Dragon Quest X, Square Enix’s MMORPG that started as a Wii game in 2012, is still getting updates in 2026. However, one of its incoming additions isn’t a bug fix or a new gameplay feature worth booting the game up for again; it’s essentially a chatbot with the series’ iconic blue Slime’s face on it.
Square has announced it’s partnering with Google to add its AI large language model Gemini to Dragon Quest X, creating a Slime character players can chat with who will respond with AI-generated text. The idea is that this thing can be a player companion, offering tips, tricks, advice, and information on the world as you play.
While an NPC chatbot might seem less objectionable than some games’ use of genAI art and voice acting, it still feels like a game developer forcing in a solution to a non-existent problem rather than using the technology for anything anyone actually wants.
This feels like Square testing the waters before potentially bringing this tech to more games. After all, Yuji Horii, the creator of the Dragon Quest series, says he expects AI to change all games in the next three to five years. Dragon Quest X is only available in Japan, which is surprising considering how much success Square has had with Final Fantasy XIV worldwide, but I wouldn’t be shocked if we saw something like this roll out in XIV if the company decides it’s getting something out of Dragon Quest X’s integration. What could that be? What sources will the Gemini Slime scrap information from? All of that seems to be up in the air at the moment.
