I think an important step would be to not be afraid of creating characters with actual… well, character. It was somewhat mentioned in the video but it seems like devs are unwilling to make NPCs with their own likes and dislikes, ones that might disagree with players instead of being all over them no matter what. This might be a slight exaggeration but boy do I wish we had more “real” feeling NPCs in games. I’m sure I’m not the only one who couldn’t care less about being the most important being in the universe and would rather be treated as an equal part of the world.

From a mechanical standpoint, relationship system in Scarlet Hollow feels like a good step into making interactions more natural (here is a detailed look by one of the devs) but I realize it’s a lot of work for something a good chunk of players won’t care about. I understand why this isn’t something many (especially bigger) devs would be interested in using but it’s still a disappointment.

Maybe AI will be able to help somewhat with this problem in the future but I’m not going to hold my breath on that.