Ubisoft’s ‘Teammates’ Makes NPCs Smarter—And They’re Listening to You

Ubisoft just revealed its most daring AI “experiment” yet: a playable research project called Teammates that lets players talk directly to NPC squadmates and a voice assistant who can change the world around you. This isn’t just another chatbot. The goal is to turn game NPCs from background filler into genuine allies; NPCs you can actually command and have conversations with as you battle through a futuristic shooter.

CEO Yves Guillemot calls it a revolution on the scale of the move from 2D to 3D gaming, confirming that Ubisoft is “all in” on generative AI across the company. Teammates is the public’s first taste of that future.

Meet Your New AI Allies: Not Just Voices in the Room

Today we’re unveiling Teammates, an AI-driven research project exploring how new tech can deepen the player experience.

More than just talk, this brand-new experiment adds depth to gameplay by going beyond AI chatbots and turning NPCs into real teammates. Find out more:… pic.twitter.com/SyISwjJ5af

— Ubisoft (@Ubisoft) November 21, 2025

Teammates drops you into the boots of a resistance fighter in a grim future, sneaking through an enemy base. The scenario is simple: find five missing teammates, recover their final memories, and survive enemy squads. But what sets it apart is how you interact with your squad.

At your side: AI assistant Jaspar and two NPC teammates, Pablo and Sofia. Jaspar completely changes how you interact with the game world. Lost or confused? Ask Jaspar to point out enemies or key objects. Want more lore? He’ll fill you in. Need the game paused or prefer to tweak settings without a menu hunt? Jaspar has your back, all through natural voice commands.

But Jaspar isn’t just a personal assistant standing outside the fourth wall. He’s woven into the game’s story, reacting to your decisions and actions, analysing everything in the game’s environment and tweaking his responses based on your vocal input.

The trick here: you’re not just talking at NPCs. You’re giving commands, asking for context, and bantering with squadmates as you clear rooms and piece together what happened to your missing team. Ubisoft says the entire system adapts on the fly to what you say and do.

From Experiment to Game Changer: And the Limits of AI

Ubisoft’s team is clear: Teammates is a research project first, but a playable one. They’ve already put it in the hands of hundreds of private playtesters to gather real feedback and are quietly iterating on every aspect, listening to both players and their own internal creative teams to iron out the rough spots.

As Xavier Manzanares, Director of Gameplay GenAI, points out, “Our early experiments showed players were quickly connecting with the AI-driven NPCs and the voice assistant concept. Jaspar was helping players when they got lost or weren’t sure what to do, he could access menus and settings, tell players more about the world and the story. We really started to like Jaspar and saw how a system like this could be interesting for many different kinds of games.”

Remi Labory, Data & AI Director, paints an even bigger vision: “This technology opens doors to new, personalised experiences. Player input shapes character reactions in real time, something traditional development can’t achieve. We’re also delivering a full pipeline, with the experience taking players from onboarding to debrief, which is a first.”

But Ubisoft isn’t ignoring the heated debates about AI’s impact on creativity. The team says their aim isn’t to replace game writers, actors, or designers. Instead, they’re looking for ways to fuse human imagination with AI’s flexibility.

Virginie Mosser, Narrative Director, shares her experience: “At first, I had the same concerns as many others. But I discovered that it’s the exact opposite of removing the human from the process. I still write the story and character personalities, but instead of fixed lines, we create these kinds of fences that let NPCs improvise within the world but stay within the boundaries of the lore and motivations we have given them. They can improvise, but we still set the rules and direct the story and characters.”

Ubisoft confirms that the project will stay in private testing for now, collecting feedback to refine both the tech and the player experience. Human curiosity and creativity, the company insists, are still at the core, even as AI takes a bigger role in how stories are told and played.

The announcement coincided with a rare disruption: Ubisoft halted trading due to an auditor issue, sparking wild rumours of a buyout before the company quickly clarified. Amid all this, Teammates stands as Ubisoft’s boldest step yet, one that could change not just how we play, but who’s on our team as we play.