> One part that's kind of boring when playing a text adventure is trying things the original authors did not anticipate and getting a boring standard response.
This happens mostly with old text adventures. Modern Interactive Fiction is really sophisticated, and you don't get many boring responses.
Example: in "Spider and Web", you're a captured spy being interrogated by your captors. If you say random gibberish, your interrogator will tell you (playing the role of the parser, but in a more interesting way). If you say something nonsensical, your interrogator will say "I'm losing my patience. No, that's not how it went", etc. Parsers are really, really sophisticated and they can make sense of contextual, unsaid information (or ask for clarification).
For more than a few decades, parsers no longer reply "you cannot do that".
Thanks for mentioning Spider and Web. It's by far my favorite modern take on a text adventure. There were a few moments that really blew my mind when I figured out how to progress.
Highly recommend anyone who is intrigued by the premise to just jump in and give it a go!
It's enjoyable to read the responses when you cannot do something. It's part of the game, baked into it.
More importantly, you and me will get the same shared experience we can discuss, unlike if we were playing with an LLM going on different, random tangents.
> Arguably, different responses would increase replayability.
Yes, but I don't think we're talking about the same kind of replayability. Certainly, not the kind I care about.
To me, replayability is a carefully constructed experience, by an author, and you explore it and find different things about it (say, like Adam Cadre's "9:05" [1]). But you can share your experience with another human, you can both go the same way and experience the same thing, and discuss it -- "hey, remember when you face the trolls in the cave, and...".
With an unconstrained LLM, you lose this. Plus, with no authorial voice behind it, I don't really care what a glorified stochastic automaton can produce.
(In case you're wondering, I find myself distancing from classic sandbox games as well... I used to like them, now I find them "too much work" for not enough payoff. With some exceptions, I much prefer a carefully curated gameplay experience).
This happens mostly with old text adventures. Modern Interactive Fiction is really sophisticated, and you don't get many boring responses.
Example: in "Spider and Web", you're a captured spy being interrogated by your captors. If you say random gibberish, your interrogator will tell you (playing the role of the parser, but in a more interesting way). If you say something nonsensical, your interrogator will say "I'm losing my patience. No, that's not how it went", etc. Parsers are really, really sophisticated and they can make sense of contextual, unsaid information (or ask for clarification).
For more than a few decades, parsers no longer reply "you cannot do that".