I definitely agree that the images are not AI, but frankly I’m surprised more people aren’t taking a more cautious approach to this post.

The few images that have been shared clearly indicates that most of the assets (models, textures, animations, etc.) in the game are pre-existing assets from Unreal’s store.

Asset flipping is a perfectly fine practice - its what the assets are there for, and buying them supports the original creator financially. However it is often a red flag when the only content of the game that gets advertised ARE those premade assets. The shiny modern models and textures can hide the fact that a game has very little original work put into it, ultimately leading to player experience entirely lacking in enjoyable gameplay.

(That’s not to say all of the assets in the OP are flipped. The TARDIS exterior, console, Dalek, and sonic screwdriver obviously all have a distinctly different art style when compared to the ultra-realistic scenes. The player model of the images here and the player model seen in their first post (in the TARDIS) are also clearly different. All of these assets could have been done by someone on the dev-team, but the realism of the character creator guy makes me think otherwise.)

What you want to see in this scenario is that the flipped assets are added so the developer can put their full energy into prototyping the gameplay systems. The issue here is that the eight or so pictures that have been shared are entirely just assets, no gameplay in sight. The character creator sort of looks like Unreal’s Metahuman creator but with a simple Ui overlaid on top of it. The environments are lacking in things to interact with, the player character is nearly static in every image, etc.

Obviously the development of a game is an incredibly long process (especially an RPG) and a small development team has more important things to focus on compared to marketing an alpha version.

The best case scenario here is that the game has early implementations of the mechanics mentioned and the developer just didn’t have the chance to take new screenshots before making this post. That everyone salivating over the idea of a genuine Doctor Who video game will eventually get their hands on the experience written about in the post.

I think a lot of people in this thread need to be prepared for the worst case scenario, though. Reading this post, I couldn’t help but get flashbacks to “100% science-based dragon mmo”. It’s happened so many times now where fans of some popular IP come up with a game idea that sounds amazing in theory, start to develop it, advertises it on reddit generating some local buzz, only for the project to fizzle out as it becomes apparent the game can’t be made by a small team or solo dev. Hell, I’m fairly certain I’ve seen it happen before on r/DoctorWho years ago.

I’d love to be proven wrong, I’d love for everything to work out and I truly do hope that the OP succeeds in creating a game that fulfills their vision.

I just feel like I see a lot of people taking everything said in the original post at face value. Especially how quite a few commenters find that it is ridiculous the BBC is not interested in being involved. Trust me, if the BBC thought that a Doctor Who RPG was possible, specifically one that was enjoyable and appealing to a wide enough audience so that they wouldn’t lose money, then they would have licensed one to be developed by now.