This AI uproar confuses me. I get that the "expressiveness" of the scenes has changed, but how focused y'all are on the art changes is... weird. If you don't like it, play an old version or replace the assets with the old ones.
Also, people who hate on AI art and "artists" don't make sense. The art was done for the game. The artist likely has no further say in the pieces already used in the game as they are likely property of the game maker, now. Likely it was part of the agreement that they'd be able to edit whatever art was received if desired or necessary, including cropping to fit, etc.
The weirdos review-bombing really need to go outside. This isn't some artefact or piece of history that needs to be preserved. Dev made a decision to go in a different direction with some of the art. If you don't like it, don't play it. Y'all act like customers who got a bad product when most of you probably aren't even supporting the game financially.
Good to know you haven't ignored tons of non-AI-related critical comments that highlight low-quality of the Gold Edition, which in turn suggests that "devs've chosen the different path" in reality is just devs cutting corners while failing to deliver their promises. Which kinda justify review bombing and all the negative attention devs got, given how they failed to do their job at developing the game.
I'd like to remind anyone apologetic that one of selling points of Gold Edition was bug fixing. Yet the opposite happened - game got tons of new bugs, many of which break the progression. Your companions can despawn from your party, there is no longer meaningful leveling system, gallery was somehow made much worse from a mess it already was, all the while ages-old bugs like castle defense difficulty select or quest log not working were not fixed at all.
Honestly, this game once again feels like pre-1.0 versions, which were a notorious mess of bugs and crashes that I've had a displeasure of playing. So, basically, we got a regress in many aspects of the game in edition that was supposed to fix things.
As for why people are focused on art changes... BECAUSE MOST OF NEW ART IS DOGSHIT. It simply has low quality, tons of mistakes, non-existant or misfitting emotions and other defects. In case you do not believe me, you can check this thread and my posts specifically, because I post and assess each artistic change I encounter, as well as some bugs.
Pre-empting possible accusations of hating the AI, you could also check that I've voiced my support for AI in general and commended some of AI pictures.
I am not a hater. But this update is dogshit that should be critisized. And devs made a greedy fuck-up and thus should be critisized as well.
