The Plot of the Phantom, a text adventure that took 40 years to finish

LLMs can enhance text adventures.

I'm not saying having LLMs narrate the entire situation. I'm saying have the LLM sit between gamestate and the player. The LLM is the UI.

Essentially the LLM can see the current game state and possible moves and it's the LLMs job to change the game state and report the current game state to the user (via a well written narrative).

That keeps the world consistent and structured, but the LLM adds enough dynamism to keep it flowing well. You can even make the underlying game state complex as well. Like you can have enemy AI's that actually move through the world too (independent of the LLM).

Even Inform6 with the English library running under a Pentium would run circles over llm's. They aren't even close. If7 will curb-stomp it.

NPC's running around were a thing even in the 80's, see The Hobbit. That on a ZX spectrum. 8 bit CPU, 48k of RAM. With if6 and Zmachine games for 16 bit and 32 bit computers in the 90's llm's can't even compete.

From Jigsaw, Anchorhead, Curses, Spider and Web to that anagram word puzzle game for Glulx (a 32 bit zmachine cousin), the array of amateur but professional looking games it's huge, really huge.

How? The LLM is in agentic mode and pulling and pushing the switches of the game. I don't see how these engines can curb stomp it.

The i6 and i7 languages have a guaranted internal consistency starting with grammar. Even if6 ('old' compared against i7) it's an incredible language targetting the Z Machine with a really easy OOP architecture to design your games. LLM's often lose the internal storyline on bizarre ways.

An Inform 6 compiler can run under DOS/386 or Linux/BSD for 486 and compile a really large and functional game in seconds. For Inform7, maybe a Pentium II/III and a bunch of seconds too.

An AI to do the same, not even a 'modern' Core Duo with a GL 2.1 adapter (the lowest of the lowest bearable specs for light web browsing and office work) can't even run a consistent world.