jarby wanted me to let you know he forgives you :) and wants to sell you a really crappy sword for 2,000 gold?!? also what are some of YOUR favorite NPCs?? genuinely curious cause its such a broad topic and I can only cover so many examples before I pass out!!! xoxo, Jacob Twitter ► twitter.com/nakeyjakey Instagram ► instagram.com/nakeyjakey
@@MidnightMan04They fixed the bug, but asking Jarborious about the blacksmith before visiting him for the first time opens up a secret dialogue which unlocks access to tier 3 upgrade materials in his shop before level 16
@@hiondubs That's odd, because it's still bugged on mine, and I'm running latest patch. Maybe it's an issue for specific reigons? I'm on the NTSC copy.
My favorite NPC you don’t really interact with. It’s a street performer in Cyberpunk. He doesn’t do anything special, only sits there and plays guitar. Being a guitar player myself for 20 some years I stopped to listen. After about a minute I realized that some genius programmer actually went through the trouble of making this NPC’s hands and fingers move EXACTLY like it would in real life for every note, pick, strum, and fret placement. I don’t know if it was mocap or just very well done animation, but it just really impressed me that someone took the time out of their day to add just that tiny bit of realism to a tiny little corner of the world.
Yeah I play guitar too and anytime a guitar is shown in some sort of media I love pointing out that they are obviously playing it wrong. I like how in Elden ring the merchants are pretty accurate with how there instrument is played too
CP2077 has a ton of mocap, and yeah, that is absolutely one such instance. Their use of the JALI tech is also super interesting, making really high quality lip synching dynamic and instantly available for any audio translation. It's not perfect, certainly not compared to super high-quality mo-capped cinematic games, but it's certainly the best dynamic, on-demand way of doing it I've seen in any game. To tie back to @shquankintet8068 Elden Ring has some of the absolute worst, most lazy lip animation (it isn't even "synching", it's just random babble mouth movement) of any game I've seen, certainly in modern times. It's so weird how they'll put a ton of effort into NPCs playing instruments, something that doesn't matter at all to the game, and then have their most important story NPCs look like goldfish out of water, gasping for air.
This reminds me of the guitarist in Belobog in Honkai Star Rail. Can't say how accurate the animation is, since I don't play guitar, but it looks very convincing and it's way more detailed than it needed to be considering it's just a random npc.
My biggest NPC memory was playing Bully (Canis Candem Edit), i was playing as usual, and I specifically remember Algernon, one of the nerds, walk up to a bully in the hallways and just said "I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS" and started beating the everloving shit out of the bully. More students jumped in and it was a absolutely giant punch up where I was helping the nerds out. That has never happened again in any of my playthroughs but i think about his bravery atleast 3 times a week. Rock on Algernon.
Oh man, I loved Bully. Rockstar should bring that back. Srsly, would get me more excited than gta6. And they should try to have random crap like you described happen every few hours in game. Wonderful stuff.
I also love Bully’s NPC interactions so much. You can stumble upon so many funny and interesting things just by walking around and watching the silly little people go around talking to each other and beating each other up. It’s not like a crazy lot and I’m sure there are a lot of other games that are more impressive, but each character does have a pretty surprising number of voice lines that can change based on who they’re fighting and what chapter it takes place in. Like for a random example if a bully is fighting a jock, they might say an insult relating to the jock clique (especially if that particular bully happens to have a particular distaste for jocks, since each NPC has their own memorable personality and likes and dislikes and sometimes even a bit of backstory if you pay attention to them) or if something’s just happened in the story, like Lola cheating on her boyfriend, you might hear that topic come up in NPCs conversations. Anyway I just happen to be really into Bully right now and I was happy to see someone mention it :) !!
My personal fave is the kids playing pranks on each other and the adults. The halloween mission in particular is in more chaotic than the end mission simplt because the kids will prank each other with LITERAL EXPLOSIVES and no one seems to care.
I'll never forget playing MGS5 the first time and realizing the npc soldiers at outposts would start to get smarter and smarter with the equipment they used depending on how you approached them for takedowns.
@@EJD339 Soldiers are starting to wear helmets if you do a lot of headshots, equiping gasmasks if you're using sleep mines and gas grenades. Or having much more troops with nightvision goggles if you often taking them down without being seen... If you didn't notice that, it probably means you should play it again 😄
@Ardioss1 I somehow just thought the guards wearing helmets after I spent like 4 hours shooting guys with the tranq pistol at almost every location was just the game getting harder and me needing better than the basic pistol, but that makes so much more sense and almost makes me feel sorry that I took that as a kill on sight change to how I played
The fact oblivion had secret sleeper agents of the mythic dawn who had lives but would attack you after a certain mission was a great touch, tgey didn't just spawn in, they had a routine.
@@jacobp8294They figured out the minimum amount you have to develop a feature in order to make broad claims about it that may be true, but they are facetious.
I remember one time my little cousin wanted me to get him into the dark brotherhood, so I decided to kill a random guy. That random guy happened to be mythic dawn and he transformed and killed me lol
He's come a long way since he used to make misleading content about busting eggs (I don't think he's ever busted a single egg - at least not on camera)
the npcs in fear were sick. playin that game on hard and tryin to hide while you hear "FLANK HIM! HE'S BEHIND A DESK!" is truly a gamer experience better than sex.
the sword in Transistor is my absolute favorite npc! the voice acting is really well done and it's like having a buddy while you're fighting increasingly apocalyptic enemies. since the character you play as, Red, is mute, you don't really get to hear her thoughts on the situation, everything is interpreted and translated back to you by the sword. really moving game
Why does it always feel like a NakeyJakey video is only like 5 minutes long? it's entertaining to the point you dont notice you've been watching for 13 minutes
the picture at 1:50 is actually my dad!! I have no idea how you got that picture but the guy on the left with the rainbow suspenders is my dad and the guy on the far right is my uncle
It's funny that I was just playing Morrowind and could fortify speed on the NPC escorts so they could keep pace with me. Bethesda learned the wrong lessons after Morrowind.
Oh my gosh the AnyAustin shoutout is not the thoughtful gesture I saw coming but that is so kind of you and absolutely deserved, it's a really cool niche of content he covers that I've enjoyed for quite a while Also your stance on AI is great, I really hope there's a good way out there for an NPC to use AI to influence their behaviors rather than their design and script so they might act more closely to changing scenarios while still respecting the artists that bring these characters to life through word choice, character design, voice direction, etc
I went to check him out too, and realized I had watched a couple of his videos but hadn’t yet subscribed. Shoutouts like that really matter a lot more than some might realize. Even if only a dozen people out of thousands take the time to seek it out, those dozen people likely care enough to subscribe and stick around. And many others will have an increased awareness of that creator and will be more likely to click on a recommended video if they’ve heard of them enough times. So yeah, genuine shoutouts are great.
7:31 Ghost of Tsushima actually fixed this issue! The NPC moves like an arrow pointing you to your destination in older games. It doesn't matter how fast or slow you go. The NPC is always in the lead and moving towards the objective. I don't get why no one else thought to do this. Edit: I just remembered Okami did this too.
@@wes8723 one that comes to mind is Thaler when you escort him out of the cave, theres also no conversation for like half of the time you are walking back to his wagon
Just lost my dream job in the games industry due to lay offs...due to missmanagement...thanks for this new video, Jakey! Made my day, cracks me up every time. Keep doing awesome videos like this please!
Lol ya you right about Jake it’s da way he pushes his penis and came out and admitted how he was born with only one testicle that makes him the single queen that we stan 😂🎉
2:42 In case someone who reads this was wondering, this was a real thing that happened in Dwarf Fortress. The only change was that there was a small bug that made it so every time they licked their paw it was the same amount of alcohol as in a mug of beer. Unfortunately, all the cats died. I only know this from the noclip interview they did with one of the developers of Dwarf Fortress, which you should watch for more stories of this style.
Yes! I've watched a lot of AnyAustin, it's very soothing, but he seems so niche, just like the topics of his videos, so I was very pleasantly surprised to hear his name mentioned here. Ironically, I discovered Jakey long after I discovered AnyAustin
That intro had me dying dude. I need a NakeyJakey and Joel Haver crossover because I could really see Jake in the Haver animated style doing european fantasy RPG skits like this more often.
Just when I think Jakey has hit the peak of cool, he recommends Any Austin's content. Two of my favorite video game content creators, both of whom could not be rated high enough, in my opinion.
My favorite NPC interaction was in Cyberpunk 2077, actually! I was talking to Vic the ripperdoc, and as I was listening to him talk, I started wandering around the room, looking at all the details. At some point, I wandered too far from him, and he was like “Oh, ok, bye then.” and when I went back to talk to him, instead of repeating all of his dialogue from the beginning, he continued his story from where he left off when I walked away. That shit blew my mind, I though it was so cool
And everytime someone calls you when you in a fight, V just like "I'm busy, imma you later" then after the fighting end V call the person that calls them before and said something like "aigh, where was we? Yes that" and continue the dialogue. Its kinda cool actually
I really enjoy Rain World's enemy AI and world, you can never tell what you'll find when you're exploring the world since these enemies interact with each other and sometimes you'll encounter them being attacked by a different enemy, makes it refreshing every single time
I am sad, I am a sad man. I study law, and it doesn't help. It made me an alcoholic. But every damn time you say Jakey, Jakey and Jackey. You make my heart happy. Thank you Jakey.
A few people have already mentioned Bully NPCs, but my favorite thing about them is when you're just running around Bullworth and just hear crazy shit like "my mom says it's normal to wet the bed sometimes". Never fails to crack me up.
so cool to see a shoutout to Any Austin at the end of this video! Been following him since the early days in his Eggbuster era and love the new stuff he's been putting out lately.
YO I'm so happy to see AnyAustin get some random love at the end of the video, he's ABSOLUTELY worth checking out. Best NPC reviewer ever, also just genuinely funny quirky man.
Thank you for shouting out Any Austin. He’s an absolutely underrated gem. All his videos are fantastic and unique in the best way - love his perspective. One of my fav’s.
The Any Austin shoutout was hella unexpected but absolutely welcome. I've been following the guy's content for like 8+ years, he's an absolute treasure.
I really wasn't expected the Any Austin shout out. I've been really enjoying his content for a while and I'm glad someone is giving him some recognition for his creative video series.
I'll never forget when I was a young buck and played FEAR for the first time. There was one thing that happened that BLEW MY MIND when it happened. I was up on some kind of catwalk and there was one enemy left looking for me. For the first time in my life I witnessed an NPC not just wander around the room aimlessly trying to hunt me down, since I was high up I was able to watch him go from cover to cover, but not walk. He would sprint to one cover, look over, then find the next piece of cover and sprint to it. At the time it was mind-blowing how lifelike it was.
Woah didn't expect the Any Austin plug hell yeah he's one of the only other people on here making videos this entertaining about games (and Action Button)
I appreciate you providing a bit more optimistic take on the future of AI in video games. I truly hope it becomes the tool to *help* writers and programmers make their worlds more immersive, and not just... be their replacements and make uncanny junk at a low-low price for publishers.
The good thing is that we are a ways away from ai being able to write competently. One important thing about current language based ai models is that all of them are essentially cool search engines. Sure they may have some bells and whistles but their a ways off from being a true artificial intelligence. When ai write today you either get the blandest, most tropey shit possible or shit that makes no sense.
With time you could potentially do with a more advanced version of this tech what takes a team for 120 people. That consolidation in our hands puts us on even playing field; one artist can make their magnum opus without selling their soul to Disney and spending their life fulfilling some corporate boardroom's idea of what media should look like. The future I'm worried about is the one where average people let their fear get AI legislated by a technophobic congress so that it's only in the hands of the powerful.
that kingdom hearts music never fails to be so good in every scenario you put it, either relaxing, funny, or exciting it always gets the job done that's a guarantee.
@@youtubesucks1821 Aw shucks man I missed it already? I seriously gotta stop chugging straight NOS and doing gainers off the Empire State Building, I’m making time go by way too fast!
I'm playing TES IV: Oblivion right now. That intro is spot on😂. Except from the stealing part. Merchants in Oblivion will in fact not buy stolen goods. Even when they shouldn't be aware that its stolen.
Dialogue Trees really make for interactive experiences too. One of the heads of voice directing for Baldur's Gate 3 has a tiktok where she actually goes into the art of dialogue trees and non-linear dialogue which adds so much to the NPC experience!
Two nakey Jakey videos in one year, Christmas came early 😎 thank you for your content jake, you have inspired me in my life to make my own content and your music/videos have saved me from some of the worst moments of my life. So thank you so much for the laughs and keep doing what you’re doing! Love you, ya hot gamer boy! ❤
Shadow of War also has a difficulty setting that increases both the enemies' damage and your damage dramatically, as well as makes the orcs use more advanced tactics and group strategy against you. Absolutely the way to play that game and I wish more games did that!
So one of the wacky game tester stories I heard about from an old issue of GameInformer was about Oblivion's radiant AI. This was a long time ago so I might be full of crap with my memory. Basically, guards keep going into a prison and killing a quest NPC. They couldn't figure out why, so they watched the guards. Turns out that the guards ran out of food, so they stole the prisoner's food, killing the guy in the process. The solution apparently was to add more food for the guards to eat.
I just had dental surgery and this brought me so much joy...and pain. Smiling and laughing is so painful. Thank you, and how the heck does grandma keep getting out of there?
Surprised Jakey didn't mention my favorite part of RDR2, the camp encounters. There are so many interactions that I missed during my first playthrough and saw during my second at camp. Examples: Sean and Karen gettin freaky in John's tent, Hosea and Dutch holding hands together and being all around gay, Reverend Swanson stealing from the camp funds and Pearson yelling at him, Javier talking to Micah in private, Arthur apologizing to the gang around the campfire for being rude the past few months. There are so many things about RDR2 I love, but the camp interactions are the best part. Not to mention when Javier began to play a song and I ran to hear him each time. Angel De Amor best campfire song don't @ me.
7:15 on the quest where you give Balgruuf Ulfric's axe you don't actually have to sit through the whole debate between him, Irileth, and Proventus, you can just talk to him again and he will say something like "I don't care what my advisers say I've made up my mind" and hands you the axe back. Likewise after killing the first dragon you don't need to sit through his whole speech after being made thane, you can just walk away since the quest is already completed and the new one started.
I honestly love u Jakey I’m drunk asf but u give me so much hope in life because u always remind me that ur human like the rest of us and we all go through our own battles
Killing Floor 2 has one of the best uses of AI for increasing the difficulty. As you move up each difficulty level, the enemies don't just become bullet sponges, they act more and more aggressive and begin moving in ways that make them harder to shoot
When you were talking about NPCs with their own schedules my first thought was literally AnyAustin’s NPC employment rate videos, glad you mentioned him
I think one of my favourite AI enemies in a game is the gangs in Infamous, especially number 2. They fire in short bursts at range but mag-dump you up close, in 2 they spam grenades a LOT if they can't hit you with bullets, guys with RPGs will sometimes not shoot when you're aiming right at them because you can blast the rocket back at them and they seem to know it, they even surrender in Second Son and if you walk away or aren't nearby when they drop their gun they'll just run for the hills and escape.
One of my fave NPCs was the hairdresser in Bowerstone in Fable 1. She had a unique model, a different voice and felt like there was just a Touch more dialogue given to her. She was still a bog-standard vendor but going to her made me feel like I was a regular at a real shop, rather than a murder-hobo saving the world.
eyes closed, hands off the wheel, ready to listen to nakobjakob talk about so much and nothing. Also oh MAN the Traverse Town theme in this video made me tear up in this one I'd love to hear you talk about video game OSTs more bc the background music in these videos is so well done every time.
The mention of Baldur's Gate 3 actually made me pump my fist the entire time, amazing content, I listen to your music all the time, thank you for making such awesome content that tickles my brain.
AI can definitely be valuable, but it's the fact that it can also take a lot of jobs away from voice actors and take voices already out there without the persons knowledge. I've seen a lot of voice actors saying "please don't use my voice in AI, I didn't say that and it furthers the idea that we can be replaced"
PLAY DISCO ELYSIUM. Not only is the writing best in the business, every NPC feels alive with an ocean of deep personalities. They may all stand in one place but they do have a schedule that meshes with the time mechanic.
My vote for best NPC goes to Varric from Dragon Age (especially DA:2). Between the writing, the acting, and his antics in the game, it's almost impossible to hate or get tired of him, regardless of playthrough.
@@pierreo33 you don't interact with him much and he does not have an ingame model, but that is literally a character and it's is not controlled by a player
I've been playing through cyberpunk again and I'm reminded of how good the characters and quests are in that game. Small side quests have multiple paths and let you genuinely roleplay out situations differently. Character interactions are great, pretty much every dialogue other characters will be doing some action while talking, they have subtle head turns, nods, shaking their head, it's fantastic. Feels like a real conversation, reminds me of GTA V where I was impressed by how characters would be emoting naturally during driving conversations. And yeah, tried starfield, was so disappointed it feels like a step backwards from oblivion.
Playing Starfield and then Phantom Liberty is like... _ouch_. It's just such a ridiculous, laughable chasm of quality between the two. None of all the supposed benefits Creation Engine has, that Bethesda fans *love* ranting about, is ever really used in any way, shape or form in Starfield, but you can bet your ass all the drawbacks and compromises made to support them are front and center: glassy-eyed, soulless NPCs fixed in place, dumb-as-rocks AI, dead world reactivity (they literally don't even stop in their tracks when I fire a massive machine gun at their feet in New Atlantis), absolutely abysmal writing and dialogue, and my god, *the loading screens*... CDPR made a lot of mistakes too with CP2077, but writing and story NPCs weren't among them, and with Phantom Liberty as a sort of unofficial re-release of the original game, it is ten times the immersive RPG that Starfield is. NPCs react to what you do, they speak like real people, the world changes and lives outside of your player viewpoint, enemies put up a real fight, random things happen on the streets. Even the romance options are much deeper, even though they appear simpler, because they assume there needs to actually be a real, meaningful connection between the PC and the NPC, and even that their sexualities must match. A gay male NPC is simply not going to be interested in your female player character *just because* you're the player, because why would he be, that isn't how real people work. And no, I can't hoard sandwiches and simulate them physically within the game, you got me there, Bethesda fanboys... But that doesn't *really* matter. That's a neat quirk that may be fun for a little while, but it's not *the game*, it's not the reason you play the game, and it's certainly not the reason you remember it fondly. Starfield lets you hoard sandwiches, yes, but its writing is still shit, its planets still boring, its locations repetitive and impersonal, its NPCs are still lobotomized robots, its "romances" shallow and player-sexual, and the world still static and devoid of responses to player behavior. Sorry for ranting, but I was excited for Starfield and I genuinely like *some aspects* of it a lot, it just makes so many mistakes, on such another level than even CDPR and Cyberpunk 2077, that I get angry just thinking back on my time in that game. For a game so many people, including those at Bethesda who made it and Todd Howard who had been dreaming about it for 25 years, worked so hard on for so long, it's frustrating seeing it be born as a mutated, slimy mess, rather than the splendid culmination of decades of RPG development and experience it ought to have been.
Cp2077 NPCs were pretty... and upon launch but now, the game has a different feel to it. With the latest update, I've seen random shootouts, car chases, and the car chases you can get into with either gang AI or the NCPD are super fun to do, as opposed to before where they just didn't exist outside of super slow chase scenes.
Thank you for existing. You really have no clue how much entertainment you've created for so many people. I'm also on shrooms and feel highly sentimental but you're truly one of my favorite youtubers of all time.
