For the past three months, ever since I spoke to the AI NPCs in Nvidia’s cyberpunk ramen shop, I’ve been wondering: Which game developer will take a flying leap on this controversial and intriguing tech? If you said “Ubisoft,” the company that’s always raising its hand to play with VR, NFTs, interactive TV shows, secondary screens and more, you’d be half right.

Last night, I played three prototype segments of an experimental Ubisoft demo featuring the company’s just-announced “Neo NPCs” — one of whom tried to convince me to join the resistance against powerful megacorps by playing on my emotions. Another walked me through an infiltration plan on a whiteboard, letting me “convince” her that we should knock out the lights or hack the...

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