For context, Larian Studio founder Swen Vincke predicted that the game could reach 100,000 peak concurrent users during its debut period, and that was a fairly optimistic prediction. I work in IT, and really feel for those folks. I hope they designed their infrastructure to scale!
And that’s only Steam, not including GOG, or the influx of PS5 users next month. Let’s take it to 1 million!
Would need to lean on AI for something like that, I think. Keep the normal human-acted main cast/supporting characters, delegate everything else to AI.
It’s already been done with a Skyrim mod.
I mean, good compression and a huge budget for VAs would also accomplish it. The limiting factors are really just cost and storage space of the files. Like they probably pay the devs $35/hour and that sounds good; but a big name actor like JK Simmons probably gets like $1000/hour for his work as Ketheric.