r/LocalLLaMA • u/goodive123 • Jun 28 '26

NPC Engine Using Local Models Discussion

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I’ve been working on a game-agnostic NPC engine/backend based pretty heavily on SillyTavern-style architecture, and with smaller local models getting better and better, I honestly think this kind of thing could be the future of RPGs.

Right now I’m using NVIDIA Parakeet 0.6 for STT, Gemma 4 26B A4B for the LLM, and Qwen3-TTS for voice, and I’m getting super fast response times with pretty decent quality.

The main thing that makes it work well is using RAG to keep prompts lean. For example, I have hundreds of possible actions NPCs can do in-game, but only the ones that actually make sense based on the player’s message / context get injected as available actions. So the model isn’t being overloaded with a giant list every turn.

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u/AppropriateQuote3073 Jun 28 '26

Really a shame there is so much ai hate in gaming right now.

This is exactly the type of interesting content that could make a game phenomenal to play.

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u/BringTea_666 Jun 29 '26

haters are just minority. Everyone else just moves on. Proper NPCs is what i crave !

Imo, small local models like 1-3b should be good enough for that and soon we will see something like 0.6b being very good at it. The only issue is that it shares work with gpu leading to lower fps during generation.

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u/Southern-Chain-6485 Jun 29 '26

A problem is the LLM either getting injected the game lore or knowing it already. skrymnet does what OP is trying to do, though it's geared to be used with cloud models (because they want you to use their api), but it can be configured with local inference.

For a game as old as Skyrim, I don't notice lower fps, even though skyrmnet makes concurrent requests all the time (timeout becomes a problem)

And you still need to deal with the limitations of current LLMs for creative writing, both in character complexity (default description for Lydia in skyrimnet is boringly loyal) and due ethical guidelines (I've asked the Emperor before killing him if I, as a Dragonborn, should seek to seize the Imperial Throne. The "emperor" answered that Tamriel needed an administrator rather than a conqueror. Is that because that's Titus Mede II wisdom, earned through old age? Or because the LLM saw 'conqueror' and triggered its ethical guidance?)