Over the past few days, the trailer of the action-adventure indie title Fallen has gone viral. Aside from being “filtered through a biblical lens”, inspired by Hyper Light Drifter and Death's Door, the trailer quickly gained traction on social media for its apparent use of generative AI, garnering scorn from viewers.
While the game's creators, Superboo Studios, have openly admitted to using generative AI for “QA, 2D animation of featured images, level prototyping, lore management, and more”, founder, director, producer, and writer Brooke Burgess tried to clarify the situation with us at TheGamer, saying that “realistic, atmospheric, combgame, combatine”. In-engine UE5.4 work.”
Fallen is a type of AI game, but not the type, the developer points out
“I'm not flying the flag for AI by any means,” Burgess told GamesIndustry.Biz last week, detailing the struggle to raise capital to create an indie game in today's market. “I'm not going to sell my soul and say, 'Yes, I'll do it myself, let me bring this whole game into existence'. No, I want to work with really talented people and make something good. But if integrating it in a way that doesn't affect creativity, but helps save a little money and the game gives me a chance to do something and make people better there. After that – it's something that I have to factor in,” he continued.
He told the website that “every publisher” he talked to asked him how he planned to save money using the much-maligned technology, and that it was something he had to juggle. However, after the release of the trailer, it looks like she might have better call it quits.
The trailer for Fallen, uploaded to IGN's YouTube channel, received widespread response, with commenters describing it as “so AI-generated it's disgusting”. It wasn't meant to be though.
What was shared as an 'official trailer' was actually our initial dev 'tone pitch'.
“I think most confusion boils down to context,” Burgess tells me. “What was ultimately shared as an 'official trailer' was actually our initial dev 'tone pitch,' i.e., a work-in-progress UE5 teaser designed for funding discussions. [AI-Generated] There are placeholders, especially some 2D test assets used to explore mood and presentation (for example, how 'lost souls' and fallen angels in the game might react when spoken and judged, w/ WIP HUD elements). That content was never intended as final content, nor as a statement of how a shipped game would be made.
Burgess says that everything in the trailer, including gameplay, environments, cinematics and combat, is “real, in-engine UE5.4 work” and adds, “All writing is mine (no LLM), all audio is bespoke, VO is by my colleague Kasper Michaels, and all creative support + execution was done with my lead.”
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Everything will be “man-made” going forward from the studio.
Burgess' words seem sincere, but it's hard to see the obvious AI use in a presentation designed to help publishers sell the game, not only in the video but also in the game's pitch deck. The deck is full of AI images, and although there's a push to have a “stable, multirole team” at the studio, the presentation suggests it will lean heavily on tech.
In the budget breakdown, SuperBoo Studios says it will “use AI and pre-fab tools to streamline world building, animation and localization,” and in the previous slide, it talks about how AI will be used as a “force multiplier.”
Burgess says that the rage over placeholder generative AI content means that the game has “briefly escaped the context of survival,” something we're likely to see more of as AI becomes more prominent in video games. Last year, 11 Bit Studios accidentally left traces of generative AI in its existence in The Alters, Ubisoft dropped AI art in Anno 117, and similar placeholder text appeared in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, thus stripping the game of its Indie Game of the Year.
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