It's pre-rendered in a sense, but there is a lot of recombination going on. It's basically a Mr. Potato Head made of shaders. Face parts, hair, skin tone, and clothing can change independently, and I'm exploring body shape options (they will probably be a bit more limited than before, but hopefully not too much). I'm not aware of any other developers that use this approach, probably because AI just made it viable and we're all still exploring what's possible.
Thanks for the answer, but I still think that the transition from 3D to 2D is a mistake. Yes, working with 2D art is much easier and faster (especially with the help of AI), but this will greatly limit the potential for customization and will drive the game into the framework of a lack of replayability. All characters will be the same because they are pre-rendered.
And prerender 200 - 300 variants of NPCs and pieces of their bodies and then “sculpting” a finished image from this is, in practice, impossible. Any developer will go insane. Even 1 NPC with such an approach is a couple of hundred pieces of art. Fat, plump, thin, with large breasts, with small ones, black, white, red, with a large areola and small nipples, with small nipples and a large areola, etc. I’m tired of writing, and you have to do it all.
Upd.
You mean that you will render only parts of the body (head, torso, legs, etc.) and then assemble a “character” from this. I've seen this many times, often resulting in "ugly mutants". If this is exactly the approach you meant. You can try, but again, this will limit the design of the game itself. The visual part of the “world” will suffer. But once again, we can take a look on a result.
