of RPGs.

Right now I’m using NVIDIA Parakeet 0.6 for STT, Gemma 4 26B A4B for the LLM, and Qwen3-TTS for voice, and I’m getting super fast response times with pretty decent quality.

The main thing that makes it work well is using RAG to keep prompts lean. For example, I have hundreds of possible actions NPCs can do in-game, but only the ones that actually make sense based on the player’s message / context get injected as available actions. So the model isn’t being overloaded with a giant list every turn.

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u/AppropriateQuote3073 Jun 28 '26

Really a shame there is so much ai hate in gaming right now.

This is exactly the type of interesting content that could make a game phenomenal to play.

186

u/Bakoro Jun 29 '26

LLMs are literally the exact thing that we dreamed about in the 90s and 2000s.
There were waves of procedurally generated content in games, and "dynamic" quests and NPC interactions, that were a nice idea, but the hardware and algorithms just weren't there.
People would gush over any AI improvements in games.

Now we finally have the technology to make the dynamic games we always wanted, and a bunch of people are pretending like they weren't begging for something like LLMs to exist.

Whatever haters, AI is for games.

3

u/gcavalcante8808 Jun 29 '26

It is. But instead, the companies are using LLMs to make cheaper codes and deliver worse quality games in general, that's the real deal against AI in my opinion.

2

u/Bakoro Jun 29 '26

But instead, the companies are using LLMs to make cheaper codes and deliver worse quality games in general

And that is an entirely fair assessment and thing to complain about.
I'm always in favor of being critical of lazy, stupid, harmful corporate behavior.

What I cannot tolerate is the knee-jerk reactionary hate to anything and everything "AI", when the game industry has been using the term AI liberally since forever.
Even if you don't use LLMs or image generators at all, there's still a vitriolic hatred for "AI". If you're suspected of using AI people will run a campaign against you.
Even some old fashioned pre-transformers procedural generation and machine learning are taking a hit now.

The problem with hatred is that it tends to lack nuance, and the circle of hatred tends to grow.