„Fabula Rasa“ is a fascinating look at AI-powered storytelling
What happens when NPCs no longer just spout text blocks but engage players in dynamic conversations? „Fabula Rasa“ provides an initial answer.
(Image: Arvore)
While video games have evolved from simple pixel graphics to vast, believably simulated worlds since the first home computers, conversations with NPCs often still seem surprisingly static. Players mostly click through predefined answers and pre-made dialogue trees. AI language models promise a new approach with more natural conversations and NPCs that dynamically react to what players say.
Arvore is among the first studios to seriously experiment with these possibilities. Its fairytale-like VR experience, “Fabula Rasa: Dead Man Talking“ is an early but promising attempt to venture into this new territory.
Until now, the AI-powered storytelling experiment was only shown at festivals like SXSW, where it won an audience award. We tried out “Fabula Rasa“ and, despite its early stage of development, were fascinated by the possibilities it opens up. At the same time, the question arose whether “Fabula Rasa“ is still a classic video game or a new form of interactive experience.
When a Video Game Requires Rhetorical Skill
The name is an allusion to the Latin phrase “Tabula rasa“, only here it is not the slate that is blank, but explicitly the “Fabula“, i.e., the story itself, which is co-shaped by the player's utterances.
The start is kafkaesque: You wake up in a dungeon while an ogre-like scribe announces that you have committed a crime and are about to be fed to a monster. He asks the player to state their name and profession, and also wants to know what offense they are accused of. We answered in English, stating that we were journalists and had spread rumors about the king.
After being transported to a medieval market and execution square, various characters gradually approach the cage and engage the player in conversations, including a witch, a bard, and the executioner himself, each with their own personalities and concerns.
The goal is to win over the characters so they can put in a good word for you with the king, who is arriving soon, and avert the death sentence. The characters address the player by name and repeatedly refer back to the stated profession. The bard, for example, asked us what rumors we had spread and if there were any witnesses before improvising a song about it. Instead of devolving into generic NPC chatter, the characters responded with sassy comments and surprisingly fitting follow-up questions.
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What also surprised us was how consistently the game put us in situations that demanded verbal improvisation and rhetorical skill, abilities that traditional video games hardly ever require in this form. This made the player experience both challenging and new. In two playthroughs, each lasting about 30 minutes, the conversations developed differently depending on the persona we embodied. Because the plot is embedded in a scenario and guided by an ensemble of characters, we were never tempted to let the conversations drift into directions unrelated to the actual narrative.
More Live Theater Than Video Game
The developers found inspiration for “Fabula Rasa“ not in other video games, but in improvisational theater. “The player spontaneously creates a story together with AI-controlled characters, making the experience feel less like controlling a game and more like entering a live performance,“ says the studio. The visual design, reminiscent of family-friendly animated films, is intended not only to lighten the grim starting situation but also, with deliberately exaggerated characters, to convey the feeling of being part of a theatrical production.
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To understand what makes a good scene, the team worked with a professional improvisation comedian and tried to transfer his behavioral patterns to the AI system. On a technical level, the VR experience combines several AI models: Anthropic's Claude controls the characters' personality, dialogues, and spontaneous reactions, while ElevenLabs handles speech synthesis. ChatGPT acts as a kind of “AI director“ in the background, coordinating the plot, context, and the state of the game world, and feeding the characters with relevant information. The platform Convai finally connects these systems with the game mechanics and processes.
Arvore is part of a growing number of studios experimenting with AI-powered NPC dialogues. “Fabula Rasa“ shares a fundamental weakness with many similar projects: spoken utterances are often followed by long pauses, which detract from the immediacy of conversations and impair immersion. Eventually, locally executed AI models could help shorten such pauses.
Conversations as a Game Mechanic
No question: Games with AI-powered NPC conversations are still in their infancy and struggle with technical teething problems. Nevertheless, “Fabula Rasa“ already provides an “aha!“ moment: conversing with game characters in an almost natural way feels like a big step towards more believable game worlds. Players are suddenly required to have entirely new skills, which could also lead to a new form of gameplay. Imagine a detective game where you have to elicit evidence or confessions from suspects in cross-examinations; a role-playing game where skillful bargaining leads to better prices, or a survival game where you hold a group of survivors together through words.
With this type of game, the industry could also reach new target audiences who have so far been less interested in traditional game mechanics. We had “Fabula Rasa“ tried by a person who normally has little to do with traditional video games, and she reacted enthusiastically to the experience.
“Fabula Rasa“ was originally developed for PC VR. We tried a Quest demo, which is currently still being optimized and is scheduled for commercial release at the end of 2026. The demo exclusively supported English, while the PC version also offers French, Portuguese, and Spanish. A German language option is not planned, at least not at launch.
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