This Nvidia ACE game lets you talk through puzzles with AI NPCs
Your voice is the controller in The Oversight Bureau
🤖 The Oversight Bureau is the first game with Nvidia Ace AI-powered NPCs
🗣️ This game lets you talk directly to NPCs and solve puzzles with just your voice
💬 Nvidia ACE translates your voice into text in real time
🎙️ Two other locally-run AI models interpret what you said and respond back
⚡️ AI-powered NPCs respond so quickly it feels like they’re real people
📅 The Oversight Bureau is set to release soon
The Oversight Bureau is the first game that you play entirely by talking to NPCs with the help of AI. It’s the latest game to implement Nvidia Ace, which thus far has only been used in a limited capacity to speak with a few AI NPCs in the Covert Protocol demo and Mecha Break.
The Oversight Bureau puts Nvidia ACE at the forefront of the experience by making your voice your primary interaction with the game. You can literally say anything while playing, and from there, Nvidia’s Riva Automatic Speech Recognition model translates your voice into text while the game’s own Narrative Engine AI model decodes what you’ve said before another AI model responds with its own dialogue, complete with emotion and tone.
The most impressive takeaway from my demo at Gamescom was how fast the game responded despite running three different AI models locally on a gaming PC. I felt like I was talking to an actual person from how instantaneous the call and response timing was.
The Oversight Bureau puts you in the shoes of Candidate 404 in a dystopian underground reconditioning facility. At the start of the game, you’re essentially stripped of your identity, except for a number, and put through voice-driven psychological tests and puzzles.
My first trial was to help a woman escape a burning building with nothing but a floor plan. I was able to guide her through by asking her to describe her surroundings and by helping her navigate using the map. After two separate attempts, I was able to save her by instructing her to go up one floor, pick up a fire extinguisher, and then make her way down, as well as locate the emergency exit latch. All of my efforts were rewarded with insults as part of the game’s twisted humor, of course.
Still, I came away impressed with how realistically the woman sounded panicked and responded so quickly. The immediacy of the responses was what really helped sell the immersion of the game as if I was talking directly to the character.
Unfortunately, you can’t just talk to the NPCs all day about anything. The Oversight Bureau has a limited set of canned responses it can choose from, so its AI can’t make new dialogue on the fly in response to you. During the demo, I tried to change the subject to ask about what the woman thought of Gamescom, to which she responded I’m in a burning building and how she didn’t care about Gamescom.
The Oversight Bureau doesn’t have an exact launch date, but the developer has said it’s coming soon. I can’t wait for the release so I can talk my way through a game with Nvidia ACE.
Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.