Players have increasingly bristled over talkative characters, just as studios are betting on buzzy AI tech to add even more dialogue to games.

Driving the news: Developers of Forspoken, one of 2023’s earliest big releases for PlayStation 5, updated the game this week to adjust how chatty the main character, Fey, and her magical companion can get.

• The action-adventure game is partly known for its quippy banter, both in storytelling cutscenes and amid gameplay.
• Tuesday’s patch notes say that the tweak “adjusted the frequency and content of the banter between Frey and Cuff.”

The big picture: The Forspoken changes follow growing irritation among some players over the quantity of dialogue. As game content has boomed, so has the number of spoken lines in a typical triple-A release.

• Last year’s Dying Light 2 was lampooned for boasting about its completion time of 500+ hours, and likewise caught flak for touting “350,000 words, 40,000 lines of dialogue.”
• 2022’s Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarök have also been dinged in coverage for extensive chatter.
• “As I traversed through Horizon Forbidden West’s beautiful post-post-apocalyptic America as Aloy, I was bombarded with her constant soliloquy on where to go and what to see,” Jordan Sutlive wrote for Polygon.
• Redfall, Dead Island 2 and Atomic Heart are other recent games that have made players pine for the days of silent protagonists.

Between the lines: It’s not only the sheer amount of dialogue that has drawn criticism, but also modern usage in game design and its tone.

• “Unfortunately, I think a lot of folks have confused ‘a funny character’ with ‘a character who doesn't take their own situation, no matter how perilous or interesting it is, seriously,’” Austin Walker, IP director at game studio Possibility Space and former editor in chief of Vice’s Waypoint, wrote in a blog post about the recent explosion of irreverent, Marvel-esque dialogue writing in games.
• Meanwhile, dialogue has been increasingly employed to aid the player — whether the player wants that aid or not. Multiple outlets have informed players you cannot disable God of War Ragnarök’s verbose puzzle hints.

The intrigue: Player irritation is mounting just as studios are experimenting with ways to use AI to give more characters even more to say.

• Assassin’s Creed developer Ubisoft unveiled its generative AI Ghostwriter tool in March during the Game Developer Conference. It’s designed to let a writer come up with a character and situation, then generate numerous lines that character might say.
• Meanwhile, the use of AI to voice characters is already being hyped by some tech companies as a way to ease the addition of dialogue to games.

Reality check: Forspoken’s recent tweak follows a bumpy release.

• The game faced a round of viral tweets mocking its dialogue before catching middling reviews for its flat story and repetitive gameplay.
• Even before the most recent update, Forspoken had a slider in its settings to let players adjust the volume of banter.

Yes, but: Both voice acting and writing can be fraught professions in gaming.

• Actors can face uphill battles in fighting for compensation, while writers often face development crunch.

What’s next: If you’re turned off by the chitchat, enjoy Link’s stoicism in Tears of the Kingdom and prepare yourself for the next epic RPG: September’s Starfield.

• Meanwhile, Forspoken’s In Tanta We Trust DLC comes out tomorrow.

Sony plans to release a new handheld later this year that will play games streamed from PlayStation 5, a partial return to portable gaming after a decade away, Stephen writes.

Why it matters: The device, codenamed Project Q, will further test the potential of cloud-based gaming, just as it'll test whether Sony can rediscover its footing in a market where it struggled.

Details: PlayStation chief Jim Ryan introduced the device during an hour-long showcase of upcoming PlayStation games, saying it will support streaming over WiFi.

• The device, which resembles a phone screen slotted between halves of a PS5 controller, has an 8-inch screen.

Yes, but: Sony's last foray into portable gaming, the powerful PlayStation Vita, failed to outsell the weaker Nintendo 3DS, and the handheld gaming market has gone on to be dominated by mobile games and Nintendo's hybrid Switch console.

Most of the PlayStation showcase focused on game reveals.

• Destiny maker Bungie, bought by Sony last year, confirmed it is making a new version of Marathon, the shooter it released for Mac in 1994. It's slated for PS5, Xbox and PC.
• Konami is remaking the classic PlayStation 2-era military espionage game Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
• Sony-owned Haven Studios showed a cinematic, non-gameplay trailer to reveal Fairgame$, a competitive heist game about robbing the ultrarich.
• Co-creators of indie hit Night in the Woods are making a new game called Revenant Hill.
• SquareEnix is developing a multiplayer shooter called Foamstars that appears to be like Nintendo's popular paint shooter Splatoon.

Be smart: Many of the games announced by Sony today are for 2024 and beyond.

• Sony's main PlayStation Studios game release for this year appears to be Spider-Man 2, which closed the event with a new trailer.

The sprawling Swedish video game company Embracer Group is reeling following its announcement that a "transformative" partnership that's been negotiated for months fell apart Tuesday night, Stephen writes.

Driving the news: Embracer said the collapse of the megadeal, the partner of which still has not been revealed, was unexpected.

Details: "All documentation was finalized and ready to go as of yesterday," Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors told investors Wednesday morning. "We asked for the execution of the agreement before our Q4 announcement. However, late last night, we received a negative outcome from the counterparty."

• Compounding the bad news, the company lowered its earnings forecast for the next year, citing game delays, from $965 million-$1.3 billion to $655 million-$840 million.

Catch up fast: Embracer has been a voracious purchaser of games, game studios and intellectual property, making more than 20 acquisition deals last year valued at more than $1 billion, according to a Drake Star report.

• Embracer's portfolio includes rights to "The Lord of the Rings" and both the characters and studios tied to the Tomb Raider franchise.
• The company also accepted a $1 billion investment from the Saudi government-funded Savvy Games Group last year.

👍 Microsoft's embattled attempt to buy Activision Blizzard received approval from China's antitrust regulators.

• Meanwhile, EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said today that the split between Europe's approval and the U.K.'s block of the deal "raises important questions."

🔫 Former Battlefield series veterans from EA Dice have formed a new studio called Time To Kill Games, according to GamesIndustry.biz.

✊ League of Legends Championship Series esports players will vote Sunday on a possible walkout to protest recent changes Riot made to amateur circuit requirements, Mikhail Klimentov reported.

🤖 The New York Times reports that Allen Adham, chief design officer of Blizzard, crowed to staff about an internally developed, generative AI tool to assist with art and design creation.

💰 "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" continues to rake it in, earning $1.26 billion globally, according to Box Office Mojo. That makes it either third or fourth among highest-grossing animated movies in history, depending on if you count 2019's "Lion King" remake.

🤡 Microsoft took a jab at Sony by letting players know that many of the games spotlighted at the PlayStation showcase, including Marathon, the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake and Alan Wake 2, will also come to Xbox.

Friday, May 26

• Forspoken: In Tanta We Trust (PC, PS5) is released.

Saturday-Sunday, May 27-28

• Summer Games Done Quick begins May 28 and runs through June 4.

Monday, May 29

• A quiet day, and Memorial Day in the U.S.

Tuesday, May 30

• System Shock remake (PC), Company of Heroes 3: Console Edition (PS5, Xbox), Shame Legacy (PC, PS5, Xbox) and Farworld Pioneers (PC, PS5, Xbox) are released.

Wednesday, May 31

• A quiet day.

Thursday, June 1

• Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection (PC, Switch) and Killer Frequency (PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch) are released.

Friday, June 2

• Street Fighter 6 (PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox) and We Love Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie (PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch) are released.

If you’ve been longing to play as ghost dog guiding an endless flood of people into a mysterious light, then have I got a game for you: Humanity (four hours played on PlayStation 5).

Conceptually, it’s a basic grid-based puzzle game, where you get an object from point A to point B. It’s well worn territory for puzzle games, but Humanity shines in its striking presentation.

The object of the puzzle is a horde, or hordes, of people. They will follow their established path and either collide with the environment or plummet until you find them a way into the light. You are a sheepdog for the masses.

• It is surreal and captivating to help move these mobs. For me, it added an emotional element to what I see as an already solid puzzler.
• As the puzzles and obstacles become more intertwined with its theme, the impact only deepens.

It was developed in part by Enhance, the synesthesia wizards who made Tetris Effect.

• And while it's a different sort of puzzle game, Humanity still evokes these rich, textured feelings that seem very unique to gaming.