That's all as true as the fact there's a gun over the mantelpiece, at least if you're making Murder on the Orient Express or, you know, Horror on the Orient Express, and I'm all for some good old railroading with Victorian lampshades but I suspect that the designers interested in LLMs-as-NPCs are interested in some kind of open-world, immersive experience where PCs get to poke and prod every inch of the game world.

The truth is that most people are used to games as these formulaic simulations with rigid rules. That's partly making a virtue out of necessity (very hard to play a game without rules; and some of us just like rules), and partly habit. Maybe LLMs can act as something new in that sense.

Bang bang.