A lot of people are annoyed about this post for multiple valid reasons but I do think "our narrative conventions have been shaped by a material world our daily experience no longer resembles" is actually an interesting problem
I think we’re all ignoring the discussion lurking about regarding the fact that if something as simple as the frame of your image has to be *this* malleable, your art is being compromised in the womb.
The thing about these kinds of Gen AI use cases is that the BBC could have easily made this video before these tools existed - you could do it with actors in makeup, you could do it with traditional VFX.
The fact that you're only doing it now means you only thought it was worth doing once the cost was essentially zero. That is to say, the content's existence has become a tacit acknowledgement of its own worthlessness.
It rules how the game: (a) actively admonishes you via the 'sorry cop' & 'boring cop' Copotypes for going out of your way to avoid this, and (b) teaches you why/how to lean into it by showing you how those choices can provoke revealing, helpful responses from people
City 17 in Half-Life is a masterclass in art direction. Mixing monolithic, brutalist alien architecture right into the heart of a decaying, post-Soviet European city creates a sense of dystopian dread that most games struggle to replicate. It feels hauntingly real.
I miss when games did commentary modes. I learned a *lot* of my level/game design sense from Valve designers banging their heads against the wall for why their levels/systems weren't working, and how to tune for each and every moment of a level.
I just don’t get it, you could literally read a book every day until you die and not even scratch the surface of what’s been written. The bottleneck has never been quantity, who is demanding more poorly written crap