It was a fun few days on the internet whenFortniteadded that AI Darth Vader companion to the game. Players immediately went to work trying to break the AI as much as possible, pushing it tosay the darndest things.
Of course, there was itsfair share of controversyas well. The voice actor’s union SAG-AFTRAdidn’t like it very much. The family of the late James Earl Jones - the original voice of Darth Vader and the source material for the project - seemed pretty happy with it. Lovely bit of chaos there.
Darth Jar Jar Makes His Way Into Fortnite, But For A Ridiculuous Number Of XP
You need a ton of XP and you need to buy it with V-Bucks.
That ‘fun’ is going to be amplified a thousand-fold, ifEpic Gameshas anything to say about it. Today, they unveiled the Persona Device: a feature in the latest version of theUnreal Enginethat’ll let developers use this technology in their own projects.
And you may bet that Fortnite’s going to make use of it too.
As for where and how specifically Epic intends to apply this tech in Fortnite going forward, they haven’t revealed concrete plans.
But that’s just Epic’s hands. You, on the other hand, might be able to pull some strings. This tech will find a home in the Unreal Editor for Fortnite.
Unreals’s Persona Device Has Big Dreams For Game Development
As for whether this Persona Device tech is any good, that’s something you can judge for yourself. The software made its debut during the State of Unreal 2025 livestream, and they gave us a quick demo of what this all looks like in motion.
Designing a character called “Mr. Button”, they built an identity that tries to convince the player to push a big shiny red button that definitely will not explode instantly when pushed (it’s very safe)(ignore those warning signs)(please).
It’s not an unfamiliar bit, but one that’s decently effective in this kind of demonstrative environment.
As feels very typical for AI dialogues, Mr. Button can be a bit verbose at times. It plays more more like two actors reading a ChatGPT conversation rather than a properly voiced back-and-forth dialogue.
Which, granted, is what almost all in-game single-player conversations literally are. But as we approach the reality of truly-conversational machines, we must first cross the uncanny valley. Behold, it’s slightly-stilted depths.
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The first gameplay footage of The Witcher IV was shown during the State of Unreal presentation, where it was confirmed it would run at 60fps on PS5.
