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If the development cycle of Black Myth: Wukong was anything to go by, we could be waiting quite some time for its follow-up, Black Myth: Zhong Kui.
The successor was announced roughly one year ago via a cinematic trailer, and several months later, it was confirmed for an eventual console release. Let's face it, though: this is almost certainly a PS6 game.
But has developer Game Science considered utilising AI to speed things up? This is a question that was posed to studio co-founder Yang Qi through Chinese social media platform Weibo (as per GamerSky and Noisy Pixel).
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Fortunately for everyone who's sick of hearing about how generative AI is being used to create placeholder assets during game development, Yang says the company has no plans to utilise the technology.
Instead, the team will continue to rely on existing methods — which makes sense, when you consider just how striking Black Myth: Wukong is in an artistic sense. Game Science will want to repeat — or better — that level of visual excellence with Zhong Kui.
However, Yang doesn't sound completely opposed to AI. He goes on to suggest that the tech simply isn't ready to benefit the studio's production timelines yet.
AI obviously continues to be a highly controversial topic when it comes to all things creative, but there's no doubt that many development outfits are now making use of it — as evidenced by the number of AI-generated assets that people have been picking out in shipped titles.
More often than not, these assets are quickly replaced through a patch or two, with the developer claiming that they happened to slip through the net. Still, the evidence is there for all to see.
What's your take on the current state of AI in game production? Are you happy to see a team like Game Science avoid the technology for now? Make sure you're human in the comments section below.