# take mirror
1.
You peer closely at the mirror, running a hand over its ornate, dust-covered frame. It's… a mirror. A perfectly serviceable, if somewhat antique, looking glass. You study your reflection – slightly disheveled, perhaps a little heroic, definitely in need of a shave. After a moment of intense self-assessment, you realize it's just… a mirror. It reflects things. Fascinating, truly. But ultimately, not particularly useful for your current quest. You turn your attention back to the room, hoping for something a little more… engaging.
2.
You give the mirror a thorough examination. It's remarkably good at reflecting things. Truly a marvel of… glassmaking. You spend a full minute admiring your own adventurous visage, then decide that, while aesthetically pleasing, it doesn't exactly scream "essential adventuring gear." You move on, slightly disappointed in your own vanity.
3.
You study the mirror, tracing the intricate carvings around its edge. It feels… cold. Not just from the stone of the room, but a deeper, unsettling chill. As you gaze into its depths, you think you see something flicker at the edge of your vision, but when you focus, it's gone. It's a beautiful object, certainly, but it feels like it's watching you as much as you're watching it. Perhaps some things are best left undisturbed.
4.
You examine the mirror. Solidly mounted, and frankly, quite heavy. It's a beautiful piece, but entirely impractical to carry on your adventure. You decide to leave it be.
5.
You give the mirror a quick once-over. Just a mirror. Reflects things. Nothing to see here. You turn your attention back to the more promising corners of the room.
I think nobody doubts an LLM can come up with responses. But can it understand when it should NOT respond? Can it reign in its baked-in impulse to be "helpful"?
Most of the responses Gemma gave you are not appropriate for many kinds of games. What if the tone of the game is, on purpose (authorial choice), to be "unhelpful"? Or what if it's meant to be helpful but ONLY if you previously unlocked something? [1]
And how can you keep consistency long term? LLMs have a tendency to go off the rails and forget context.
[1] There's an Interactive Fiction game, whose name escapes me now, where you're trying to communicate with a derelict spaceship, with one survivor. The parser is the survivor. For reasons I won't spoil, garbled communications and misunderstandings are part of the game. It's your mission to figure this out and what the survivor really wants. If the LLM becomes "helpful" in its replies, it will spoil the game!
For the types of responses, needed long term context shouldn't be required.
Anyway, I noticed that on a standard laptop, getting a response from the Chrome Prompt API running Gemini nano takes a rather long time.
I also worry not only about the loss of a shared experience among players, but also about the authorial voice... I find LLMs (even when prompted) tend to have an instantly recognizable style that I find unappealing.
Yes, all of this -- voice, tone, narrative direction -- could in theory be fixed with the right prompts, but I remain skeptical. From theory to practice seems such a long way...
This happens mostly with old text adventures. Modern Interactive Fiction is really sophisticated, and you don't get many boring responses.
Example: in "Spider and Web", you're a captured spy being interrogated by your captors. If you say random gibberish, your interrogator will tell you (playing the role of the parser, but in a more interesting way). If you say something nonsensical, your interrogator will say "I'm losing my patience. No, that's not how it went", etc. Parsers are really, really sophisticated and they can make sense of contextual, unsaid information (or ask for clarification).
For more than a few decades, parsers no longer reply "you cannot do that".
Highly recommend anyone who is intrigued by the premise to just jump in and give it a go!
If not, perhaps it's already using a LLM?
It's enjoyable to read the responses when you cannot do something. It's part of the game, baked into it.
More importantly, you and me will get the same shared experience we can discuss, unlike if we were playing with an LLM going on different, random tangents.
I'm not suggesting to let LLMs create important parts of the game. If you want that, you can already play AI dungeon since 2019!
Yes, but I don't think we're talking about the same kind of replayability. Certainly, not the kind I care about.
To me, replayability is a carefully constructed experience, by an author, and you explore it and find different things about it (say, like Adam Cadre's "9:05" [1]). But you can share your experience with another human, you can both go the same way and experience the same thing, and discuss it -- "hey, remember when you face the trolls in the cave, and...".
With an unconstrained LLM, you lose this. Plus, with no authorial voice behind it, I don't really care what a glorified stochastic automaton can produce.
(In case you're wondering, I find myself distancing from classic sandbox games as well... I used to like them, now I find them "too much work" for not enough payoff. With some exceptions, I much prefer a carefully curated gameplay experience).
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[1] "9:05" by Adam Cadre: https://adamcadre.ac/if/905.html
Also you could use LLMs for NPCs and for certain areas of the game, like mazes.
I'm sure there are way more possibilities. We're still at the very beginning. Just think about it: Everyone is complaining about LLMs hallucinating. Text adventures are an area where such hallucinations are desired.