Hello to all our old and new friends, I am Yang Bin from Sense Games, the producer of AI LIMIT. In January of this year, we unveiled the game's first official trailer. In the blink of an eye, it's already May. Over the past few months, the members of our studio have been working tirelessly to ensure the development progress, striving to present our game to you all within this year.
As a new game from China, AI LIMIT has received so much attention and love, and all the developers, including myself, are deeply grateful for this. While we are busily preparing a new trailer, we hope to share the world view and design ideas of AI LIMIT with dev log.
Inspirations Behind AI LIMIT: Where does the game world come from?
Many players may have first learned about AI LIMIT from the PlayStation China Hero Project, but the story actually began much earlier. The Go match between Lee Sedol and AlphaGo in 2016 shocked the whole world. At that moment, I realized that AI might no longer be an unattainable dream in science fictions. Since then, I have been considering using this title for some game creation.
In 2017, there was the release of the BLAME! film edition in Japan. The original work was created by the Japanese manga artist Mr.Tsutomu Nihei. The cold, eerie, yet grand fictional post-apocalyptic cityscape deeply impressed me with its unique charm. As a player who enjoys various post-apocalyptic themed games, from that moment on, I was determined to combine the two major themes of artificial intelligence and post-apocalyptic settings to create my unique wasteland in the world of gaming.
When it comes to post-apocalyptic themed games, we can always think of those well-known works: Fallout, The Last of Us, Borderlands, Resident Evil, Horizon... Civilization declines, abandoned cities are overrun by rejuvenated plants, desolate streets are wandering with zombies, bio-mutants, mechanical beasts, and even alien creatures. The causes of the wasteland are also no more than familiar elements such as global nuclear war, bio-viruses (fungal technology!), or intellectual crisis. Although we wanted to create a wasteland evolved from an artificial intelligence crisis, it wasn't a particularly novel idea. So, what would truly be unique? This question actually troubled us for a long time until an ordinary thing caught our attention - plants.
What would happen if plants went extinct? Generally speaking, people in a post-apocalyptic world often lack the ability to transform the ecology (otherwise they wouldn't be in such a situation). The extinction of plants means that the atmospheric environment and food sources that humans rely on would no longer exist. Most post-apocalyptic themes tend to focus on their own subjects and don't mind sharing the end-of-the-world scenario with plants - so we decided to challenge this notion.
After deciding to remove the element of plants, constructing a post-apocalyptic world would inevitably require an explanation of what is supporting the atmospheric environment and food sources - this explanation can naturally return to the theme of artificial intelligence. Starting from this point, a plethora of ideas emerged: out-of-control technology, plant extinction, organic life forms, urban megastructures, the legend of Elysium... We abandoned the popular elements like mecha science fiction, zombies, and alien invasions, and ultimately constructed a post-apocalyptic world that only belongs to AI LIMIT.
Level Design: How to present a post-apocalyptic world in the style of AI LIMIT?
The story of AI LIMIT takes place in a city called Havenswell, where you start the game as a Blader, venturing from the edges of the wasteland all the way to the heart of the city, and accomplishing feats that have a profound impact on the world. This means that the scale of the game will be a considerable challenge for us: to construct an entire world that is both fantastical yet serious, and to immerse the players within it.
Indeed, we greatly admire the highly interconnected design between maps in the first Dark Souls, where all areas are centered around the Firelink Shrine within a space of several hundred meters. However, for a post-apocalyptic city that pursues a realistic scale and has a radius of over ten kilometers, this is difficult to achieve. Due to the volume of the levels and technical limitations, we did not present this world in a seamless form.
The large framework of level-based design naturally has its advantages: stronger thematic elements and the ability to focus more on the design of route exploration. During actual gameplay, to eliminate the psychological gap between the size of the playable area and the actual size of the city, the player's journey will interweave between various different scenes on the surface and underground of the city. Through a 'scene-changing-as-you-move' approach, players will cross the city without realizing it. Such an arrangement also showcases the richness of the city's scenery on the other hand. Players are not just constantly shuttling back and forth through the streets of ruins; instead, they experience a variety of wonders on a more three-dimensional, gigantic urban structure.
Sunken City is a level in the early to mid-game, and it is also one of the unique urban landscapes that we hope to showcase to players. Unlike the common post-apocalyptic street scenes, due to the subsidence of the earth's crust, the surface of Sunken City is submerged by lakes, making the ground areas inaccessible. Players must traverse elevated roads, rooftops of buildings, temporarily constructed suspension bridges, and zip lines to explore the city in the sky.
In the design of the architecture, we have to some extent referenced the style of Brutalism, with its exteriors and interiors often utilizing concrete materials, which can effectively convey the city's cold and desolate atmosphere.
Sewer Town is a massive sewer system that runs through the underground of the city and appears multiple times throughout the game. It includes not only dark, damp, and winding narrow tunnels but also vast underground spaces that seem to stretch on endlessly. Due to the continuous changes in the geological layers, there are varying degrees of collapse and faults throughout the sewer system. People forgotten by the post-apocalyptic world hide in these places, vying for the remaining space with the monsters that roam here.
These two areas are just a small part of Havenswell's post-apocalyptic world; we have many more breathtaking views waiting for everyone to explore.
Character Design: The Birth of the Protagonist and Enemies in AI LIMIT
As an ARPG, the protagonist design of AI LIMIT is naturally of utmost importance. Attentive players may have already deduced from the first PV that our protagonist Blader Arrisa is not human, but rather a new type of life form closely related to the core worldview. The various characteristics displayed on her body: the cracks on her skin, the deep red shell-like left arm, and the luminous patterns in her pupils are all manifestations that correspond to it.
In terms of appearance, the early version of Arrisa had long bright pink hair, but as we delved deeper into the game's world and established more details, to adapt to this rugged and brutal adventure and make the protagonist's crawling and fighting in the ruins more natural, we adjusted her image to a cool short light pink hair (not white hair!) , and the design of various suits also changed from exquisite tailoring to a more post-apocalyptic mix-and-match style.
On another aspect that players are concerned about, the combat performance of the protagonist is more agile compared to traditional Souls-like games, yet more grounded compared to fast-paced action games. It's roughly positioned between Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne, although individual experiences may vary. Overall, the action performance is quite agile, and the cancellation of recovery animations and aimed stop have been adjusted to a more lenient degree. We hope that players will not feel overwhelmed by enemies in terms of basic attribute, and that the confrontations with enemies will return to a test of skill and mentality.
With a powerful protagonist, naturally there must be a rich array of enemies. Taking one of the enemy factions in the game, the Necros, as an example. Necro is a general term for a type of monster that wreaks havoc throughout the city. Their appearance mainly features elements such as spikes, blades, tentacles, silver shells, and insect-like wings, symbolizing chaos and slaughter.
The Necros possess overwhelming strength. Some move with swift and eerie agility, making them elusive and hard to predict. Others have sharp claws and blades that not only deal damage but also inflict very troublesome status effects. Some can harness extremely dense energy to create explosions and rays... Even with enhanced mobility, it is by no means easy for players to withstand the onslaught of the Necros. Only by leveraging all available resources and thoroughly mastering every aspect of the combat system can one hope to tame this rebellious wasteland.
This the end of first dev log. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to comment below. We will select the questions that are of concern to everyone and provide answers in the next dev log.
Feel free to contact us through the official Discord and X account.
Discord: discord.gg/bTBPQPVz7D
X: @CEAsiaHK
If you are interested in AI LIMIT, please add it to your Steam wishlist, it's really important to us!
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2407270/AI_LIMIT/
May the Branch guide your path.
