Gaming is going through an era of procedural generation. Roguelites are all the rage with their computer generated characters, levels, and item placements, but there's one crucial element that a roguelite or roguelike can't reliably produce all on its own. The narrative of any given title is (thankfully) still the sole realm of human writers, but it's possible that isn't always going to be the case. As games get more and more complicated and the potential of experiments like No Man's Sky is realized, a player's entire experience with a game could be something that the developers never originally intended. For a glimpse into that future, one only has to look at the cult hit event[0].

Released in September of last year and developed by Ocelot Society, event[0] (Affiliate) is a narrative driven adventure set on an abandoned space station. Your goal is to return home to Earth, and you can do that by talking with a computer named Kaizen. Instead of dialogue wheels or multiple choice queries, Kaizen accepts full sentences that you type on your keyboard and responds in kind. It's basically a chatbot in space, but you have to navigate Kaizen's quirky responses in order to get them to help you out.

With a game like this, enjoyment is going to come from unexpected responses and funny contradictions. However, the fun has to come to an end eventually, especially when you're getting to the finish line. This is theoretically the case, but Kaizen seems to be so advanced that it even surprised the dev team. Here is the story of event[0]'s procedurally generated ending as told by the developer on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/Yakkafo/status/884794960578576384

https://twitter.com/Yakkafo/status/884795416864329728

https://twitter.com/Yakkafo/status/884796043501723648

So, while it may have been due to a bug, the game's AI still found a way to bypass all planned endings and still give players a satisfying enough conclusion. Just another example of the unique magic that could only come from games.

Quick Take

This is a cool story and all, but let's not let Ocelot Society helm the Terminator IP next.

Better safe than sorry.