Hi, this is the director of Vapor World.

Following the AI removal hotfix, patch 0.5.4f10 is now live. Since launch, one of the most common pieces of feedback has been that movement feels slow and heavy. This patch greatly improves the movement and actions you can directly feel in play. It is a small patch. Please try it and see if it feels different.

• Greatly improved the character's movement speed, sluggish motion, and action feel.

• Fixed a critical bug where the game could not proceed past the title screen.

• Fixed the error that could reset save data.

Save data will no longer be reset. Thank you so much for bearing with us on this.

Going forward, unless a major content update makes it unavoidable, we will do our best to keep your save data safe.

Many of you have been asking more questions about AI, so I want to add a few more words here in this patch note.

To make things easier for you, I have been forcing myself to write in my poor English, but I don't think it works anymore. My words keep getting distorted in translation. So to avoid any more misunderstandings, let me say this in my mother tongue. From now on, for anything important like this, I will write in Korean, so my meaning stays intact.

많은 분들께서 AI에 대해 더 질문을 주고 계십니다. 이번 패치노트에서는 이 부분에 대해 몇 가지 더 이야기해 보려고 합니다.

먼저 말씀드리고 싶은 게 있습니다. 저희도 순수 AI 작업물 자체를 긍정적으로 보고 있지는 않습니다. 저희는 몇 년 동안 오리지널리티를 추구하는 게임을 만들어 온 사람들입니다. 오리지널리티의 가치를 누구보다 잘 알고 있고, 지금까지의 결과물이 좋은 평가를 받지 못할 수 있다는 것도 알고 있습니다.

저희 사정을 조금 말씀드려야 할 것 같습니다. 한때는 지금보다 훨씬 큰 팀이었지만, 지금은 다섯 명이 되었습니다. 저희에게 주어진 시간과 자금을 놓고 봤을 때, 이 장르에서 가장 중요한 전투와 레벨 디자인에 힘을 쏟아야 한다고 판단했습니다. 그동안 많은 시행착오를 겪으면서, 내부 인하우스로 제작한 컷씬은 노력과 시간 투자 대비 메시지 전달 측면에 있어 좋은 결과로 이어지지 않았습니다. 때문에 이러한 방식으로 앞으로 들어갈 모든 컷씬을 만드는 건 저희에게 현실적이지 않다는 결론에 이르렀습니다. 이야기를 전달할 때 가장 중요한 것 중 하나가 표정과 비언어적인 행동인데, 이런 디테일을 사람 손으로 전부 만들려면 많은 시간이 필요하고, 실사에 가까운 화풍을 지향하는 저희에게는 그 부담이 더 클 수밖에 없었습니다. 팀을 늘려서 풀어 보려고도 했지만, 사람이 늘어난다고 해결되는 문제가 아니었습니다. 컷씬에 AI를 택하게 되었고, 결과적으로 잘못된 선택이 되고 말았습니다.

AI에 거부감이 드실 수 있고, 풀 핸드메이드보다 정성이 없어 보일 수 있다는 것도 충분히 공감하고 이해합니다.

하지만 이 정도로 여러분이 AI 작업물에 부정적인 인식을 가지고 계셨을 거라고는 판단하지 못했습니다. 그건 제 실수였습니다. 앞으로 나올 에피소드의 컷씬들도 저희 손으로 만들어 가겠습니다.

다만 그 시행착오들이 헛되지는 않았다고 생각합니다. 그 과정을 거치면서 저희가 어디에 힘을 쏟아야 하는지를 배우게 되었고, 한정된 자원 안에서 더 좋은 게임으로 만들어 가는 방법을 배웠습니다.

이번 주말에는 앞으로 있을 대규모 업데이트에 대한 로드맵을 발표하겠습니다. 조금만 기다려 주시면 감사하겠습니다.

긴 글이 됐지만, AI 사용을 옹호하고 싶어서 쓴 글은 아닙니다. 저희가 왜 그런 선택을 했는지 한 번은 솔직하게 말씀드리고 싶었습니다. 그 결과가 저희 책임이라는 것도 잘 알고 있습니다. 되돌리는 작업을 마쳤다고 해서 그걸로 끝났다고 생각하지 않습니다.

부족한 부분이 보이면 계속 말씀해 주세요. 전부 읽고 반영하겠습니다. 긴 글 읽어 주셔서 감사합니다.

Below is the English translation of the Korean text above.

There is something I want to say first. We do not see pure AI output in a positive light either. We have spent the past several years making games in pursuit of originality. We know the value of originality better than anyone, and we also know that the results we have shown so far may not be received well.

I should tell you a little about our situation. We were once a much larger team, but we are now five people. Looking at the time and funding we had, we decided to pour our effort into combat and level design, the things that matter most in this genre. Through many trials and errors along the way, the cutscenes we produced in-house did not lead to good results in delivering the story, compared to the effort and time we put in. So we came to the conclusion that producing every future cutscene this way was not realistic for us. One of the most important parts of delivering a story is facial expressions and non-verbal acting, and creating all of that detail by hand takes a great deal of time. For a team like ours, aiming for an art style close to realism, that burden was even heavier. We tried to solve it by growing the team, but it was not a problem that more people could fix. We ended up choosing AI for the cutscenes, and in the end, it was the wrong choice.

I truly sympathize with and understand that AI can feel unwelcome, and that it can look like it carries less care than fully handmade work.

But I failed to realize just how negatively you felt about AI-made work. That was my mistake. The cutscenes in the upcoming episodes will be made by our own hands as well.

Still, I do not think those trials and errors were wasted. Through that process, we learned where we should focus our effort, and we learned how to make this a better game within limited resources.

This weekend, we will share a roadmap for the major updates ahead. I would be grateful if you could wait just a little longer.

This has become a long post, but I did not write it to defend the use of AI. I wanted to be honest with you, at least once, about why we made that choice. We know full well that the outcome is our responsibility. The removal work is done, but I do not think that means this is over.

If you see anything falling short, please keep telling us. We will read all of it and act on it. Thank you for reading this long post.

Young Kim
ALIVE

Hi, this is the director of Vapor World.

Launch day has been quite a day for us.

As promised, here is the AI removal hotfix, faster than you might have expected.

• Removed every AI-generated cutscene from the game.

• Restored the original in-game cutscenes we built ourselves before the switch.

• Going forward, no AI-generated cutscenes. Not in any cutscene, as promised.

• Over the next few patches, save data may be reset. We are sorry for the trouble and ask for your understanding while we get things in order.

• If anything looks off in the restored cutscenes, or anywhere else, tell us here or on Discord. We read everything.

Thank you for bearing with us where we still fall short.

Thank you all, always.

Young Kim
Director of ALIVE