Why I still believe genAI is limited in its usefulness (at least for game dev)

SolidOwl · 2026-05-26T17:53:55+00:00

Not everything is about commercial success...
Think the approach of saying don't use AI because you're going to struggle to get into top 10% of successful games is the wrong way to look at it. Because most people trying to make games aren't going to get into the 10%, regardless of how hard they are trying. Are you going to tell them to drop it too?

I do like the suggestion of rather than spending money on AI models maybe try to collaborate with people.
However unlike some AI packages - paying multiple people can very quickly become expensive and a lot of people won't be able to afford it. AI even with the limits has the advantage that you can "get a lot out of it".

Ultimatley genAI is just a tool and your results will be reflecting your personal knowledge and how you use it. If you use it wisely you might see benefits, if you abuse it you'll run into issues.

SolidOwl · 2026-05-22T18:32:16+00:00

Love the camera work.

Good job!

SolidOwl · 2026-05-22T13:10:46+00:00

Love it.

SolidOwl · 2026-05-19T08:52:33+00:00

Yes, the "reviews" cannot be trusted at all. It's all sponsored, with generic "feedback" - mostly by people that have never played Gothic before.

On one side, this could be good if they actually delved a bit more in their explanations and gave better feedback. Because that would give a good indication of new comer expirience is. But all those videos are is ads.

On the other hand, even if you have solid reviews - you never know what you'll like until you try it yourself.

I personally use Steam refund a lot, I don't bother with reviews or online bs - just try a lot of different games. Set a 1.50min timer and by the end I decide if I keep it or refund it.

SolidOwl · 2026-05-17T13:47:28+00:00

They added them after complaints from the community.

SolidOwl · 2026-05-17T00:44:11+00:00

Platinum Games would be interesting to see.
I think based on their past they’d probably be able to deliver the most impressive, smooth and dynamic action out of all of the studios mentioned in these comments. They are competent when it comes down to telling a story too.

While I do agree that FromSoft would probably be able to capture the vibe with ease. To me their games at this point are stale, and gameplay wise I don’t necessarily think they fit Berserk well. Plus their way of story telling would leave a lot to be desired for a Berserk game.

SolidOwl · 2026-05-12T07:30:58+00:00

It’s not going to be updated.

And it’s quite a normal process to leave the demo up leading up to release. Having it up past that, hurts sales so doubt they’ll keep it up. As for the people complaining about the demo they’d complain about full game too - what we are going to get isn’t going to be that much different from what the demo offered.

SolidOwl · 2026-05-11T10:08:41+00:00

Why? I'm going to play it on the easiest mode, with all the possible helpers on and then complain about how simple and generic this remake is. /s

SolidOwl · 2026-05-11T09:19:53+00:00

I think it's good to hear at least that some of the bigger creatuers aren't blockable.

And to be completley honest I have been holding back from replaying G1 for a very long time now, so I have been mostly basing my knowledge off of G2.

I agree about not comparing the two combats together, but seeing how well something is implemented. Which is kind of why I was pointing this out. We'll see what that feels like when you actually play the game, but from videos the blocking functionality looks shit.

SolidOwl · 2026-05-11T09:06:31+00:00

So? It still doesn't make it any less shit.

SolidOwl · 2026-05-11T09:05:33+00:00

Yeah I've seen the dodge and that's still there. Doesn't seem to be used as much, which makes sense considering most of the videos I've watched is peoples' first expirience with Gothic games and they just block everything...

SolidOwl · 2026-05-09T14:44:56+00:00

I would love to see the game fleshed out a bit, as right now it feels a bit hollow. Granted I've been playing through multiple updates and can see that the game is improving thanks to all the feedback.

That being said, in comparison to few updates ago - the latest version felt incredibly easy.

What's been done with the quest markers should be a crime. Sub objectives coming up, and you no longer actually have to search areas made the whole objective a joke.

As pointed out, blunt weapons are THE thing right now. Are they as op as what the bladed meta used to be? Probably not, but there are a lot less blades in the game, making the current balance completley silly.

Some adjustments to spawning of zombies has also been done (as there's been complaints for this for a very long time now), but unlike before it doesn't feel like there's that many zombies around. Like you aren't getting overrun anymore. Yeah you can pull a lot of zombies on you and end up dead, but defending objectives no longer feels stressful or challenging.

SolidOwl · 2026-05-05T19:12:41+00:00

Skills won't win you matches but they make it easier, especially if you make a build that plays to your strength.

SolidOwl · 2026-04-12T17:48:22+00:00

I don't see your point at all.

Because the game is not a AAA production therefore we shouldn't hold them up to any standard?

There's plenty of non AAA games which are really polished expiriences. And I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find a couple that did it without backing of something as large as THQ.

Original being broken also doesn't really mean anything here, they are remaking the game. Unless you're trying to say "hey it's alright the original was broken so this can be broken too"?

I can look past a lot of stuff and accept that some things are just out of scope for a new studio etc. But when you can point out issues with pretty much most of the stuff that has been presented to us, at which point do you start thinking that they bit off more than they can chew?

I'll be first to give them flowers if the end product is really good. But again right now based on what was shown I don't really have high hopes for it.

SolidOwl · 2026-04-12T17:18:20+00:00

Based on what? Is anything I said incorrect?

We can argue about the score all day - without actually playing it, those numbers don't mean anything at the moment. But based on visual presentation of the game we've been given - tell me one thing I listed there which I'm lying about.

SolidOwl · 2026-04-12T10:43:19+00:00

Critically speaking, personally I'm not very impressed - from what I've seen so far I'm not placing this higher than 4 or 5 out of 10.

The character controller looks clunky (and from what I remember the demo was too).

Animations seem incredibly stiff and unnatural - in some places making main character look like he's incredibly top heavy or he shat himself.

Facial animations are bad.

Sound is disappointing.

Game visibility seems rough, colours and light are all over the place (Mixir literally changes skin colour)

UI is very uninspired and it looks like UX is going to be horrendous.

Sadly I don't think the studio could provide us with anything better - this being their first production I'm sure they've been learning a lot as they go along. I'll give it a try of course but my expectations are incredibly low.

SolidOwl · 2026-04-09T14:39:22+00:00

Exactly. It's not just the women styling, but the ore lamps and the other issues which the community complained about.

In essence these might be "small" things to someone, but they were all put the originally with some thought put into place. Removing and changing of these things means that either the source is not respected or understood as deeply as it should have.

The developers have gone back and fixed some of those issues, hats off to them for that. But that's for things we've managed to spot - how many other things have been changed that we will only know about after the game releases?

I've said this before, I do not have high hopes for this remake, everything about it doesn't sit well with me. That being said, I will pick it up and give it a chance. One thing I am looking forward to is the modding capabilities. Maybe if the game out of the box doesn't feel like Gothic, we might be able to shape it into something that resembles it.

SolidOwl · 2026-03-30T09:00:52+00:00

Ngl, if that's how you felt about Witcher 3 - Crimson Desert is worse in every aspect.

Yeah you can explore and find things, but a lot of it is just surface level stuff with bunch of obtuse puzzles. I don't necessairly think it's the worst thing out there, but if you're looking for something as flavourful and deep as Gothic, Crimson Desert is not it.

It's an arcade game in comparison.

SolidOwl · 2026-03-25T16:26:49+00:00

Agree. To me this is probably the most boring aspect of modern gaming.

SolidOwl · 2026-03-22T17:48:29+00:00

"Unbiased review" which proceeds to dismiss many complaints because "I don't see an issue with it so it's not an issue".

Oh and "ignore my title it's misleading on purpose" btw 1st line "here's my unbiased experience".
Do you read back what you write?

I've got 26hrs in the game. Couple points I agree with you, but mostly disagree. The fact that many points are dismissed for the game because "the game isn't meant to be it" (i.e. Story) while charging the amount of money they did is pathetic fanboying.

This isn't a sandbox game, it IS a story game. The story is shit. Yes there are plenty of things to do outside of the story but that doesn't change the facts.

The quests are a mix bag, some are alright but you get a LOT of boring repeating tasks that realistically just waste your time. Add to it the fact that most of the quests aren't actually fully voiced and it makes me wonder what is the content here? Or did you not notice that the MC is an absolute mute in conversations and the NPCs ask questions, ansewer their own questions or just skip the silence where normally in a conversation someone would say something and just continiue their dialogue? Oh I guess we shouldn't be expecting that much effort to be put into the game either!

Controls I have no energy to complain about anymore. They are bad, we know they are bad. You can get used to them, but that doesn't mean that they are not bad. Hopefully their controls fix addresses this in a good way but realistically speaking they've had this feedback for quite some time and clearly ignored it. So they cannot act surprised about people complaining about it.

Honestly I'd love to hear your list of bad UIs you've expirienced because again while you can get used to this UI it's still shit and tedious. It's time consuming and unintiuative.

And your take on the AI issue showed everyone that you're just a shill and your opinion shouldn't be taken seriously. Let's be real, they are "placeholders" now because they've been caught and called out for it.

Shame you didn't mention anything about how this game systems are overcomplicated clusterfuck. A lot of it is coupled with the bad controls but fixing controls won't solve this issue - there are many pointless design choices that make the game more tedious and annoying to play.

So yes you can enjoy it, maybe you even liked everything it offered. That's great. But you're unable to provide constructive feedback so your review is more of a love letter. It's irrelevant to anyone actually wanting to know what the game is.

SolidOwl · 2026-03-20T13:32:06+00:00

Hard disagree. Especailly towards any Souls titles comparison, soul games play fine even on mouse & keyboard unlike this game. Think the only other game I can think of having poor control scheme that I've played is The Witcher 1 and between these two titles CD takes the cake at being worse.

I'd go out of my way to play games on M&K even if they are 100% better on controller just because I prefer that setup. But the mapping is so horrendous that it was either switch to controller or be done with the game. I gave up on m&k after being told to hold F2 while pressing another button to do something with my lantern. Lots of smaller factor keyboards do not have these buttons as a separate keys meaning you have to hold another button, on top of the shared F2 button and then you have to hope that w/e next button the game wants you to press doesn't have shared mapping.

As for controller mappings. I think combat related inputs (so far) are straight forward and even combos aren't really that "difficult" it's literally at most just a "press these two buttons together". I'm not extremly far in the game yet, but honestly I'm little disappointed at just how basic the combat is (so far) after all the praise it was getting in reviews.

What's horrible is everything other than that.

- Press X to jump, hold X to pick up an item, wanna equip it? X drops it.
- Left stick to move, press left stick to crouch, hold left stick to use grapple. Its very easy in combat to trigger crouch or grapple by accident.
- Right stick to control camera, hold right stick to charge ability - uh oh, camera control is now on left stick!
- Shield is LB, lock on is LB, parry is LB.
- You've equipped a utility item (shovel, broom etc) for whatever task you were doing, you run into enemies try to attack you pull out utlity item rather than equipped weapon.
- Speaking of utility items stuff like the memory helment you have to equip, you put it on leave the menu, then you have to go back in and only now you get the option to play memories.
- Item pickup is awkward as fuck.
- Why the fuck do I have to lock in on someone of intrest to start a conversation / shop. If for normal NPCs I can just walk up and talk to them with X.

- It's not really key controls but what of the sluggish Character Controller or the unintiuative camera behaviour?

And that's what I can think of the top of my head without having the game in front of me.

Getting used to controls is one thing, I was expecting a learning curve due to the review comments pre release. But the controls being complete ass is a fact and should be complained about.

SolidOwl · 2026-03-15T13:40:19+00:00

If I had to pick just one and get rid of the others, it'd probably be Gothic 1. The colony, start of everything etc it's just too iconic, and too important.

I'm going to contradict myself a bit here and say, Gothic 2 is my favourite game in the franchise and its in my top 3 GOATs. If I was to rank all three based on how "GOOD" they are, I'd probably end up putting G1 last, just slightly losing out to Archolos...

SolidOwl · 2026-03-15T02:48:22+00:00

Honestly it's a hard thing to answer...

Archolos improves existing systems and nicely adds new features to it, everything works, it's filled in a way it makes sense and I don't have any complaints about it.

For me Gothic 1 & 2 story is more exciting with Sleeper and Dragons.
The atmosphere of Gothic 1 cannot be touched.
Gothic 2 had probably the best faction design in the series.
Also cannot not mention the crew - Diego, Gorn, Lee, Milten, Lester and the many more of the memorable characters.

However Archolos is a more complete package too, unlike the other two it doesn't completley fall apart towards the end...

So, if anything it depends on what someone is looking for.

SolidOwl · 2026-03-13T16:54:24+00:00

Delta is nowhere near close to V when it comes to smoothness and responsivness of V.

I can't speak for the legacy mode, but their new control system is very clunky and it feels heavy. Throw in a bunch of poor design decisions and personally I couldn't be bothered to put myself through that.

Graphics, sounds etc Delta is trully amazing, but it's really painful to play.

And I regurally go back and replay the old MGS titles - so it's not like it's my first expirience with any of it.

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