Topic: Holy Horror Mansion

Okay, i made this thread quickly after i found interesting article about Level-5 games trailer after i watched Transformers One at my local cinema XXI for the fourth time.
I was surprised to see Pikotaro PPAP and AvantGardey from Got Talent show were featured as new Yokai design.
Not gonna lie, i was chuckled to see PPAP Yokai as Apple Pen creature. 😆
So, from my first thought, it looks like the Yokai spirit will become creature after possessed them. Kinda like poltergeist phenomenon.
Anyway, what is your thought about this game?

I was excited for the game until I realized that they're using generative ai art for the backgrounds in the video. Now I'm not going to get the game.

Guessing it's a Switch 2 game, if it comes to a Nintendo console. Noticed they don't say what platforms it's coming to, it says, that's "a secret". And it's not coming that soon. I'm guessing 2026. The fact that the trailer says "work in progress" "not actual footage", sounds like game's release is two years away.

@VoidofLight Why do you say "they're using generative ai art for the backgrounds in the video"? How do you know?

@WoomyNNYes Zoom in on some of the scenes. A lot of the little details genuinely don't add up. In the thumbnail of the video if you zoom in towards the desk you can see Ai artifacting in the desk lamp and on the big machine next to the desk. The light hanging on the ceiling also has something wrong with it. In one of the shots of the city they show a railing with half lacking the bottom rail that should be there.

These inconsistencies combined with Level 5's powerpoint where they tried to make a case for Ai usage in game development to the Japanese government leads me to believe that this is Ai art. The other uses of Ai that Level 5 has been utilizing are: Ai Upscaling for old promo images (inoffensive imo), Ai being used to randomize rooms in Decapolice along with ChatGTP being used to write sidequests, and then them experimenting with Ai to try to recreate Yokai Watch's art style based off of promotional images that were drawn by people on the team (dubious and sets a dangerous precedent).

@VoidofLight I think the artifacting I see is youtube compression. Youtube doesn't care if you have 1080p selected. They will compress that sh*t.😆😁

@WoomyNNYes Nope. The lamp on the desk looked like it was melting in the high quality version of the thumbnail as well.

Just saw the trailer and that looked kinda cool. Looks a bit different from the previous Yo-Kai Watch games and it sort of looks like a reboot or spin-off, but the new concepts look kind of interesting and the absurd humor of the 3DS games look to still be there, and that is great.

I think one of Yo-Kai Watch’s greatest strengths was its weird, kiddy, and fun humor alongside the personalities of the yokai, though I wasn’t expecting the Pen Pineapple Apple Pen guy to show up for a few seconds.

The fact that the yokai are going to be tied to different dances rather than themes and tribes is interesting. It also seemed like the titular watch is going to be replaced with a camera, so it makes me think that the game is going to be replacing a lot of the concepts from the previous games.

I really like the haunted mansion-esque theming they chose for some parts of the trailer, but I wonder when this is going to release. Probably not anytime soon given the footage isn’t from a finished build of the game and was more like a concept trailer, plus there’s apparently been something going on with Level-5 repeatedly delaying their upcoming games by a few years, like that Decapolice game supposed to be released this year getting delayed by two more years. I don’t know if I will get it when it releases, but it is nice to see Yo-Kai Watch coming back, cuz I haven’t heard anything on that series for a good while and it fell out of popularity in the West a few years ago.

Still on the topic of Yo-Kai Watch, I do wonder if they are going to still localize the 4th game, but given that game did poorly commercially and the fact that you need to not only have played previous games but watch an anime series and anime film (which also haven’t been localized) to understand and know some of the characters in that game, I am really doubtful they will go through with that, plus that game was released five years ago.

@VoidofLight Ohhhh, I see some of the weird stuff now. That desk room environment does look AI generated. Like the pipe vent above 4ft about the left side of the desk, it blends strangely into the environment. And the refrigerator sized thing to the left of the desk looks like it has a magnetic computer tape reel on it: Those are always two reels of tape, but here it's only one reel. I've never seen a single reel, it's incomplete. ...and yeah, i see what you're saying about the desk light now.

@WoomyNNYes the tape reel also has holes on it that look really wonky. A touch that an experienced artist tends to not mess up.