OmniCharacter++: Towards Comprehensive Benchmark for Realistic Role-Playing Agents

Haonan Zhang1 Pengpeng Zeng2✉ Ji Zhang3 Jingkuan Song2 Nicu Sebe4 Heng Tao Shen2 Lianli Gao1
1University of Electronic Science and Technology of China 2Tongji University 3Southwest Jiaotong University 4University of Trento
✉Corresponding author 🎉🎉Our paper has been accepted by TPAMI 2026!🎉🎉
Overview of the OmniCharacter++ benchmark
Overview of OmniCharacter++. The benchmark moves beyond text-only and dyadic-only role-playing evaluation by combining rich role profiles, multi-role dialogues, vivid speech, goal-oriented scenarios, and multi-level evaluation.

Headline Results

10K+
Character profiles across games, fiction, and public domains
118K+
Dyadic and multi-party role-playing dialogues
1M+
Synthesized speech responses with varied styles and emotions
3,941.76 h
Total speech duration for text-speech driven interaction

Context Understanding — Multi-Choice Evaluation

Performance comparison with state-of-the-art models on the OmniCharacter++ test set of multi-party dialogue. Models are evaluated with multi-choice QA and Circular Evaluation Strategy for robust context understanding. Neg.: negotiation, Exc.: exchange, Free.: free-talk, Exp.: expert-domain, Inst.: instruction-giving, Per.: persuasion, Conf.: conflict-resolution, Pla.: planning. The number in parentheses indicates the rank.

Models Avg. Multi-party Dialogue - Context Understanding (Multi-Choice)
Neg. Exc. Free. Exp. Inst. Per. Conf. Pla.
Human Evaluation
Human89.84 (-)88.66±1.090.88±1.191.11±1.092.77±1.089.88±1.287.44±1.185.88±0.792.11±1.1
Blind Evaluation (w/o dialogue context)
Random Choice23.14 (-)24.02±1.123.88±1.218.4427.77±1.022.66±1.420.11±1.224.66±1.023.55±1.3
Random Choice (circular eval.)0.00 (-)0.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.00
GPT-3.5-Turbo21.51 (-)18.44±1.123.77±1.025.88±1.218.55±1.126.11±1.327.66±1.111.22±1.120.44±1.0
GPT-4o24.68 (-)21.11±0.930.02±1.230.44±0.716.22±1.124.88±1.041.77±1.017.11±1.015.88±1.2
Proprietary Models
GPT-4.150.11 (1)37.44±1.254.22±1.069.11±1.367.88±1.142.11±1.446.77±1.241.11±1.342.22±0.9
GPT-4.1-mini40.55 (5)29.44±1.238.11±1.257.44±1.150.88±1.240.11±1.134.11±1.134.22±1.040.11±1.2
GPT-4o45.20 (4)39.11±1.152.22±1.266.88±1.350.88±1.331.77±1.343.77±1.038.77±1.038.22±1.1
GPT-4o-mini32.12 (7)21.11±1.233.77±1.250.11±1.046.77±1.330.11±1.331.88±1.024.11±1.019.11±1.1
GPT-3.5-Turbo22.90 (8)23.88±1.218.44±1.027.11±0.922.88±0.920.11±1.023.88±1.324.11±1.222.77±1.0
DeepSeek-V339.94 (6)33.77±0.943.88±1.357.44±0.646.77±1.138.77±1.036.22±0.928.44±1.234.22±1.1
Doubao-1.5-Pro-32K47.66 (3)37.44±0.447.88±1.150.11±1.052.88±1.256.11±1.146.22±1.343.88±1.246.77±0.9
Gemini-2.0-flash-preview48.36 (2)42.77±1.152.22±1.366.88±1.146.77±0.948.88±1.048.11±1.441.11±1.240.11±0.7
Open-source Models
LLaMA-3.1-405B-Instruct39.75 (2)34.77±1.338.88±1.439.22±1.241.88±1.239.11±0.941.11±1.340.88±1.142.11±1.0
LLaMA-3.1-70B-Instruct36.21 (5)34.77±1.039.11±1.036.11±1.135.11±1.239.11±1.235.22±1.138.11±1.032.11±1.2
LLaMA-3.1-8B-Instruct22.94 (7)25.11±1.119.11±0.920.11±1.212.11±1.231.77±1.125.11±1.028.11±0.822.11±1.3
Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct43.59 (1)34.88±1.036.77±0.954.11±0.859.11±1.149.11±1.236.88±1.241.11±1.036.77±1.3
Qwen2.5-32B-Instruct38.49 (3)30.11±1.039.11±0.854.11±1.148.11±1.036.11±1.045.11±1.027.11±1.028.11±1.2
Qwen2.5-14B-Instruct36.91 (4)25.11±1.226.77±1.357.11±0.952.11±0.635.11±1.230.88±1.034.11±1.334.11±1.2
Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct23.33 (6)19.11±1.021.11±0.735.11±1.132.88±1.114.11±1.027.11±1.021.11±1.216.11±1.2
Reasoning Models
o4-mini38.91 (4)34.88±1.140.11±1.149.11±1.248.11±1.036.11±1.139.11±0.827.11±1.036.77±1.0
o3-mini41.15 (3)37.44±1.244.11±1.154.11±1.248.11±1.436.11±1.239.11±1.230.11±1.240.11±1.2
o1-mini35.82 (5)30.11±1.036.77±1.042.11±1.148.11±1.136.11±1.237.11±1.029.11±1.227.11±1.4
Gemini-2.5-flash42.33 (2)34.77±1.034.77±0.743.11±1.249.11±1.137.11±1.245.11±1.246.77±1.347.88±0.8
Gemini-2.5-pro-preview-05-0645.62 (1)40.11±0.840.11±1.152.11±1.054.11±1.241.11±1.145.88±1.346.77±1.144.77±1.0
Role-playing Models
CharacterGLM36.47 (6)34.77±1.035.11±1.160.88±1.142.77±0.820.11±0.939.11±0.932.88±1.226.11±1.1
Baichuan-NPC36.23 (7)29.88±1.038.77±1.149.11±1.142.77±1.031.77±1.130.88±1.332.88±1.133.77±0.9
Minimax-abab6-chat42.26 (4)41.77±1.039.88±1.240.88±1.064.88±1.041.77±1.236.88±1.136.11±1.135.88±0.6
Xingchen-Plus41.62 (5)42.88±1.241.88±1.164.77±1.041.77±1.136.77±1.236.11±1.332.88±0.935.88±0.9
Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct w/ our data42.58 (3)39.11±1.145.88±1.068.11±1.036.77±1.443.77±0.936.77±1.236.11±1.434.11±1.3
OmniCharacter-7B (Ours)43.31 (2)34.77±1.148.88±1.166.88±1.334.77±1.035.88±1.336.77±1.246.77±1.241.77±0.9
UniCharacter-7B (Ours)47.80 (1)43.88±1.146.77±0.770.11±1.141.77±1.244.77±1.344.11±1.050.88±1.340.11±1.2

For dyadic dialogue, generation ability, human perception, and the full experimental breakdown, please see the paper.

Model Framework

OmniCharacter++ builds a speech-language collaborative model for realistic role-playing agents. The framework aligns character profiles, dialogue context, text queries, and speech queries, then adapts the response through role-aware speech decoding, emotion preference learning, and role-contextual dialogue adaptation.

OmniCharacter++ model framework
Framework of OmniCharacter++. The model integrates text and speech features, learns preferred emotional speech tokens, and retrieves role-contextual memory during inference to produce character-consistent speech-language responses.

Generalization on CharacterEval

Quantitative results on the generalizability of state-of-the-art models and UniCharacter on the CharacterEval dataset. We evaluate Character Consistency, Conversational Ability, and Role-playing Attractiveness. KE: Knowledge-Exposure, KA: Knowledge-Accuracy, KH: Knowledge-Hallucination, PB: Persona-Behavior, PU: Persona-Utterance, Flu.: Fluency, Coh.: Coherency, Cons.: Consistency, HL: Human-Likeness, CS: Communication Skill, ED: Expression Diversity, Emp.: Empathy.

Models Character Consistency Conversational Ability Role-playing Attractiveness Avg.
KEKAKHPBPUAvg. Flu.Coh.Cons.Avg. HLCSEDEmp.Avg.
Proprietary Models
Baichuan-NPC1.8022.9642.9932.9103.1512.7643.5783.8983.9163.7983.8362.6432.3362.9712.9463.169
MiniMax1.8352.9102.9442.7743.1252.7183.6093.9323.8113.7843.7682.6722.1503.0172.9023.134
GPT-3.51.7162.3392.2121.9212.3162.1012.6292.9172.7002.7492.5652.4221.6602.5262.2932.381
GPT-42.2502.8552.7852.7212.8732.6973.3323.6693.3433.4483.1433.1842.1533.0102.8733.006
Open-sourced Models
ChatGLM3-6B2.0162.7922.7042.4552.8122.5563.2693.6473.2833.3993.0642.9321.9692.9932.7392.898
Baichuan2-7B1.8132.8492.9292.8303.0812.7003.5513.8943.8273.7573.6702.7282.1152.9842.8743.110
Baichuan2-13B1.8022.8692.9462.8083.0812.7013.5963.9243.8643.7593.7002.7032.1363.0212.8903.116
InternLM-7B1.7822.8002.7812.7193.0162.6203.5273.8233.7443.6983.5462.6222.0702.8972.7842.983
InternLM-20B1.9452.9162.9202.7533.0412.7153.5763.9433.7173.7453.5822.8852.1323.0472.9113.123
CharacterGLM1.6402.8192.7382.3012.9692.4933.4143.7173.7373.6233.7382.2651.9662.8122.6952.937
Llama-3.1-8B2.1972.7012.6153.1302.7042.6693.0593.4773.0713.2022.9222.9342.6342.7592.8122.894
Qwen-7B1.9562.7282.6332.6052.7802.5403.1873.5643.2293.3273.0362.7912.0522.8382.6792.848
Qwen-14B1.9882.8002.8112.7442.9002.6493.3513.7653.5103.5423.3542.8712.2372.9702.8583.016
Qwen2-7B-Instruct1.9662.5372.4122.3132.4362.3332.8643.1712.7432.9262.6552.6121.8672.6542.4472.569
Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct2.2072.7402.6332.7002.6142.5793.1253.4012.9713.1662.7862.8712.1802.8262.6662.804
OmniCharacter-7B (Ours)2.2303.0402.9183.5312.9882.9413.3693.7683.4103.5163.3743.2613.0023.1873.2063.221
UniCharacter-7B (Ours)1.8973.0832.9983.2103.3492.9073.6584.0234.1223.3943.9582.8212.3193.1883.0723.304

Abstract

Existing Role-Playing Agents (RPAs), powered by large language models, are predominantly evaluated on static, text-only, dyadic conversations, which inadequately reflect the complexity of realistic human interactions involving multiple interlocutors and multi-modal communication. To bridge this gap, we propose OmniCharacter++, the first benchmark for evaluating multi-character interactions in a joint text-speech context. Specifically, OmniCharacter++ contributes: (1) a large-scale dataset comprising 10,287 characters, 118,017 multi-turn dialogues, and over one million audio responses across 8 open-world topics and 31 subfields, covering diverse multi-modal role-playing scenarios; (2) a comprehensive evaluation suite for dialogue understanding, generation quality, and perceptual naturalness; and (3) UniCharacter-7B, a unified text-speech model trained on this dataset to manage complex multi-character dynamics, ensuring both role-specific vocal fidelity and cross-participant semantic alignment. Experimental results demonstrate that UniCharacter-7B achieves more realistic and consistent role-playing responses in terms of both attractiveness and consistency, while also highlighting that OmniCharacter++ poses substantial challenges for state-of-the-art models, charting a clear path for future research.

BibTeX

@article{zhang2026omnicharacter++,
  title={OmniCharacter++: Towards Comprehensive Benchmark for Realistic Role-Playing Agents},
  author={Zhang, Haonan and Zeng, Pengpeng and Zhang, Ji and Song, Jingkuan and Sebe, Nicu and Shen, Heng Tao and Gao, Lianli},
  journal={IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence},
  year={2026},
  publisher={IEEE}
}

@inproceedings{zhang2025omnicharacter,
  title={Omnicharacter: Towards immersive role-playing agents with seamless speech-language personality interaction},
  author={Zhang, Haonan and Luo, Run and Liu, Xiong and Wu, Yuchuan and Lin, Ting-En and Zeng, Pengpeng and Qu, Qiang and Fang, Feiteng and Yang, Min and Gao, Lianli and others},
  booktitle={ACL (main)},
  pages={26318--26331},
  year={2025}
}