I’m betting on the bad kind

MiHoYo appear to be eternally busy. After printing copious amounts of money with games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, they are continuing to do so with future releases like Petit Planet (or Not Animal Crossing) and Honkai: Nexus Anima (Not Pokemon). Now, it turns out, they’re also working on an MMO, seemingly codenamed Genesis, that seemingly in some capacity incorporates AI, it’s just unclear what kind.

As spotted over on ResetEra (thanks, Eurogamer), miHoYo shared a very short kind of teaser video acting as a sort of recruitment post for said MMO that’s described as a “fantasy realism open world game.” Details are quite slim, unsurprisingly, but here are the ones of note. It’ll be made in Unreal Engine 5, it’ll have PvP, “Intellectual NPC,” and the two potentially controversial bits, an “Artificial Intelligence Stimulated Eco System,” and “All-Terrain Battle AI.”

Watch on YouTube

A few points worth mentioning here. Something could have been lost in translation here, so it might not be talking about the bad kind of AI you and I hate. AI as a term has obviously been used to describe NPC behaviours for a long time too, so it could just be that. But miHoYo are no strangers to AI usage, they’ve even done so in Zenless Zone Zero, and I’m not sure what an AI stimulated eco system could mean other than the bad kind. So, take all of this cautiously and skeptically until there’s more details.

Judging from the very short teaser that exists, whatever Genesis ends up being like, it’ll probably be a lot less anime (as vague a descriptor as that is) than games like Genshin Impact. A potential divergence for the company that relies on people getting much too invested in jiggly, overly cute women. Well, and the occasional man these days too. Diversity win!