Ubisoft’s "Teammates": A New Tool for IP Scribblers?
I read a piece about Ubisoft’s “Teammates” prototype, and it triggered a flashback to every franchise gig I’ve ever worked.
When I was on Star Trek, I watched old episodes until my eyes burned. On American Gods, I kept the audiobook running to lock in Neil Gaiman’s voice and rhythms. On VALORANT, I looped agent dialogue lines until their vocab and speech became second nature.
Franchise characters come with wounds, rhythms, and fifty years of fan expectations. Get it wrong once, and the illusion breaks.
The Tech Signal: Self-Aware NPCs
Ubisoft’s new video game prototype tech features AI squad-mates who actually “know” who they are. They aren’t reading off dialogue trees; they’re referencing a persistent memory and context. They resist actions that don’t match their identity.
For screen-scribblers, it’s not about the combat mechanics. Consider the self-awareness.
The Burden of the IP Bible
On Star Trek: Discovery, we inherited fifty years of canon. We used episodes, wikis, show bibles, and continuity assistants. These tools track facts, but they don’t understand behavior.
A wiki can tell you Spock’s rank in 2267.
A wiki can’t tell you that your line of dialogue implies an emotion Spock wouldn’t feel yet.
Ubisoft’s tech suggests a shift from “checking the wiki” to “asking the character.”
The New Tool: The Narrative Tuning Fork
Imagine feeding a virtual model every script, performance, and beat of a character. You’re not asking it to write the scene. You’re using it to stress-test the scene.
The “Voice” Calibration (Hannibal) On Hannibal, we spent hours calibrating Lecter’s dialogue. Too flowery? It broke. Too plain? It felt cheap. Bryan Fuller had an ear for the drift. Imagine having Mads Mikkelsen’s entire performance loaded as a reference. Not to generate lines, but to flag the drift. Like a digital tuning fork that hums when you hit the wrong note.
The “Logic” Interrogation (Lost) In the scribble room, we’d ask, “Would they really do this?” usually after we’ve broken the episode. But what if you could interview the character before the beat is locked-in?
Scribbler: “Jack, do you trust Kate here?”
Model: “No way. Not after what happened at the hatch.”
What This Means for Screen-Scribblers
We could be moving toward a world where Show Bibles are living documents, wikis or, PDFs.
From Static to Reactive: Your research material talks back.
The Stress Test: You can double-check emotional logic before committing to the draft.
Legacy Protection: Hopefully future scribblers on your show will flounder less; they’ll be able to interrogate the world you built.
I’ve spent decades juggling fictional universes in my head. This kind of NPC tech won’t remove that responsibility. But it could share the load. It won’t remove my creative agency. But it could energize my execution. As long as I keep scribbling.
