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NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
New EA Patent Could Be Big for Mass Effect 4 and Dragon Age 4
A new EA patent has surfaced online, and the technology it protects could play a substantial role [...]
comicbook.com
A new EA patent has surfaced online, and the technology it protects could play a substantial role in shaping future games from EA and its studios, particularly BioWare, which is currently working on a new Mass Effect game and Dragon Age 4. The patent in question involves NPC behavior, and, more specifically, equipping NPCs with the ability of self-learning, which in turn would permit NPCs to adapt to the decisions the player is making. Of course, NPCs reacting to the decisions players make isn't a revolutionary idea nor a new one. If you play a Renegade Shepard in the Mass Effect games, NPCs react differently to you compared to a Paragon Shepard. They do this though because of precise scripting on the behalf of BioWare.
So, what's different about the patent? Well, if you read between the lines of the technical jargon, it sounds like the aim is to make NPCs react not only to decisions players make over the course of a story, but to the player's playstyle as well. In other words, rather than check if you made a certain decision to influence dialogue, the NPC would react to all available data about the player, and then adapt themselves based on this data.