Panache Digital Games has taken generative AI out of 1666: Amsterdam and will not use it again, studio head Patrice Desilets told GamesRadar+ in comments reported by PC Gamer.
The witchy action-adventure is the long-awaited dream project of Assassin's Creed co-creator Desilets, and its reveal at Summer Game Fest came with a playable prologue released alongside the announcement. Players working through that prologue began spotting in-game assets that carried what PC Gamer called the distinct whiff of generative AI, and the mood around the reveal changed quickly.
Panache acknowledged using AI in the production of certain assets, apologised, and promised to remove those elements in time for the early access launch. With that launch now behind it, Desilets says the studio has decoupled AI from its pipeline entirely and will not use the technology in future.
Confined to the early stages, the studio says
Speaking to GamesRadar+, Desilets stressed that Panache was done with generative AI and claimed most of the AI used had come in the early stages of the project. "Yes, we use some AI in the process, mostly at the beginning," he said.
In conception and pre-production. It's been totally removed and we won't be using it anymore.
PC Gamer welcomed the removal but took issue with the framing. Concepting, the outlet argued, is the most rewarding part of any creative project and the stage where most of the imaginative work happens, before the discipline and hard choices needed to actually finish a game set in. Handing that phase to a machine, it wrote, raises a philosophical question of its own: whether a game can reasonably be said to contain no generative AI if the technology helped imagine it in the first place.
Mixed reception in early access
1666: Amsterdam is now out in early access, and its Steam page does not carry an AI disclosure. Players are divided on the game itself: it currently sits at a Mixed rating with 66% positive reviews, with users praising the setting and the exploration while criticising clunky combat and a general lack of polish.