E309: first footage of Lionhead's Natal-enabled virtual friend Milo

Agies

#1 – 6:34 AM June 6, 2009

I've been thinking about this for a while (since Monday afternoon) and I think I'd rather have a new Seaman. Some may think of Milo as a new Seaman but I don't think they are right. The level of interaction might be higher with Milo but there is something about discovering Seaman's mysteries and helping him evolve and learn about the world that is more engaging than the prospect of simply talking with a lost boy in a LCD Neverland.

Maybe it's because Seaman is actually a very structured game with discrete stages. You could choose to linger on any given stage but there is always a goal to be achieved which moves you towards the ultimate goal.

Maybe it's just easier to forgive the shortcomings of a technology when it's a weird fish-man talking to you. It seems far less reasonable to expect Seaman to understand everything you say than it is to expect the same of a boy like Milo.

Either way Milo is extremely ambitious. But it's less of a game than it is a toy, and it's kind of creepy to keep a child trapped in a box as a toy.

It doesn't help that Molyneux kept harping on it as something that sci-fi has never thought of. Has he never seen Star Trek's holodeck or even an episode of Red Dwarf? Science fiction has been physically interacting with artificial intelligence for a long time.

Snagdoinugo

#2 – 11:17 AM June 6, 2009

There's so much potential to use this technology for interfacing. Perhaps a virtual librarian who can look up books for you, open them on screen so you can flip through pages with hand gestures.
you could potentially bounce ideas off it and have it handle the hefty calculations or simulations to better realize all those keen notions going on in your skull.

y'know kind of like orlando jones as vox in the 2002 time machine movie... but better
(and peter molyneux said sci-fi never thought of this stuff... Pfeh!)

Torley

#3 – 4:44 PM June 6, 2009

Re: Peter Molyneux's opening words, I strongly agree. That was a surprisingly ignorant statement from such a visionary — even if the popular sci-fi tropes include advanced versions of interacting with virtual characters far beyond what we can do today.

I didn't watch the full thing but it looks pretty fun. The water bit reminds me of Koi Pond on a larger scale, altho I'd be disoriented without tactile feedback.

AirPillo

#4 – 10:59 PM June 6, 2009

Did anyone else notice the tell-tale hints of a green-screen composite when the woman was interacting with Milo?

The outline around her and the lighting suggests a pre-scripted performance by Milo and a, well, "fake" video of her interacting with him.

Bear in mind, Molyneux has a years-old reputation for delivering substantially less than he promises. His name is often used as a colloquialism for promising much and delivering very little.

Specifically, it is his modus operandi to come up with a very neat, fun idea... and then completely fail to implement it into anything polished. The great idea is always there... but it's waiting for someone else to come along, steal it, and use it on a more polished, professional product that's actually worth paying for.

I would not be surprised, in the slightest, if Milo turns out to be nothing more than a construct built from Molyneux's overactive imagination and a vaporous cloud of deceptive marketing.

RedShirt77

#5 – 10:44 AM June 8, 2009

I think I would find this more interesting if it was a Murder mystery I could work through with a virtual partner, or a zombie apocalypse where I had to talk through the options with a fellow survivor. Sort of a choose your own adventure book meets video game.

My desire to chat with 13 year old boys is more then satisfied by the real world.

RedShirt77

#6 – 10:59 AM June 8, 2009

I think what you are seeing as blue screen is just the line resolution playing with the blinds although no doubt it is a staged recording where she doesn't have to repeat herself to get voice recognition.

Also not the expanded hard drive thing on top of the Xbox. It has to be 4 inches thick.