backstory
Explanation
This comic imagines a near-future scenario where AI has been integrated into video games to give every NPC (non-player character) and enemy a detailed backstory.
A player sits at their screen with a game controller. From the game, a speech bubble delivers a heartbreaking monologue: "That giant rat was looking for vegetables. His family are waiting by the hole of the burrow. So hungry. So cold."
The caption reads: "Thanks to AI, everything you kill in a game can now have a rich backstory."
The humor comes from the contrast between how players typically treat low-level video game enemies — mindlessly slaughtering them for XP without a second thought — and the emotional weight that a backstory would add. The "giant rat" is a classic starter enemy in RPGs, the most disposable and insignificant creature you fight. Giving it a tragic family narrative about hunger and cold transforms a routine game action into something that feels morally devastating.
The comic satirizes both the tech industry's eagerness to shoehorn AI into everything and the unintended consequences of making games more "realistic." Sometimes ignorance is bliss — players don't actually want to feel guilty about killing a sewer rat in a dungeon crawler. It also touches on the broader question of whether more information and more detail always improves an experience, or whether some things work better with less context.