Publication
LLM can decide your fate - literally, but for now in the game❤
Fabula Rasa: Dead Man Talking is a VR experience in which you are put in a cage in a medieval square and prepared for execution. The king is preparing to administer justice to you, and you must convince the witch, bard, executioner and other characters to stand up for you
LLM can decide your fate - literally, but for now in the game❤
Fabula Rasa: Dead Man Talking is a VR experience in which you are put in a cage in a medieval square and prepared for execution. The king is preparing to administer justice to you, and you must convince the witch, bard, executioner and other characters to stand up for you (almost like in one game with a coin from the childhood of millennials🫤). Don’t choose a line from three options, but convince out loud, get out, improvise, lie beautifully, or press for pity. The project doesn’t look like a demo from an enthusiast’s basement and has already received an Audience Award at the SXSW 2026 XR Experience.
The trick is that NPCs there don’t just give out pre-written blanks. The characters listen, remember who you say you are, and react to your profession, accusation, and style of speech. Heise writes that in two 30-minute playthroughs, conversations developed differently, and the process itself felt more like improvisational theater than a classical game 🎭
What grabs me about this story is not that “AI now writes dialogue” (this is exactly the most boring part), but that the game suddenly begins to test the real ability to speak with people instead of the usual stress test on reaction, accuracy or ability to level up a character. If you know how to convince, you live. If you don't know how, they feed you to the monster. Very vital, by the way.
This is an important turn for the industry. If previously the screenwriter wrote a tree of dialogues, now he designs the frame: the world, roles, conflict, boundaries of behavior and dramaturgy of the situation. And LLM inside becomes an engine of live communication and even a little co-author of the product ✏️
If you don’t think about the costs of tokens, from a business point of view everything is also pretty fat. Such mechanics can be useful not only in games, but also in training negotiations and sales, developing soft skills, legal simulations, corporate simulators and VR onboarding. So I see in the future not a dull “choose the correct answer” test, but a scene where the client is angry, the official is putting pressure, the investor is doubtful, and the employee really has to get out of his way with his voice.
To be honest, I'm surprised how few games there are with LLM installed under the hood. We have already written about different VR experiences. And it looks like the next big leap in realism in VR won't be in graphics. It will be that virtual characters will finally cease to be furniture and new interaction mechanics will appear.
If you are making a game, a simulator, corporate training, or just thinking about how to attach AI to an interactive product without a neuroslope, this is exactly the type of case that I can help you sort out. Contact us for a consultation ✨