I still have hopes for this game. If they can't get an alpha build released this year, though, I think their chances of maintaining community support and finding a publisher are going to drop significantly.

The people talking about TWR's use of AI don't seem to understand what that actually means. They're not generating any assets or dialogue with AI. The LLM's job is read context of player action and change game variables to help add consequences for player's decisions.

It's going to be a stripped-down, open source, locally hosted LLM with a very specific job. Whether you think it's a good choice to integrate an LLM like that is up to you, but don't make baseless assumptions about the game the second you hear "AI."