AI-powered NPCs are transforming video games from scripted characters into responsive digital participants that learn, adapt, and evolve alongside players. Introduction For most of gaming's history, the non-player character, the NPC, has been a kind of furniture. A vendor who says the same three lines. A guard who patrols a fixed route. An enemy who follows a predictable script. The NPC existed to populate the world, to give the player something to react to, but it wasn't a p