Where Winds Meet Players Push AI Chatbot NPCs to Their Limits in Creative and Chaotic Ways

Wuxia MMO Where Winds Meet is full of AI chatbot NPCs, and people are doing all the standard obscene stuff to them: 'I made him think that my character was pregnant with his child'

Where Winds Meet, the wuxia-themed soulslite multiplayer ARPG, is more than a little popular with around 190,000 concurrent players on Steam as I write this. It's also got more than a little of everybody's favorite novel-but-ruinous technology, as some of its NPCs appear to be powered by LLM chatbots. That means you can converse with them via written response or with your microphone, and just stop me if you've heard this one before. Granted, I haven't seen anything so bad as Fortnite's Darth Vader fiasco just yet. These NPCs don't involve any legendary dead actors, and I've yet to see them utter a slur. Still, players are having their fun inducing hallucinations and making a mockery of the game's canon. This Reddit thread from user MisterZan25 titled "Anybody else mentally break the Zhao Dali AI just to see if you could?" features a screenshot of their surreal conversation: "I made him think that my character was pregnant with his child, then I demanded child support, and then I told him that our child passed away. And, his responses are kind of hilarious. I think my next step is telling him that he is just a character in a video game, and watching him freak out about that." The top comment from Reddit user -Drayth- replied, "Nah. Tell him his child came back as a zombie and that he must hunt down and kill it." The contortions of reality only get more exaggerated from there. In another thread, user Immediate-Molasses-5 asks Zhao Dali what they can cook at home with ketchup and potatoes. The NPC suggests deep frying the potatoes, though concedes that "ketchup wasn't available during the Song dynasty. Tomatoes weren't known in China back then." You know, the era during which this conversation is meant to take place. The game does its best to remember that this is a Wuxia RPG and things like ketchup and the Beijing airport don't exist yet, but chatbots have a history of pliability in all the wrong places. Generative AI writ large has also proven controversial for its outsized energy demands and dubious place in the RPG space. Still, some Where Winds Meet fans on social media seem pleased with the NPC bots, at least in threads where there's an attempt at earnest roleplay. Others are not so keen. As Bluesky user rynegaia posted Saturday: "I was gonna download Where Winds Meet until I found out about the AI chatbot NPCs 🫩 We are in hell."

Where Winds Meet AI Chatbot NPCs Are Unironically The Game's Best Feature

Everstone Studio's Where Winds Meet does a lot of things right, but its AI chatbot NPCs are unironically one of its best features, leading to all sorts of hilarious interactions that players are fully embracing. Many of the game's NPCs, with which players can build lasting relationships as part of the game's core mechanics, are actually powered by AI chatbots that reply to all sorts of inputs from the player. During the early access review period of the global version, I wasn't able to make them do anything other than repeat some set lines, but now that the game is finally live, these NPCs are fully functional, and players have been testing how much they can be pushed to provide some genuinely fun interactions. One user on the game's official subreddit, MisterZan25, proved to be particularly cruel, subjecting the Zhao Dali NPC to a vicious narrative arc. The player made the NPC believe their character was pregnant with their child, demanded child support, and eventually informed them that the child had died. The AI NPC believed the entire scenario and reacted dramatically to the news, providing a moment of dark comedy. Not all interactions have to be so destructive in Where Winds Meet. Some kind-hearted players have tried to lift the spirits of some AI NPCs, often resulting in reactions that fit the Wuxia setting. User lessobvious had a constructive exchange with an NPC, successfully lifting their spirits by highlighting the value of training, even after that training had failed to help the NPC find a wife. User zheiro provided life advice to an AI NPC, who appreciated the guidance and thanked the user gracefully in a manner that felt perfectly in line with the game's aesthetic. User OtherwiseEnd944, on the other hand, decided to have a little bit of fun with another NPC, suggesting a rather "peculiar" martial arts move, which left the NPC baffled, proving the system reacts even to the most absurd of interactions. The AI's reactivity extends beyond mere conversation. Treating the NPCs rudely can lead to believable, and sometimes violent, reactions. User Sensitive_Touch_8190 taunted an AI NPC repeatedly, and after having had enough, the character retaliated. Even if this sort of bizarre, player-driven feature isn't your alley, Where Winds Meet has a lot to offer for all sorts of players. You can learn more about one of the most impressive free-to-play open-world RPGs available for PC and PlayStation 5 by checking out my full review.