miHoYo, the developer behind Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, and other gacha titles, has released a teaser video for its upcoming Unreal Engine 5 project. It’s a fantasy MMO which, you guessed it, makes use of AI.
Spotted by users on ResetEra, miHoYo’s hiring department posted a video and additional project information on Xiaohongshu (a Chinese social media platform). The post lists out a number of key quirks of the game, including MMO, PvP, Open World, “Artificial Intelligence Stimulated Eco System”, All-Terrain Battle AI, and “Intellectual NPC”.
It’s worth noting that these are translated, and therefore the exact wording must be taken with a grain of salt. However, it does provide some manner of insight into one of miHoYo’s big upcoming projects. First of all, one immediate thing one can see from the post is that the aesthetic of this mysterious new project isn’t miHoYo’s typical anime style. Instead, you see the obvious marks of Unreal Engine 5.
What might raise an eye brow is the mention of AI there, which miHoYo has used in the past in Zenless Zone Zero to “smoothen” the development process. The company has previous drawn a line in the sand when it comes to AI art and voicework, and claimed it had AI voice protections in its contracts when a contract dispute led to the recasting of SAGAFTRA members.
This post appears to indicate a continuation of miHoYo’s approach to AI in game development, though obviously the full extent of its use remains unclear. We don’t know the name of the game, when it’ll be coming out, what the gameplay will actually look like… It’s a big question mark over the company’s line-up at the moment.
What isn’t a mystery are some of the other games miHoYo is working on, including a monster-collection game called Honkai: Nexus Anima. For now, we’ll have to just hunker down and wait for more information as to this new project.