Gundam Breaker 4 Vs AI Slop
9/2/2024
This article contains SPOILERS for Gundam Breaker 4! If you want to see it all for yourself, blind, you better go now! All screenshots in this page were taken by myself on my own purchased copy of the game on Nintendo Switch.
Gundam Breaker 4 has been a Gundam fan's dream release. Even if you don't love Gundam or aren't a part of the general mecha culture, you might just have some fun with the sheer level of customization and self-expression that the game allows. The core gameplay is fairly reminiscent of a Musou style game, with some beam rifles and Hyper Mega Cannons for good measure. I can't put this damn game down! But anyone who played through the Story mode over the last weekend might have been met with an uncomfortable handling of a touchy subject. AI in game development.
The main villain of the game, Chaos, was a developer on the in-game video game called GB4. He goes rogue and attempts to take control of the game himself, having quit the development team after they began using AI to "run simulations", as he says. He damn near calls it AI slop verbatim, at the start of his scene where this all starts to be revealed.
Chaos, by the way, is voiced by the amazing SungWon Cho. I only mention that because I don't want any criticisms I make of the story or writing to be aimed at him. He's a wonderful actor and overall cool human being, last I checked.
I'm not the only player that was caught off guard by this. Sure, keeping Chaos's motivation a secret is standard villainous writing, but I don't think anyone was expecting to suddenly feel like they were on the wrong team! Chaos's speech continues, just driving home the fact that he is taking over the game to put human creativity back inside it. He even says he's against easy profits at the cost of human potential. How are we supposed to hate this guy?
Generative AI, in almost everything has been an issue for years. While there are ways to train AI on ethically sourced data, we've known for a while now that this kind of "brute force" computing brings a crazy carbon footprint and uses up a lot of water. It's creeping its way into places like animation and voice acting to try and replace creative jobs as soon as possible. To put it another way, it sucks, and the struggle to keep this out of as many places as possible is an ongoing war.
Back to Gundam Breaker 4, the situation continues to be queasy as the finale plays out. Our heroes, naturally, react negatively to Chaos's take over of their favorite game, and kidnapping of their AI friend, Lillin. Yes, their AI friend.
Lillin here falls into the classic "emotionless" cuteness archetype. Think Nagato Yuki or Rei Ayanami. At first, she speaks very little, but over the course of the game she opens up and develops a more outward personality with her friends. Said friends are you and the other heroes of the game. Later on, she's revealed to be a part of the "Mother AI" who helps control the game. How much of the in-universe game is AI driven is not extremely clear, because talking to human developers is also brought up a few times in the story. This "Mother AI" started making bot players in order to learn more about how people were playing its game. Lillin is one of those bots.
Chaos kidnaps Lillin in order to bait the heroes into coming to save her and trying to stop them.
This is an interesting little idea on paper, but it doesn't take much reflection to see that saving our AI friend and being against AI use in game development are simply not the same thing. Nobody on the hero team seems to have any refute to Chaos spitting some heat. Other than, of course, that they love Lillin and GB4 the way it is.
There's nothing wrong with saving your friends and wanting to keep your favorite game online. If we take this at face value, Gundam Breaker 4 is just tone-deaf. It's clumsily written and unprepared to even brush the surface of these kinds of issues. Lamentable, but not condemnable or damning in any way. But all this left such a bad taste in my mouth that the thought crossed my mind...
Was this intentional?
I know to suggest this implies something completely ridiculous: That Bandai Namco (or CRAFTS ＆ MEISTER Co., Ltd, responsible for development) would carefully craft a story where the heroes are pro-AI and the villain is anti-AI in order to warm up their customers for any AI-shit-shenanigans that could come in the future. Why else make the most visibly cute character, who needs rescuing against the final boss, an AI? Why else have the villain be against AI in game development specifically? Chaos does give a passing mention to "the singularity" (as in, the even that would create actual artificial intelligence), and finds himself amazed at Lillin's growth. But that's not what he was talking about earlier, not at all! And yet, he concedes to the heroes that...uh, AI is fine, I guess? Because Lillin is close enough to being a human, or effectively is one?
There's a lot of details missing from this story that would help us judge it further. What exactly were these "simulations" that were being run with AI? Are levels and missions generated by AI? What do the human developers do? We do know that Chaos quit his job and was not fired, but its use in the development is still what drove him to try and remove all AI presence in the game. It just so happens that AI presence includes a cute girl now. So, uh, generative AI is bad until it becomes sapient? ...sure.
Again, I don't think I could say with a straight face that the story in Gundam Breaker 4 is a part of some kind of conspiracy to normalize this crap. If it is, I really doubt it's gonna work. But it's so damned stupid in just the right ways that it's also hard to believe that it's an accident. Do you have to try and make something that's this confused, or is this an unfortunate case of swinging for modern issues and striking out?
It's not like Bandai Namco is a stranger to jumping onto these kinds of "trends" (for lack of a better phrase). This is the same Bandai Namco that tried to put a machine learning AI as representative for its wider Gundam Metaverse plans. Hell, just under a year ago they bothered to name a short series Gundam Build Metaverse. I can't say I'm completely abreast of how those first two projects are turning out, but there's definitely an interest in "tech trends" on Bandai's part, and specifically with their Gundam IP.
I'm still going to be kind to Gundam Breaker 4, hell, I'm probably gonna play it right after I publish this. If you want my serious final word, I believe this is all a big fluke. They struck out. I can, to an extent, admire most misses at big themes, if they're in good faith. But this one was such a disappointing and poorly thought out one that I couldn't help but briefly imagine that it was all an insidious plot. There are no AI-generated textures, voices, or assets in the game that I'm aware of, so I will say the coast is clear, for now.
Whatever stupid crap Bandai might be up to with NFTs, the Metaverse (whatever it is), or generative AI, I have little fear that it will be met with anything other than harsh criticism, and a forced retreat. Square Enix is still trying their hand at blockchain, NFT crap, to no good reception that I've ever seen. I suspect a similar fate for Bandai. They can try, but they will fail. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't push back when it shows up. Hell, today, as I write this, NaNoWriMo is getting their shit blasted for endorsing AI in writing. This is the energy we're going to need to keep in the coming years. We can't be dissuaded by any shiny, pretty projects, flowery language, or fun video game, that might try to convince us otherwise. Gundam Breaker 4 isn't one of those games. I think. But that Story Mode is on thin ice.
See you next time!
- James