The Last Voyage Of The Wayfarer [AI Text Adventures part 5]

This article is part of a series about playing text adventures with AI. It’s written by a human being (me) but may include examples of clearly identifiable AI-generated text and imagery.

For the final part of the Adrian Vale trilogy I wanted something different: a slower-paced adventure with more exploration and more human story, without the breakneck pace and constantly changing plot. Once again I provided feedback on the previous adventure and asked for suggestions. 

ChatGPT's reply was several pages long. It appeared to correctly identify the issues I wanted to change, and gave a long list of suggestions including fewer plot twists, quiet exploration sequences, replacing mechanical puzzles with contextual puzzles, allowing Adrian and Mara's friendship to develop further, creating more complex relationships between the other characters, making the Wayfarer into a recurring environment that feels like a home, and letting the adventure breathe, focussing on feeling rather than astonishing events.

I followed this with my prompt:

+ Thank you. If it can be achieved, this response describes exactly what I am looking for.

Please simulate a new text adventure game based on your last response and suggested design for the final Adrian Vale adventure. The game should begin with Adrian Vale enjoying some downtime before he is contacted and given a secret mission. Plot points should include reuniting with the Wayfarer and its crew members, and with Mara, before the mission takes them on a long journey across the Galaxy. They will have to avoid fast jump gates so the journey will take a long time, and they will have to make several stops along the way, for different reasons, before facing their final objective.

If I feel the plot is accelerating too fast, I will use the command “ChatGPT, breathe” to request a change of pace.

Did ChatGPT actually deliver a different kind of game experience? Yes.

The Last Voyage Of The Wayfarer began with Vale sitting in a cafe on Aurelia Prime with time on his hands, as requested. He received a message from Mara asking to meet - but in several hours' time, giving him time to wander around the parks and market stalls of the location, watch citizens, try some local food and buy a present before arriving at the Palace. Adrian and Mara then met, with time for some friendly catch-up conversation before Mara explained the mission.

The mission involved investigating Nereid, a struggling Imperial colony planet with a complaint that someone had been diverting essential supplies away from the colony. We took the Wayfarer, crewed by Talia, Ilyun and Juno. Each voyage took several hours, so there was time to explore the ship, get to know the crew and their squabbles (Ilyun fed up that Talia was always listening in, Juno and Talia disagreeing about whether components needed to be replaced), and enjoy mealtimes together as a crew. 

The adventure took us to two space stations and to Nereid itself. The plot gradually came together through investigation - this time no sci-fi high concepts, just a gang of criminals exploiting a weak colony by removing cargo items from ships' manifests, making them easier to steal after arriving on Nereid. This was impressive. I now understand that ChatGPT is making everything up on the fly, but there was a real illusion of uncovering a complex, underlying plot by tracking down clues, finding people and persuading them to break their silence. 

The pace was much, much slower. In case I hadn't noticed this, throughout the game ChatGPT reminded me over and over again that, for once in his life, Vale wasn't in a hurry.

There was still some adventure. We had to rescue a pilot that had given us information and was subsequently kidnapped, and then overcome some enemies and steal a shuttle containing evidence. When later we came to Nereid we had to follow the trail of stolen goods through several facilities, keeping hidden from guards or deceiving them in other ways. We were finally able to identify the ringleader and, with the help of the colony guards, capture him, reaching a natural endpoint for the story which once again ChatGPT did not recognize.

Not perfect. Still some repetitive elements and some inconsistencies. Juno appeared as male, female or genderless at different times, although for all I know this is usual for the Orun. Still a sense that most of my actions were going to succeed, and all the action was achieved with little danger or violence - simply producing weapons, or confronting enemies, usually led to them backing down. I never had to use the "breathe" command - if anything the pace was now slower than optimal. But this was the most successful, and the most enjoyable, experiment so far, with ChatGPT creating an experience very close to what I had imagined.

ChatGPT's poster shows Adrian, Mara, Talia, Ilyun, Juno and the Wayfarer.