Ever thought a sentient Lara Croft could play herself in her own game? The commentary she makes is enough to make it extremely entertaining.
"Maybe I really am in a video game," Lara says as she comments on the cave. YouTuber FoxMaster used AI tools to make a Lara Croft bot that not only plays the game, but comments on everything as she goes with gusto and personality.
It's really entertaining to watch her try things and explain her thought process as she travels around.
"I don't need to get my clothes wet," she says in her perfect British accent, imitating the original voice actress of Lara Croft in Tomb Raider II, Judith Gibbins, as she walks away from a small pond that seems like a dead end (at 1:00). She even comments on story aspects, such as the lore of the legendary Dagger of Xian that she is after in this game.
She has a lot of (un)intentionally funny moments, like commenting on a tiger that spawned. "Getting it out of there without an anesthetic is going to be tough," she ruminates, showing that maybe Lara does have some remorse after all for all the animals she eliminates along the way.
You can also watch how FoxMaster created the self-aware Lara Croft AI bot in the video below, which will also start with the first level of Tomb Raider I, if you'd prefer to see a walkthrough from the beginning.
Step 1 was to teach it basic controls in the Lara Croft mansion. He was able to even speed up the clock and have Lara learn it. After looking at the compass for no reason, Lara learned and optimized the path over time. But he also needed to make it look more natural, so he limited her knowledge only to her field of view. He even studied real players going through the tutorial to see how they behave. Next, he needed it to always recognize where Lara is, and then recognize the environment.
The section on personality is also fascinating. Her voice turns out to be fantastic. The bot actually uses Google to search for matching images of things, and then thanks to ChatGPT, makes comments based on her personality (rather than entirely random ones). Of course, the voice from the game was sampled to recreate and record her comments. She is also able to listen to ambient noises and her own dialogue. This really is quite a lot of work.
Lara Croft was also recently named the most iconic gaming character.
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