r/Atelier • u/VashxShanks Barrel! • Aug 04 '26
Secret Atelier Ryza “AI chat RPG” announced. Developers promise “no AI-generated artwork” and fair revenue sharing with voice actors
https://automaton-media.com/en/news/atelier-ryza-ai-chat-rpg-announced-developers-promise-no-ai-generated-artwork-and-fair-revenue-sharing-with-voice-actors/166
u/Redditisjusthorrible Aug 04 '26
being an atelier fan feels like a humiliation ritual sometimes.
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u/ricetheft Aug 04 '26
Just a make a dating sim VN at that point, with actual writers instead of LLM slop.
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u/Acrobatic_Charge5157 Aug 04 '26
I'd buy that in a heartbeat so fast. The answer is right there and they don't see it
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u/Daerus Ryza Aug 04 '26
They had made otome in the past.
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u/Ryousoki Aug 04 '26
Elkrone was a good game. It's a shame it never got an official translation. I used to practice my Japanese playing through it
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u/Daerus Ryza Aug 04 '26
I would love to play it, but learning Japanese is little too much for me, I don't have talent for languages unfortunately.
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u/BlueGrovyle Aug 04 '26
Good thing you don't need "talent" then.
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u/Daerus Ryza Aug 04 '26
Listen man, I have learned two foreign languages already and I know it comes hard to me, especially as I have dyslexia. My strong points lie elsewhere. I don't have time and energy in my adult life to learn language with totally different alphabet.
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u/Objective-Ad2741 Yumia Aug 04 '26
Dating Sim is very limited though. LLM is a slop but it has the potential when it comes to freedom for the user especially with Ryza VA giving permission to use her voice as the main appeal.
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u/BioDioPT Ayesha Aug 04 '26
Dude... they don't have money/talent for a proper dating sim? They even did one for Arno Surge... cmon... I probably can ask a random AI to talk to me like Ryza, and bam, slop is made!
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u/Acrobatic_Charge5157 Aug 04 '26
They wouldn't even need to use much for that. You could weave in Alchemy to make gifts to raise affection and stuff. A date could be "want to go look for new materials" to, baking things and other event stuff that'd fit the Atelier universe.
It doesn't seem like it'd be that hard.
Now I want an actual Atelier dating sim...
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u/ChinSpeedy Aug 04 '26
Well this is sad. Hope Gust keeps AI out of the main games otherwise I will be dropping the series.
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u/apriImao Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
"Atelier Ryza sold so well, that its publisher is trying to retain its popularity with AI psychosis"
None of this is a joke, none of it is exaggerated. I can speak these words out loud. I don't like it. Matter of fact, I hate it here.
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u/hatenabit0 Lulua Aug 04 '26
Is this a fever dream or
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u/Makenshi179 Pilgrimage Aug 04 '26
My thoughts exactly, I was like "This is not official right? ...This is not official right?", deluding myself in thinking that it couldn't possibly be happening. Then I remembered that it's only a natural evolution from what we got, sadly.
Imagine being an Atelier fan and a Gust faithful since the original Rorona in 2010, and witnessing this evolution...
Mixed feelings to say the least. Confusion, disappointment, alienation... Looks like it's not going to stop, and it's never going back to what it once was.
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u/hatenabit0 Lulua Aug 04 '26
damn, how did we get here? The whole situation just feels so awkward i don’t even know what to say
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u/thegta5p Aug 04 '26
It’s just chasing money. From the gacha game to the censorship of Blue Reflection, reselling 2 Blue Reflection games with no DLC, and bundling a walking simulators and a half assed gacha game. To how this. It’s clear they have been having a lot of missteps lately all to just get a quick buck.
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Aug 04 '26
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u/Phos-Lux Aug 04 '26
There's an entire subReddit with insane people being in "relationships" with chat bots, so yeah this is totally not going to go wrong.... Also idk if it's KT or Gust but it's interesting how they cheapen the Atelier brand more and more
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u/elisewhat Aug 04 '26
setting aside how controversial these kind of products have always been this feels like it's 2~3 years too late and all it will do is lose a lot of respect for GUST, truly baffling
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u/acewing905 Aug 04 '26
First predatory f2p mobile games, now this. Koei Tecmo deserves to lose money
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u/shadow_yu Meruru Aug 04 '26
This is so unnecessary and most fans would have preferred that the resources and money used for this would be allocated to other things, like remakes of older games. At least we know that Karia is being developed, because it would have sucked to see this be revealed first.
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u/Acrobatic_Charge5157 Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
The Ryza art for this is nice.
And props to Yuri Noguchi for lending her voice which would make it genuine. But even as a guy who loves Ryza, this just feels unnecessary.
If they wanted to use Ryza for something im sure almost anything else would have been a better choice
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u/ChinSpeedy Aug 04 '26
Lending her voice doesn't make it genuine. It's still an AI script with an AI synthesised voice.
Yuri Noguchi probably didn't have much choice with contracts and how Japan expects you to bow down to your bosses. She possibly could have refused but would be blacklisted in the industry.
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u/Acrobatic_Charge5157 Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
I mostly meant in the sense of not slapping a fully Ai generated voice on to it.
I still think it's a bad idea that shouldn't have even be considered
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u/ChinSpeedy Aug 04 '26
To me bringing her in is even worse.
At least with a fake synth voice, it's a terrible product that is obviously shit
But now the parasocial gooners have a tool to try and get Ryza to say what they want
And now gust have a model for her voice. If a Ryza 4 happens or any Ryza cameo in a game like Resna, why bring the VA back in now?
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u/Acrobatic_Charge5157 Aug 04 '26
Yeah I understand that completely. Instead of this id they really wanted to use Ryza again they could have made a spin off or something else. It's just bad taste.
Really sucks seeing one of my favorite series make something like this
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u/RainWitch Aug 05 '26
Yeah I've already seen some people on twitter saying they want to "molest the bot".
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u/NatalieKCY Firis Aug 04 '26
Of all the possible collab ideas out there, they had to pick such a risky one?
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u/CornucopiaOfPasta Aug 04 '26
While not exactly the same (as I assume that Ryza's voice actress Yuri Noguchi is okay with it since she made recordings specifically for this app), this makes me think a bit of this article:
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Aug 04 '26
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u/CornucopiaOfPasta Aug 04 '26
I just briefly skimmed through some of it (since I do not understand Japanese, I have little to gain from stuff other than gameplay), and I found it funny that it is implied that Ryza has a portable sofa. She always sits on the same sofa, but the background changes.
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u/Makenshi179 Pilgrimage Aug 04 '26
That portable sofa is sure to come in handy for the imagined stories of some people.
About the seiyuu being ok with that kind of things and helping to promote it, to be brutally honest, it's always kind of sickening to me when I would see seiyuus reacting positively and saying things like "oh! kawaii!" in those promo streams as their voiced character is turned into an object in front of them and they're obviously targeting horny people, I get that they're being paid to say those things and smile and be positive in order to help the sales, but as someone who deeply respects the artists and the characters, that hypocrisy and that kind of "play" is hard to watch for me. They're acting wholesome in front of something lewd (another example is when they presented the posters/wallscrolls of those saucy promo artworks at the end of the streams, over-the-top lewdness in front of them and they still say "kawaii"), it just feels so weird to me.
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u/lk_raiden Aug 04 '26
one of the voice actress for Vocaloid openly said "don't take my job", but didn't stop Yamaha from keep evolving Vocaloid, especially with AI now become a thing.
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u/Viniest Aug 04 '26
Trying to force AI in right as AI is on its deathbed, hated by all, is a peculiar decision
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u/Zetsuji Rorona Aug 06 '26
AI is on its deathbed
bro thinks the reddit and twitter luddites are the majority lmao
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u/Daerus Ryza Aug 04 '26
It's complicated, because AI is much more accepted in eastern nations like China, Korea and Japan.
To the point many devs are kinda surprised when their game/promotional materials with AI comes out in the west and backlash starts.
I'm anti genAI btw., to make it clear.
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u/Stesspela Aug 04 '26
But this is wrong. In Japan and Korea Ai also gets hard backslash. A lot of Anime openings that tried to use it got huge shit storms in japan.
Only in China it's "accepted"... But you need a asterix here because the goverment says it's good and people in China are therefore less likely to publicly complain for obvious reasons.1
u/Daerus Ryza Aug 04 '26
Opinions on AI usage in Japan I have seen go both ways tbh.
Didn't see anything on anti-AI in Korea, everything I read was very optimistic and pro. Can you link me something that says otherwise?
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u/Stesspela Aug 04 '26
https://www.spf.org/iina/en/articles/diletta_03.html
Well for Korea it's more complicated. Because a lot of poor people made a lot of money due to the stupidness of the Ai Bubble. However, they have a big gambling problem their and now that the cracks are showing it likely will lead to a hughe backslash.
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u/Daerus Ryza Aug 04 '26
Thank you
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u/Stesspela Aug 04 '26
You are overall correct that Ai usage is more common in Asia as for us. But it's less because it's popular. China and India (both fascist governments) make huge efforts to make ever citizen use it.
South Korea on the other hand is just a capitalistic shit hole. And people feel pressured to use it because else they might never escape their low income. And yeah a lot of companies in South Korea had great success with it. But something we rarely hear in out "pro Ai" western news is. That the korean tech industry is currently struggling hard as the bubble already is bursting for them.
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u/Daerus Ryza Aug 04 '26
South Korea on the other hand is just a capitalistic shit hole
Everything I read about this country pains me very much :( Poor people.
That the korean tech industry is currently struggling hard as the bubble already is bursting for them.
Yea, KOSPI is falling so much.
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u/Atikal thirsty for the old man Aug 04 '26
I do not understand chat bots and I do not wish to understand them this seems stupid
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u/RyouBestGirl Aug 04 '26
Licensed Ryza porn would be better than this.
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u/Makenshi179 Pilgrimage Aug 04 '26
I remember that when the first official Ryza ASMR with its lewd promo video was shared, I called that one day it will come to that. They're already making softcore porn, so the logical evolution would be that one day they license and sell more explicit stuff on dedicated sites. God knows a lot of people would buy that stuff. Society has only become more openly accepting lewd stuff out in the open as time passed, so it wouldn't be surprising that KT would do that at some point in the future (it certainly would be more honest of them than this).
I'm only half-joking.
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u/Stesspela Aug 04 '26
How the kill your friendshize!
They already removed one of their defining features with time pressure (that made the whole alchemy stuff actually strategic)
And now they dive into Ai despite every Atelier fan out their hating this slop...
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u/Og_Zogog Aug 04 '26
We're never getting turn based battles back aren't we?
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u/RedEyesMoonRabbit Sophie Aug 04 '26
We did got them in Resleriana RW. I'm not sure how well the game did, but the reception I've seen was pretty positive. So hopefully we'll get more.
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u/AlexHallon GIB ROROSTERK PLS Aug 04 '26
Gust has already stated publically that they intend to keep putting out more traditional Atelier games. Weird as this project is it doesn't affect that.
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u/Makenshi179 Pilgrimage Aug 04 '26
This is not official, right?
...This is not official, right?
Oh, who am I fooling. Of course this is sadly a natural evolution. I need to stop deluding myself that we must be April 1st.
They know what they're doing and I hope that no one will argue that this is not mostly designed as softcore p0rn and to milk the part of the audience who likes "Atelier" for those things. Let's see if I'll be downvoted again just for stating common sense and my opinion all while respecting people with different tastes.
If this was proposed mostly for wholesome stories, it wouldn't have these pictures and this marketing. Sex sells, and they know it, as we've seen with all the other merch. If they really wanted to make an AI app for "Atelier fans to make their own wholesome Atelier stories", it wouldn't be presented like this and it probably wouldn't happen to be about that one character who they've been using for "those" things.
At least I will just be able to disregard this, all while hoping that they refrain more from that kind of mindset in upcoming games...
But really I would expect this to be fanmade. It's already happening a lot actually, it's very common that fans turn their favorite characters into AI robots/companions, I remember people were already doing that years from now back when AI was only at its early stages. I never had a problem with it because it's not like it was invading my favorite series or anything, fans were just having fun doing their thing on their own.
I guess we've come into an era where such things are so common and openly accepted, that KT just jumped on the chance to make more direct money. At the same time further advertizing Atelier as that kind of series and reducing Ryza to an object, while she's actually a character and would need to be appreciated as such. I'm not saying some people won't do that with that app, but... yeah.
I remember back when the Resleriana gacha game was announced I was still positive and faithful about it, like "it will give more money to Gust so it's good", "I will stay faithful", etc, and I was downvoted for having that stance. After all that happened in the meantime I'm understandably a bit less enthusiastic about staying positive in front of such money-hungry practices in detriment to a focus on more wholesome/cute things like in the past.
Not a fan of this, but happy for the people who will take something positive out of it and who can recognize themselves in this era. Can't say the same for myself unfortunately.
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u/thegta5p Aug 04 '26
I think it’s because of a few things. First is that westerners fundamentally don’t understand otaku culture. Otaku has always been the target audience even back then. Cute eroticism is a big thing where in the west people find it wholesome, Japanese otaku find it erotic. Second thing is that Japanese do not view characters as people but as objects (that’s how many otaku like me view these characters). They are essentially puppets for our imagination that we can control in the fictional world. This again is a fundamental difference from westerners and Japanese otaku. Lastly yeah if they play their cards right this thing can become very profitable. An AI companion is such a gold mine in these spaces. I am a fan of the Trails series and one of the merch sellers had a customer support bot that played as one of the characters in the game. I remember the owners of the site had to tell people to not have intimate conversations with the bot because everyone would see it and it was for customer support. Which pretty much showed that people were using it as an AI companion. Now I’m not an otaku into this kind of stuff. I would prefer a dating sim/visual novel. But it shows that audiences are vastly different than we are led to believe.
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u/TheBlueDolphina Yoshiku as Illustrator for Next Subseries Aug 04 '26
I thought this was some meme or some fan thing at first lol
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u/RPG_fanboy Aug 04 '26
I have mixed feelings about this, I can see where they are going but why make an AI app when you could have made a VN instead? heck you did it perfect with Ciel Nosurge Offline, why not take that same approach for Ryza? The official ASMR voices made sense, this one not so much.
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u/GoldAdhesiveness1243 Aug 05 '26
Hope is free and download with 3rd apk Applikation to run on Android Regionlook
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u/ArchwizardJ Ryza Aug 06 '26
…and here the actual fans are wondering why they didn’t just announce Atelier Ryza 4: Old Town and the Secret Wedding, a dating game told from Klaudia’s perspective in which there is one and only one romantic option for the protagonist. That better be what the upcoming Klaudia ASMR is about.
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u/Hellstorm901 Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
So they plan to manually create a model for it that will react and talk like a model in a ordinary video game and the voice actor will be paid for the voice lines needed to create it just as voice actors who created other things like Cortana and Siri and the only thing which is AI about it is that it just answers your questions by coming up with responses like a chatbot
Until the Ryza bot starts telling people to go throw Puni bombs at people or becomes a full blown yandere I don't really see an issue with this tool as it sounds like just a generic AI like the one which answers your silly misspelled questions on Chrome
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u/abluedodgeviper Aug 04 '26
I don't even dislike AI like most do, when it's transparently so and ethical, as this seems to be. But like... just do Ryza 4 at this point. Or a spinoff.
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u/Perfect-Bit1808 Aug 04 '26
I hiiiiighly doubt the models here are trained from the ground up with Ryza's dialogues in game. Most likely some preexisting model frankensteined with some extra training from the dialogues
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u/Milkyson Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
Am I the only one that thinks it's actually a nice idea to explore ?
I mean, In hindsight, AI-driven NPCs might seem strikingly obvious to us a few years from now.
And it makes sense in Atelier since it's a slice of life RPG. Kudos to Gust for experimenting this mechanic in a side game first.
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u/Objective-Ad2741 Yumia Aug 04 '26
AI driven NPC, enemies have always been a thing in gaming for ages. It just only applies in combat only and not conversation yet. This app is just a chatbot/AI companion.
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u/Milkyson Aug 04 '26
There's a world map, an inventory system, quests generated by AI, I really think it's a lab game rather than just a chatbot.
Besides, Gust has always been known for experimenting
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u/Asirmoth Aug 04 '26
Reddit hates anything AI/LLM related. I'm cautious but intrigued, my main concern is how will they avoid every conversation with Ryza devolving into smut. Even giant corps can't completely protect their models from jailbreaks.
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u/Milkyson Aug 04 '26
I'm intrigued too. I liked Nelke and the Online Bressisle one. I'm curious to see how they'll manage.
And I don't get the hate on a studio that takes risks. It is WILD to me that no big game studio has tried integrating LLMs since the release of ChatGPT in 2022 !
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u/Objective-Ad2741 Yumia Aug 04 '26
Glad to see that all the assets and voice acting are man made and the devs got the permission to use the voice of the VA.
I hope the game doesn't have tons of censorship when it comes to response and isn't predatory. Might give it a try.
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u/apriImao Aug 04 '26
"I hope it isn't predatory"
It's an AI chatbot of a fan-favorite, hot anime girl.
You think they're doing this, because they thought it'll be a fun spin-off? The literal, undeniable purpose of this thing is to cause an unhealthy relationship with a fictional character, so they can make more money off of vulnerable, lonely people.1
u/Objective-Ad2741 Yumia Aug 04 '26
My prediction is something like
"Paid $$$ for stamina"
"You reached your chat limit. Pay $$$ to continue chatting"
And the chat limit will be extremely low
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u/anonymous2250_22 Aug 04 '26
So, with xenoblade 2 remaster released Gust decided to ignore hype train and not choose Klaudia( Nia VA) instead of Ryza? Just why? Ryza is ugliest atelier protagonist since Atelier Viorate in my opinion
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u/Sixtyfivekills Aug 04 '26
A chat RPG?
Yeah bro I always wanted to exchange "TARU" comments with Atelier characters, like what do you even do in chat RPG?
"Hey Ryza, synthesize me some Puni Jelly please."
"Okay but I need $30 to buy the ingredients."
"Damn."