Ubisoft has announced a new game prototype that includes voice-controlled AI teammates that understand visual context and natural language. This “Teammates” project is based on the Neo NPCs that Ubisoft revealed in 2024 with Nvidia to demonstrate in-game AI that can naturally respond to players. A key difference this time, besides the complexity of the interactions supported by the prototype, is that Teammates is already being played in a closed playtest with “a few hundred players,” Ubisoft says.
Teammates, even though Ubisoft describes it as a playable “experimental research project”, still uses the basic concepts of a first-person shooter. Prototype casts players as “a member of the Resistance in a dystopian future who is tasked with advancing through an enemy base to locate five missing members of his team,” where directing the in-game AI characters is the key to success. Ubisoft came up with three AI NPCs for the project, “Jasper”, an AI assistant who has awareness of in-game lore and the ability to instantly adjust game settings, and “Pablo” and “Sofia,” robotic characters who are physically present in the game and can respond to commands.
Jasper has both diegetic and non-diegetic presence in Teammates. (Ubisoft)
Based on footage shared with Engadget, Ubisoft’s AI characters not only understand voice commands, but also have visual awareness of what the player is looking at. The direction of “standing behind the barrel” prompted Sofia to consider where the player is looking and position herself appropriately. In the version of Teammates available in the Closed Playtest, Ubisoft also uses Jasper to coach and teach players about the fundamentals of the game. In most cases, the AI characters appear to be overly talkative and verbose, but Ubisoft is experimenting with letting players choose sets of personalities for Sofia and Pablo – including an option labeled “Bad Cat and Good Boy” – that can change the way each character expresses themselves.
“This technology opens the door to new, personalized experiences,” Ubisoft’s data and AI director Remi Laborie shared in the Teammates announcement. “Player input shapes character reactions in real-time, which traditional development can’t achieve. We’re also providing a full pipeline with an experience taking players from onboarding to debriefing, which is a first.”
Ubisoft has explored applying generative AI to other parts of the development process in the past. The company’s Ghostwriter tool, introduced in 2023, uses AI to create first drafts of in-game dialogue. Ubisoft also recently got involved in publishing Anno 117: Pax Romana Without removing its AI-generated loading screen art.
Ultimately, the underlying technology powering Teammates may appear in other Ubisoft projects in the future. The company is collecting feedback from its playtests to apply for future research, but Ubisoft suggests that the middleware built for Teammates already works with both its Snowdrop and Anvil engines, opening up the tool for future teams to use in their games.