The head of Epic Games Tim Sweeney believes that tiny teams will soon be able to operate AI prompts to create video games on the scale of Nintendo the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Talking to IGN at Epic’s State of Unreal 2025 Event (where CD Projekt revealed the stunning demo version of Witcher 4), Sweeney said that AI monitors would be a “basic part” of gaming engines and will cause “completely new game species that were not possible or practical” without it.
“Every significant progress in technology has led to an increase in new games,” Sweeney explained.
“I remember that the 3D game became possible, and then Doom and Wolfenstein introduced a 3D shooter. The Battle Royal species itself became possible only when you had sufficient performance on equipment and engines that you can have a hundred players in one space.
“AI characters giving you the possibility of an infinite dialogue with a really straightforward configuration for the creators, means that tiny teams will be able to create games with huge characters and huge and interactive worlds. What was needed to build a 10-person team, a game such as Zelda Breath of the Wild, in which Ai simply performs all the dialogue and you just write some sylops.
Sweeney’s enthusiasm around AI is obviously not a secret, and epic games are inside. Ai Darth Vader hit Fortnite last month In the first for the versatile Battle of Royale. He can serenade you, join and leave the teams at will, intelligently answer the player, release an improvised dialogue, summarize the events of the game and warn the player if something ends.
Darth Vader is expressed by the unique James Earl Jones, who died in September 2024 At the age of 93. This version of his voice, driven by the Google Gemini 2.0 Flash and Flash V2.5 Elevenlabs model, is used with the consent of the Jones family.
This caused a debate on the ethics of artificial intelligence, especially when it comes to NPC, such as Darth Vader, which enliven the voice of dead actors. Sweeney, however, believes that AI technology ultimately has a net benefit for society, despite some disadvantages.
“I see artificial intelligence as a technology, which ultimately aims to enable human creators to create things more efficiently,” he said. “I think it’s good. It’s unfortunate that the arrival of modern artificial intelligence has been contaminated by companies simply breaking huge amounts of content from other companies and people on the Internet. But as a basic level technology it should be a multiplying factor and multiplying our skills.
“Certainly enabling independent teams to build larger and better games means that it also allows AAA teams to build stunning, huge games and hunt it more and more. So I think that there will be a huge evolution, because everyone is trying to teach fresh skills when they are possible here. But I think that in the case of all other technologies that improve our lives, it is that net people are higher.”
Undeterred by any loose for AI Darth Vader, Epic announced permission plans for people to create their own AI NPC in Fortnite.
Wesley is a director, news in IGN. Find it on Twitter on @św100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpole@ign.com or confidentially at spine@proton.me.
