Redoing the whole game was serious not serious. You couldn't just start using AI art in the current game, it would change too drastically. A future game in EK's style made with imperfect AI art would be more consistent and faster to make, probably less stressful too.
I like the art in ORS, a lot could look better and be more consistent, but it does give it charm. The last update seems to have quite a few changes to Lena's look in a lot of the images, not the first time it has happened. It would be interesting that if Lena chose the drugs throughout the game, and smoked, and was a super slut, that she might start looking more haggard deeper into the game. The opposite on the other end where she is a monogamus clean girl. Similar to how Ian gets a few more lines on his mid section and arms if he goes to the gym a lot, but more evident. To me in the last update Lena looks a bit worn out in the new images.
I know you have seen what a couple in the FanArt thread can do on their own, and they aren't spending days doing it. They have been working on it for awhile at this point, and are getting very consistent images now. They can drop an image described to them in minutes. Compare to EK including 30 to 50 non-sprite images (a wild guess that seems close to me) in an update, I would guess a few of days of generating and tweaking images to suit would result in a lot more than that. They wouldn't even have to come up with the scene themselves, so less thinking more prompting.
The good images (there are some not so flattering ones) in the that thread are idealized versions of the current art, smooth and perfect, because that's what the AI knows, the ideal look the masses want. They could be made to not look so perfect, but telling an AI to make something not look as nice can be horrifying
(personal experience). It knows what people want, and when you try to tell it that something is too perfect, it struggles with making it less so. The plethora of AI Slop games that pop up show what the base AI is good at, perfect idealized images in a couple of pretty specific styles. 3d rendered games are idealized too, since players want a more perfect world to play in, not the real world. When a dev makes a skin for a model that is not perfect they get dinged for it being ugly.Personally I would take the overly smooth and perfect, but consistent art over the charming and inconsistent art. Purely because going from one scene to the next when the characters look slightly different can break the storytelling a little. Consistency in AI art takes awhile to get, but someone who isn't a full time or talented artist may never be able to draw consistent characters.
