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I saw that this game was going to have a promo collab with Persona 5 on a Japanese game site that I follow, and I found out that Uchida Yuuma and Nakamura Yuichi were gonna voice in it so I decided to give it a shot since after all, it’s a free to play (lol) Gacha what could go wrong?! At first I was really hooked by the design and aesthetic because it reminded me a lot of Scarlet Nexus (which is like my favorite JRPG ever that I didn’t ragequit and completed almost all the achievements in.) The battle system was fresh to me at least since up until now most games I’ve played were turn based JPRGs or weren’t “real” battle like Infinity Nikki and Love & Deepshit (which btw I finally uninstalled GOOD RIDDANCE LMAO). Everything seemed cool at first, the driving system was janky but whatever I was having fun with it:
I hate using the word “content” because it feels so artless, like we’re just addressing something that’s there to fill up a quarterly release on a spreadsheet. I want to use the actual term for whatever it is instead to give it some life and individuality. But when it comes to gacha game releases and updates, I intentionally want to use the phrase “content” because that really is what’s going on here. They need to hit their schedule of one release every X number of weeks and it needs to check all the requisite boxes and that’s that. So at this point I generally assume that any Chinese gacha game is making extensive use of AI in order to keep pumping out all that content. I’m using a very expansive definition of AI, but at the same time I don’t actually care if the devs used an AI tool rather than doing their plagiarism the old fashioned way since the end result is still the same to me (read: bad). Whether it’s tracing a poster or generating some lorem ipsum brainrot for the nonstop texting, I don’t care to differentiate.
Up until today I hadn’t put much time into it. NTE launched the same week as P5X, FFXIV and Infinity Nikki dropped a major patch. All I had done was a daily login and input some redeem codes. Beginning yesterday I finally started doing stuff in the game, making money, unlocking cars, apartments, and robbing banks (or whatever GTAesque things you do in the game 🤣). Anyway as I was exploring I got to a place that looked like Dotonbori area in Osaka which I had visited many years ago and got nostalgic. As I started taking photos I noticed this:
Hmm this looks like the typical GenAI text you find in AI slop. I did a quick search and welp turns out most of the background assets are in fact, AI slop. There’s scenes in the game I haven’t even reached yet but a quick search makes them very easy to see:
Claiming background AI assets are place holder – I could maybe believe, but having straight up cut scene footage be AI generated is not a good sign. It’s even worse with the Wuthering with You AI slop because even if you say “well they could have maybe just traced it and changed the design” …well ok now we’re just getting into plagiarism wtf. I think the biggest issue is the developer interview a week before the launch claimed they will not use AI which honestly just feels like false advertising at this point. Also even the protagonist’s outfit texture is AI generated:
Anyway this shit’s so disappointing it kinda killed my motivation for the game. There’s plenty of people defending it with “yea well it’s temporary” or “yea well who cares about backgrounds I don’t even look at them” and the game made a shit ton of money in the first couple of days so clearly the future of AI sloppery games is already here. 😭 If people are willing to pay money for this shit then the devs will continue to churn it out. I took a break from NTE for now, to see if the devs will address the AI sloppery, plagiarism and janky driving system, but I get the feeling they will just ignore it and pretend everything is fine. I feel like most gacha games being churned out of China are using AI now and it’s considered the norm over there so even if the few westerners give them backlash, as long as Chinese players continue to whale for waifus, the AI slop will remain as a part of modern gaming unfortunately. And then to top it all off, the extent of the P5 collab was just…you can buy some of the soundtrack songs to play on your car radio for absurd amounts of money (like more expensive than a motorcycle or apartment).
And then the use (or even suspicion) of AI exacerbates everything. In much the same way that the AI tool is there because “idk we just gotta put some textures on those buildings and some background chatter when you walk through that crowd”, the various in-game activities give the exact same vibe. Why is there a secondary stamina system associated with a large assortment of different minigames? Why do said minigames unlock the way they do? Why were these specific minigames the ones chosen for inclusion? I never, ever assume that it’s because of some kind of greater artistry going on, where it’s absolutely necessary in order to achieve an individual person’s creative, emotional message that the game must include not just a car racing minigame but also a taxi minigame (which essentially is just “car racing but on the city streets instead of a course”). So in true gacha form, what instead happens is that all of these thoroughly unnecessary systems all layer on top of each other in a way that instead of creating more joy and excitement instead creates anxiety or FOMO. Driving the car badly is funny the first day. Then every day after the first day it’s incredibly annoying as we wish that the fast travel system was more convenient or that we didn’t have to slog through these horrendous car controls every time the game makes us pray return to the Waking NTE Sands.
On another note, Love & Deepspace uses AI too, but nobody cares as long as they release hornee cards people will throw their money at it:
Yurika and Kanade's Game Reviews 
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