{"id":15375,"date":"2026-10-13T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/?p=15375"},"modified":"2026-10-13T21:56:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T18:26:11","slug":"ai-couldnt-have-made-star-wars-galactic-racers-biddy-blas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/2026\/10\/13\/ai-couldnt-have-made-star-wars-galactic-racers-biddy-blas\/","title":{"rendered":"AI Couldn\u2019t Have Made Star Wars: Galactic Racer\u2019s Biddy Blas"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an IGN opinion piece from Mat Jones. He loves weird little guys in video games. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

If your social feed is anything like mine, it\u2019s been overtaken by a weird little crocodile man that\u2019s knee-high to a Tauntaun and has an unresolved rage twelve times his size. His name is Biddy Blas, he\u2019s one of Galactic Racer\u2019s supporting cast, and he\u2019s the best new thing to happen to Star Wars since Andor. <\/p>\n

Give an AI as long a time as it needs: it couldn\u2019t have made Biddy Blas.<\/p>\n

With every new day, the ground underneath video games as a medium, one where professional creatives are valued and capable of negotiating an honest living, feels more and more unstable. Perfectly good studios are shutting in the name of brand restructuring. Electronic component prices have no incentive to reduce. The cost of producing anything is rising due to the precarious supply of energy and the push to end physical ownership. It\u2019s hard to imagine what the future of the medium looks like, regardless of AI\u2019s role to play in it.<\/p>\n

But look, I\u2019m not a doomer \u2013 games continue to exist in spite of these truths because of the passion of the people involved. They\u2019re also often better than they\u2019ve ever been. Star Wars: Galactic Racer is a highlight for the under-served genre of arcadey high speed racer, with surprisingly in-depth vehicle customisation, heat management and opponent rivalry systems.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard not to think about how good it is in the context of Epic Games\u2019 apparent push for an “AI first” production model. Such a pivot has reportedly delayed a secret Star Wars and Marvel crossover shooter, which will apparently be developed with AI tools on both the coding and art sides of the project. <\/p>\n

I can\u2019t speak to the quality of a supposed game that is an indefinite time away from release, especially one that no one outside of the Epic offices has seen a frame of, but I can\u2019t see this approach being able to emulate Galactic Racer\u2019s secret weapon. For all the arguments of efficiency, accuracy, and speed, I don\u2019t think a Large Language Model has the capability to create a breakout character. AI cannot make a Biddy Blas.<\/p>\n

Blas is an icon. He\u2019s the perfect example of what Star Wars fans have dubbed a \u201cGlub Shitto\u201d; not important enough to the narrative to be a main character, but so arresting in their limited screen time that they become your favorite anyway.<\/p>\n

Biddy Blas is Galactic Racer’s greatest character, brought to life by Richard Summers-Calvert | Image credit: Fuse Games<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At this point you may be thinking, \u201cSurely a bit of computer code could come up with an angry crocodile in a hat?\u201d And maybe it could. Arguably the main thing that makes Blas so perfect is his ridiculous voice, and AI companies have gone to great lengths to ensure its products can do voices. But, as The Blood of Dawnwalker\u2019s lead actor Will de Renzy-Martin put it on a recent episode of My Perfect Console, \u201cthe least interesting thing about what I do is the way my voice sounds\u201d.<\/p>\n

“[AI]\u2019s not replicating my personality and the things that I do when I’m in the room, and the choices that I make, which is all the reasons that a director or a producer would want to work with me\u201d said the actor behind Dawnwalker\u2019s protagonist, Coen. “Actors are pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things. And if you end up with an AI that can produce the right noises, you’re going to need somebody who can interact with it and get the performance that you want attached to those noises \u2013 and they’re going to be much more expensive than an actor is.”<\/p>\n

To put it another way: an AI might have been able to write a nonsense Huttese catchphrase, but only Galactic Racer\u2019s specific writers could have decided one of those sounds was \u201cScrib Doon\u201d, and only Biddy Blas\u2019 performer, Richard Summers-Calvert, could make the inspired decision to deliver the line as ridiculously as he did. And it\u2019s that combination of creative human decisions, that living understanding of what\u2019s genuinely funny, that turned Biddy Blas from a collection of script and polygons into an icon. <\/p>\n

No one can prove a counter-factual, sure; I don\u2019t see the same outpouring of love happening if we outsourced seemingly small decisions like these to the computer. As an anecdote, there\u2019s no reality where my partner would be interested in having a Star Wars racing game hogging the home telly; the Biddy Blas game is an entirely different proposition.<\/p>\n

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Maybe Epic\u2019s new production pipeline makes sense for a company that has spent the past decade turning Fortnite into a platform more than a game, one that increasingly eschewed creative flair and originality as a driving force (a much ruder critic would say this has never been the ambition at all). The Fortnite of today is now primarily a hub for other brands to throw their licenses at. If the priority of Epic is to focus on streamlining the production process for cramming in things which already exist, an \u201cAI first\u201d approach might seem obvious. If you\u2019re making a Star Wars and Marvel shooter, there are plenty of reference materials for both of those properties to train an AI on. I would simply argue there weren\u2019t reference materials for either\u2026 before they existed.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just Star Wars that needs Weird Little Guys created by Actual Cool People. Players are picking up Valve\u2019s hybrid MOBA-shooter Deadlock in record numbers following its most recent patch, inspired largely by the exciting amount of creative flair displayed by the new inhabitants of the increasingly graphically-realised cursed New York City. Characters like the Rat King, who has hundreds of individually written and performed dialogue barks naming a different one of his rodent subjects for every time one of his abilities is used, or the Chess-hustler Solomon, whose weapon is a board showing historically important endgames chosen by the design team which change depending on the maximum amount of ammo in his magazine. Without people making deliberate decisions, having completely original character ideas, people would not have the same incentive to log in daily to go 0-8 in lane. (Although I hate being in games with these powerful new characters, so maybe this is actually a bad example.)<\/p>\n

I see the continued use of AI in ideation and initial production as an existential issue for the medium that we\u2019ll one day be course-correcting away from in the same way it would have seemed obvious to CEOs to chase the seemingly inevitable draw of live-service, online passes and on-disc DLC. For all of the efficiencies in the process, for all the promise of profitability, I\u2019m not sure how you can actually sell<\/em> any of this stuff without the unique spark of newness. I\u2019m talking about this from a purely cynical marketing perspective: If I\u2019m just going to get stuff I\u2019ve already seen, it\u2019s stuff I already have.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\"Mat<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

Mat Jones is a Senior Social Producer for IGN based out of London, UK<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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