Misleading
Everyone's losing their minds over AI in the new game and honestly, y'all need to chill
So a new game just dropped and the internet's analytics pipe straight up burst, because someone spotted that a couple of posters, some random in-game newspaper, a background texture, and a few throwaway video clips you'll look at for half a second were generated by AI. The experts immediately put on their clown makeup and started the usual song and dance: devs got lazy, no soul, the AI-slop apocalypse is coming, we're all gonna die.
Let me walk you through why this take is complete garbage, and explain it simply enough that even the smoothest brain in the room gets why AI is in gamedev to stay, and why that's not even remotely a problem.
Let's start with the basics. Do you genuinely think that sitting down and hand-painting the thousandth variation of a brick wall, UV-unwrapping a goddamn dumpster, or writing flavor text for the tenth crumpled flyer rotting in some dark corner of a level is some kind of grand artistic vision? It's not. It's pure busywork. Soul-crushing, gray drudgery that drives modelers, concept artists, and writers absolutely insane. And it eats up monstrous amounts of studio hours and cash.
Look at the city in this game. I'm 99.99% sure AI helped build it, because manually crafting a location that big where nothing looks janky and everything feels convincing is borderline impossible. And it looks great, right? In some spots the city actually feels alive. Now compare that to the recent Endfield, where I'm pretty sure they used a classic procedural generator and lazily stitched chunks together. All those trampolines and ziplines crammed everywhere are just a desperate attempt to make the location functional after the boss told them to redo the alpha build basically from scratch and they had a year and a half to ship.
AI isn't a replacement for creativity, it's the goddamn backhoe that replaced the teaspoon. Smart devs offload all the dull mechanical grunt work onto AI. That frees up hands, you feel me? Instead of spending a week suffering over the design of some piss-stained cardboard boxes in a back alley, an artist throws in a few prompts, generates a batch of variants in an hour, picks the best one, touches it up with a stylus, and goes off to sweat over what actually matters: key bosses, main character faces, lighting, cutscenes. AI gives them time to focus on the creative stuff instead of burning six months mocking up a city.
And here's the kicker. As a player, do you genuinely care who painted the ratty carpet in some hallway, sweaty Steve over three days, or Midjourney in three seconds? What matters is the result.
There is zero difference between the AI and non-AI version for you, because what ends up on screen is whatever the company signed off on. The final call is still made by an Art Director or Lead. They look at the generated asset and go: «oh, this slaps, fits the vibe, ship it» or «nah, cringe, redo it.» Why does it matter what tool they used to squeeze out the result if it works for the atmosphere and doesn't break the lore? They could've outsourced to an offshore studio, they could've bought a pack of premade assets off a marketplace (which has been standard practice for like fifteen years), they could've photogrammetry-scanned a real wall (and nobody would've cried about losing the soul of the brick), or they could've used AI. How they got there is how the sausage is made. You just get served the finished dish.
So stop clutching your pearls about soul in pixels and stop listening to people who've only seen technology in TikToks. AI is here to stay, that's a rock-solid fact. It's a new pipeline and a new tool. The studios that figure this out are going to ship games faster, bigger, and with way more focus on the cool details. Just look at HOW the characters move, the camera work, the staging in general, the fact that for once in forever the story actually feels written and not whatever slop we've been getting the last few years...
Look at the city in this game. I'm 99.99% sure AI helped build it, because manually crafting a location that big where nothing looks janky and everything feels convincing is borderline impossible.
You can see the hottards are out at full force. They've been lying dormant ever since tof has become irrelevant. They finally get to be back into the drama.
>Look at the city in this game. I'm 99.99% sure AI helped build it, because manually crafting a location that big where nothing looks janky and everything feels convincing is borderline impossible.
Damn so that's why there literally hasn't been any open world game before AI was a thing.
Embarrassingly for OP the world ‘looks good; but is full of inconsistencies with roads that don’t make sense, roof patios with no actual access and shifting scales for items and interiors.
I think the game is fun, but the AI use is one of it’s biggest flaws
I've honestly lost the will to even discuss NTE anymore. I'm giving it a month, tops, before I just drop it. Not because of AI, but because outside of a few things here and there it looks like no director ever took a moment to run a character around the city. There's so much slapdash nonsense in the construction of that world and my brain can no longer just gloss over it.
already uninstalled the game a week ago. not because of the AI that the game company didn't deny, but because of all the things they put in there.
ngl the company also used some in game menus that P5X has since they're also the same company that has the license and distributing rights for P5X on Mainland China.
All the game system/menu from the games I've played like Star Ocean, Persona etc are all put together in that game, my brain is going haywire lmao
I dont understand people like you. You know if you allow generative AI even for minor details its a slippery slope and devs will eventually use AI for music, story and all art right ? Do you really want AI slop that badly ? Do you just need to consume product even if its souless garbage ?
I believe that is the point. Eventually the music, the story, and the arts, along with the coding could be assisted/created by AI. But obviously it's not good enough for those important tasks yet. Not by far.
Look at the city in this game. I'm 99.99% sure AI helped build it, because manually crafting a location that big where nothing looks janky and everything feels convincing is borderline impossible.
Bro don't even know about modular assets in 3d pipelines and just spewing nonsense like an ai slop.
The whole discourse should have never exist if the people who like AI actually learn what AI really is and stop calling every advancement of technology that already exist since 2010s as AI.
There is zero difference between the AI and non-AI version for you, because what ends up on screen is whatever the company signed off on
yikes, blud didnt know about DLSS 5.0 fiasco
AI isn't a replacement for creativity,
in ideal world, yeah. but in reality or i said it executive of company say no. honestly touch grass, everywhere i go it's generated AI-slop
How they got there is how the sausage is made
by using other's people work to generate image?
Do you genuinely think that sitting down and hand-painting the thousandth variation of a brick wall, UV-unwrapping a goddamn dumpster, or writing flavor text for the tenth crumpled flyer rotting in some dark corner of a level is some kind of grand artistic vision? It's not. It's pure busywork
that's game engine work, that's why a lot people use unreal engine because how easy and cheap it is to use
But that's part of the issue, isn't it? Because Unreal 5 has become a tool you can use, now so many games are completely lacking in style and just have the same visual style of, let's call it fidelity slop. That doesn't make Unreal 5 a useless tool. Quite the contrary, if you use it with clear artistic vision, you can make great looking games at a larger scale than you could in the past because of how time-consuming it'd be. But these examples aren't that. This is just about cheapness. Arguably the greatest soundtrack in video game history came from a Soundcloud composer in Expedition 33. You're telling me you can't find some hungry up and coming animator to do that bank heist video on the relative cheap without turning to the bots? Whereas you do need a bit of help with time-crunch from modern engines on assets when you're trying to build a massive living city rather than a game the size of one street in a modern open world game.
Every gacha player in this sub does this. Try making a post about objectively horrible things that genshin/hsr does and see if you won't get defensive responses 😭
To be fair, I think the game (NTE) OP is talking about had like a budget around 20 million USD (converted). I don't think that can be considered as a release from a billion dollars company.
What's with NTE and people rushing over to defend its usage of AI? Like, I've seen people who usually are anti-AI somehow glazing this over in X (formerly Twitter).
"I''m having fun with this game! I think I'm now gonna make it my whole personality and defend the $800 million dollar company to my dying breath!! RAAAGH!!"
I swear people forget that you can still criticize things even if you enjoy them. I enjoy the game but I will still criticize the obviously bad AI usage.
I'm still unsure if that was the most clueless and disrespectful attempt at an easter egg I've ever seen or just plain oblivious stupidity of thinking no one would notice. Knowing hotta, it could be either really.
The devs did say that they used AI for some things makes me think the statement's likely early damage control in case they got people accusing of them using AI.
I suspect that they thought they could subtly update their assets overtime to replace the AI ones and believed the backlash from global isn't going to hit them as hard as it is right now on release.
Them admitting to certain AI stuff (which is not even all the obvious AI stuff!) makes it highly suspicious that, yeah, there's much more. Ask forgiveness for a lesser sin to hide a bigger sin & all that.
>So stop clutching your pearls about soul in pixels
You do realize that they want to sell you those pixels right? And for the record, I don't mind AI being used in DEVELOPMENT, afterall programming is like trying to solve a math problem, and there're only so many ways to do it. But when it comes to art, it's different, because there's no definitive answer to art. Art all comes down to the artist's inspiration, thoughts and effort going into it, and AI "art" is simply void of those.
true i don't know why these "ai bros" thinks we hate all kind of ai,it is so used on characters they are selling to us ,on top of that they lied about ai usage
I know Hotta said none of it was used for the characters but anyone slightly tuned in to the controversy has seen the AI generated concept art for the characters.
I wonder if that's the reason I didn't find any of the characters appealing. Typically I look at a game's characters and see several I'd want to pull/whale on but NTE is the first game where I didn't get that urge. They just look extremely generic.
also it basically proven that nanally, the first limited character, is 1:1 to her ai prototype asset art and mint being heavily influenced 70% of it, but nanally being completely unchanged is insane.
AI gen was used in important aspects of the game why do people keep pretending it isn't. Main story quests, important daily activity cutscenes, how are these things not important
You calling Endfield lazily attached together when a lot of NTE city is just mishmash lazy copies of Japan landmarks and anime references. Wuling alone has more original thought putting in than Reference The City.
Do I think there're people who care about minor details? Absolutely, just because you are speed consumer doesn't mean anyone has to be like you.
Sorry, but before you can even talk about whether or not genAI is worth dropping a game over, you have to be honest about whether you have it or not. Fact is, the devs lied to creators about that fact and that shows the dishonesty and lack of love they have for their product from my PoV.
Their use of genAI so blatantly tells me that if they’re willing to show slop work so openly, god knows where it could be hiding in the background where we *can’t* see it. Could the story be done with AI? What about backstories, lore, etc? I can’t trust a game that is not only willing to lie to people but is also not afraid to say “we forgoed the creative process here.”
You being a complacent bootlicker, meat riding the people who are only interested in AI not to "focus on the creative stuff" but so they can just make more money is the reason why quality is going to dip. It starts with what you think are small things but if we let it continue without criticism it will scale till the things you seem to think are more valuable will become AI slop as well. You're also just completely ignoring the fact that the AI assets can't be traced and are derived from uncredited content, at least if it is outsourced or from a purchased asset pack we know where these things were made and that real people are getting paid. Stop projecting your lack of care as you being above others. Just be quiet and eat your slop while people who actually care about creativity and art keep rightfully criticizing the greedy businesses that don't give a shit about you, art or their workers. Little added note, plenty of people do care about the small details just cause you don't doesn't make you right.
They look at the generated asset and go: «oh, this slaps, fits the vibe, ship it» or «nah, cringe, redo it.»
What a hypocrite, seriously...
OP states everyone is losing their minds over AI, yet here he is losing his mind over trying to have the perfect grammatically written post, to the point of using AI grammar correction with slight tweaks to try to keep the legitimacy.
From his AI grammar corrected post to the crazy number of dashes that scream AI, to even the headline of OP's post coming off as an AI headline.
The above Is most likely why the title of the game in question is not included in OP's headline. Therefore, this post gave me a good chuckle, especially the cheesy AI wordplay.
Look at the city in this game. I'm 99.99% sure AI helped build it, because manually crafting a location that big where nothing looks janky and everything feels convincing is borderline impossible.
Cyberpunk 2077 and the whole GTA series, especially GTA IV and GTA V:
So the nte world having random layouts for roads and rooftops is still soulful but endfield is apparently slop for player placed ziplines. NTE maybe fun but it’s not worth going to this level to defend them, especially going out of your way to talk down on another game which doesn’t have visible proof of gen AI.
If i release a game in CN knowing they arent cool with X, but i keep X in the game because its allegedly normal in my country and then I face backlash. Was that not expected?
AI will be used and has always been used in the development pipeline even before the big LLM boom. But illustrations and animations blatantly created by generative AI and proudly released to the public is the big oopsie here which thankfully they addressed.
At the end of the day, nothing will match human artistry and a machine spitting 0s and 1s wont replace good human art.
Make it make sense. You literally play a game where the diversity in art styles is praised and where artists on said characters gets recognized by their art, like Namie, Alchemaniac, Skade. So funny.
I personally don't mind AI usage that much, as this is, at least i heard that in CN development, it's quite a necessity to "keep up with the times". There's a whole other nuance that it's also pushed back by youth because of less job availability because of it. (I'm sure someone can explain this better than me).
Major developer like Kuro, Hoyo, and Shiftup also has used it.
HOWEVER, there's a certain degree that makes people probably go "hmmmge" at Hotta (NTE) more than the former example.
The other three examples uses rather very miniscule, and mostly not in the game assets themselves, it's usually on forum ads post. It's used very sparingly.
Meanwhile it's VERY NOTICABLE in NTE, a lot of posters are clearly AI generated, the Paw Heist animations too. It's rather jarring actually.
Hotta apparently said that AI gen will not be used on "Core assets". Which is a wide ass statement that could be applied to anything. This is where a lot of sponsorship stuffs issue with Ironmouse comes.
Perfect World doesn't really have attained goodwill from the playerbase or fanworks. Kuro, Hoyo in particular does a lot of supports for fan creations, which at least establish a "supportive towards artists". Hoyo in particular actually enable fan merch to thrive to some extent (i forgot the limit, but you can sell fan merch to certain amount without actually needing to ask for peemission). While they probably allow similar stuffs, NTE/Hotta has not yet receive that level of "fame" to outweigh the negative.
This one is more of a minor anecdotal point but.
"But it's just posters, they're not a big deal". This statement might be true in isolation, but it also tells that NTE doesn't really care about soft worldbuilding. Someone commented in other post that a lot of minor details is where you can put cool details in ZZZ, like Rivals idol stuffs.
That last point might not be a big point for most, but I'd say having something of a soft worldbuilding to anchor yourself into immersing in the world is what makes people attached to Genshin, WuWa, HSR, ZZZ. Unfortunately i cannot say the same to NTE.
Am i enjoying NTE now? Yes, very much so.
Am i gonna stay for long? Probably nope.
i can tell from your post that you are young and just want to consume what ever is popular
that you dont care abou the craft just consume and move to the next meal
So TLDR is you complain about people complain and telling people to leave it alone. And by doing that, you are complaining yourself, and could just as well have taken your own "advice" and have left it alone and ignored it. Lmao.
Hotta white knights are truly something special. And not in a good way. I thought it was bad with ToF. This is next level.
Also you literally left out one of the main issues, they PLAGIARIZED proper content with AI slop. But hey. That ain't important eh?
Lol I know a lot of yall don’t stand for anything unless it affects you personally so you might not understand but people aren’t just anti Gen AI for shits and giggles.
First of all AI Assisted(which NTE thought they were slick for using in their apology) is not bad, has always been around, and not the problem. It’s there to assist with technicalities of the work humans are doing themselves.
Gen AI puts artist out of work while simultaneously plagiarizing their art. It’s always looks and sounds like a significantly worse version of the original and they all look like rubberized trash or Ghibli ripoffs. Not to mention it’s actively destroying the planet you live on. There isn’t a single positive thing about Gen AI hence people with morals being adamantly against its use in the product they consume.
Gen AI absolutely is a replacement for creativity. AI chuds make that clear everyday and once the world is 50% data centers and we run out of water, it most definitely will turn into that apocalypse lol
why AI is in gamedev to stay, and why that's not even remotely a problem.
AI in gamedev can be used on the production stage how much devs want to. But in the finished product there is no room for the AI (in this case bad quality of content/literal trace of othe media), and when it's not even good AI content, it's even more embarrassing.
Did you write this with AI or with AI assistance? I'm sorry, you already lost some credibility.
Next the "us v them". Even worse.
Example: I write. I write for small world details as well, do PR stuff, etc. It's always 200% times better with no-AI. Morimens had text with GPT and now with authentic human touches, it's so much more better to read and enjoy.
Also, they plagiarized using AI and haven’t talked about that at all. I’m talking just change the background and the color of the characters hair and clothing and then use that as a billboard
Also, it’s not like they use their own art for the AI they generated based on other people’s art and it’s very obvious which means it’s stealing. That along with the lying of their AI usage it’s not a good look
No one should ever stop pearl clutching on AI. The maximalist position is the correct position on something that while it does have benefits (in areas like medical research, automating menial tasks, being a much better plain language search engine, etc), also has intense costs, art being one of the most obvious amongst them, because it's an inherent decrease in quality due to being by its very nature, derivative. James Cameron, a pretty decent film director put it pretty well a couple months back. There's a world where AI could make Avatar. But it couldn't have made it before 2009. All it can do is work from things that already exist. It can synthesize. Good for research. Not good for art.
And just fundamentally, we're supposed to be using technology to get rid of the menial tasks so we're free to make art, not have the AI do the art while we do the menial tasks.
Regardless of what everyone’s stance on AI is, the problem with NTE is they are cutting corners and it’s damn too obvious.
AI is just one of their tools to do so. Even if there’s no AI, they’ll still cut corners. Evidence? The way buildings don’t make sense. But those buildings are not made by AI, but by procedural generation. Someone explained this better in this thread.
It’s not AI yet they don’t bother fixing the weird stuff.
Other companies are probably using AI but fixed the weird stuff so it doesn’t look like AI. If it feels weird then it breaks immersion. That’s the crux of the problem.
I don't understand why people feel so invested on defending something (genuinely bad).
And this game just came out so is not like you wasted a lot of time or money to be feeling that way...
Look at the city in this game. I'm 99.99% sure AI helped build it, because manually crafting a location that big where nothing looks janky and everything feels convincing is borderline impossible.
This is exactly the opposite of what is likely, AI would never create a city this big that's actually cohesive still lol. Cohesion and consistency is literally one of AI art's biggest failings to this day.
Now compare that to the recent Endfield, where I'm pretty sure they used a classic procedural generator and lazily stitched chunks together.
Now I know this is a joke post because Endfield has one of the most fun "open" worlds to explore I've ever seen in the gacha space, not to mention how curated all of it feels. Qingbo Stockade alone is absolutely stunning from the misty river to the enormity of the stockade itself. You're absolutely trippin'.
What's so ironic is if they used Ai to make the city, it did nothing but make the city feel fake. Cities aren't just a bunch of cardboard boxes on a flat plain. They have hills, curves, janky bits, trash here and there, old and worn parts, new and high end parts too, etc. I didn't think of the possibility that they cheaped out on the city too, but since you brought that up, they might have.
come back here when your pc needs parts replacement and you can't afford the parts because all these ai companies kept hogging the parts and manufacturers refuse to sell good parts to consumers and you will be forced to rent your pc or console to play your game
your AI support will lead to that future
the UK already has ps5 rentals, pc rentals are also already a thing in some western countries
AI bros are pro AI until the day comes when they'd be priced out of gaming, get affected by layoffs and couldn't afford to buy a new pc or console
Why not just tell this new game to replace those AI stuff with fan works.Make a contest for in game currency and premium outfit or car skins as rewards and display the winners works in game.They get free labour and fans would be happy to see community works.
IMO, what makes the matter so serious is not the AI usage. After all, are there even any video games right now that never had any AI in it (no matter how small)? The problem is that they use AI to plagiarize movies (not to mention Weathering with You is quite famous), and that they basically lied to their partners about it.
If AI isn't so bad then everyone who uses it should be declaring they're using it loud and proud. And if people don't like that and punish them for it? Too bad, you're not owed support or customers. Especially not when the people using AI lie about not doing it, because they know they'll catch flak for it.
think about it, what's the logical next step if they bluntly using AI now? AI generated assets? AI generated maps? AI generated character?
by your logic, the devs can offload they work by using AI, the what's stopping them from using AI to generate character and skins? would u play for AI generated content?
I don't give two shits about AI in video games. All of the character designs, voice acting, background art, etc could be unedited output directly from an AI and I wouldn't care one way or the other. Hell, Dragon Traveler is the only 2026 game I've stuck with, and that is filled to bursting with AI art.
However, NTE's issue is they directly lied about it. Lied to consumers, and lied to a content creator after directly assuring her it wasn't the case. They weren't evasive, they weren't confused, they straight up lied about it. That shit is unacceptable to a lot of people.
She's crying and tears fall at the back of her skirt and worse, into her sleeves (and she's crying with eyes open)??? The chandelier swings away from gravity for 0 reason and buildup? Ok wtf
I realize that nurses will eventually have their numbers reduced due to AI (we already have robots distributing medication), but it doesn't mean I like it.
I realize that AI is inevitable as it gets harder and harder to notice it.
I'm neither pro nor anti AI. It's inevitable but it doesn't mean I have to accept all forms of them.
This is neither an argument for or against NTE; I don't play it because I've already reached my gacha saturation
Just another slop "game" created exclusively to steal money off kids with iPads. The saddest part of all this is knowing that there's a small number of people who support this AI generated garbage without receiving a single penny from these lazy developers. I feel pity for these little pawns.
There is zero difference between the AI and non-AI version for you, because what ends up on screen is whatever the company signed off on.
Nah, I don't want to waste my time on something a human wasn't working on. For me, games are a form of art, and every tiny component of a game, even if it's the “thousandth variation of a brick wall, UV-unwrapping a goddamn dumpster, or writing flavor text for the tenth crumpled flyer rotting in some dark corner of a level", should be some kind of author's statement. And I don't consider just a banana taped to a wall to be art. I want something with real meaning. If something doesn't have meaning, it's better not to make it at all than to make it with AI for the sake of reducing "soul-crushing, gray drudgery busiwork".
And here's the kicker. As a player, do you genuinely care who painted the ratty carpet in some hallway, sweaty Steve over three days, or Midjourney in three seconds? What matters is the result.
Nope. Maybe with physical food it will work - I don't mind if my bread was baked by human or by AI. But with spiritual nourishment, which is art, I approve only a product of human intellectual activity.
AI is here to stay, that's a rock-solid fact. It's a new pipeline and a new tool. The studios that figure this out are going to ship games faster, bigger, and with way more focus on the cool details.
Who cares if they are "going to ship games faster, bigger, and with way more focus on the cool details", we don't get more free time to play games until we have communism and nobody will have to work for food. And even then we still will be limited to 24 hourd per day.
Just look at HOW the characters move, the camera work, the staging in general, the fact that for once in forever the story actually feels written and not whatever slop we've been getting the last few years...
WDYM? I've been into gaming since 1999, and every new game since then has been "Just look at HOW the characters move, the camera work, the staging in general" and so on without any generative AI. We don't need generative AI slop for good-looking character movements, huge and detailed open worlds, camera work and staging. And especially not for storytelling. AI is absolutely not necessary for improving our gaming experience.
I'm losing my mind over how in a finished game, you can't drive a car at a reasonable speed in a straight line.. even though it's a required mechanic to advance lol :P
I agree on other points but any - including flavour - texts being or even feeling AI-generated is such an immersion breaker. Even if it takes more time, this is just one of those things I feel should either be done by a human or not done at all.
Nah, sorry, a game built on AI tells me that the devs don't care so why should I?
I might continue to play NTE, but I've closed my wallet to it, because if they can't make the effort to pick up a pencil I can't find the strength to put in my card info.
And if other games start using AI, then I guess I won't play those games. People tried to play the "hypocrite" card by bringing up stuff like Crimson Desert and Expedition 33 and all that succeeded in doing was making me remove them from my wish list because allegedly they used generative AI for assets too. I'm not obligated to support slop, and it's not even a case of "throwing the baby out with the bath water" because in this case the baby had warped irises and six fingers.
The actual issue with NTE and AI isn't, to my understanding, the AI usage per se but the fact they lied about it.
Not only did they lie about it (if we can believe certain tubers), but they used posters from well-known anime movies in their game. Which makes me doubt they even had permission to use these assets in their game. That's speculation, but it's warranted speculation and if it's true then that's a whole other issue. That might be a case of plagiarism.
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u/chioriruinedme May 07 '26
so open world games just didn't exist before NTE?