- Primary Subject: Kingdom Come: Deliverance
- Key Update: Director Daniel Vávra said AI is a permanent industry shift, arguing it will reshape both production and gameplay systems.
- Status: Confirmed
- Last Verified: February 5, 2026
- Quick Answer: Daniel Vávra argues AI is inevitable in game development, useful for faster production and deeper NPC interactivity, but raises ethical, job, and design-quality concerns.
The debate around artificial intelligence in game development intensified after Daniel Vávra, director of Kingdom Come: Deliverance and its sequel, made it clear that AI is not a temporary trend but a permanent shift the industry will have to live with.
His comments came in response to rapid advances in photorealistic generative video tools, which demonstrated that a single creator can now produce visuals that once required entire film or game production teams.
For Vávra, this moment represents a turning point where both film and interactive media fundamentally change, not gradually, but quickly.
He argues that the technology has already crossed the line from experimental to practical, meaning resistance won’t stop its spread.
Does Using AI Make Art Less “Real”?
He argues that AI serves as an extension of human intent, not a replacement, and rejects the claim that using AI makes creative work less authentic, comparing it to saying cars are cheating because walking is more “natural.”
In his view, art still begins with a human mind — AI simply accelerates execution. He suggests the real creative act lies in vision, taste, and decision-making, not in how long it takes to manually produce each asset.
This philosophy aligns with his broader criticism of modern AAA development, where projects take many years, involve hundreds of people, and cost so much that creative risks become harder to justify.
AI, to him, is a way to reduce production drag so teams can focus more energy on design, storytelling, and innovation instead of repetitive technical labor.
However, the backlash to his remarks comes from the clash between his optimism and industry concerns, as many artists, voice actors, and developers fear that “efficiency” usually leads to job losses rather than greater creative freedom.
The reaction he’s facing reflects a wider concern that companies might use AI primarily as a cost-cutting tool, replacing human work instead of empowering it.
Critics also point to ethical issues, such as AI models trained on creative work without permission, or voice replication being seen as a form of digital theft.
These tensions show that while the technology is advancing fast, the moral and legal frameworks around it are still unsettled.
Could AI Change How Games Are Played, Not Just How They’re Made?
According to Vávra, AI may influence gameplay directly, enabling characters to engage in unscripted exchanges while altering speech style or historical tone as situations change.
From this perspective, AI is less about efficiency in asset production and more about unlocking complex interactivity that scripted systems struggle to manage broadly.
For him, the remaining limits are more about hardware capacity than conceptual possibility. In truth, AI-driven gameplay could be the most significant “feel” upgrade in years, yet it also has the most visible potential to misfire.
On the positive side, AI can make worlds less predictable: NPCs that react to what you’ve actually done, remember your behavior, and respond naturally could finally reduce the “theme park” feeling where everything resets after a quest.
It could also improve accessibility and personalization, like tutorials that adapt to how you play, quest hints that don’t spoil the solution, or companion characters that feel genuinely responsive instead of running on the same dialogue loop forever.
Even enemy AI could evolve beyond scripted patterns, pushing stealth, tactics, and survival games into something more dynamic and replayable.
But the negatives are just as real since AI-driven dialogue can quickly turn into soulless slop, full of words but empty of intent, the kind of text that feels like filler because it is filler.
Second, it can break the game’s identity fast: lore contradictions, tone whiplash, characters acting out of personality, and emotional scenes getting undercut by awkward, generic responses.
On top of that, adaptive AI can easily slip into frustrating territory, where enemies feel unfair, stealth becomes impossible, or the game constantly counters your playstyle in a way that feels like rubber-banding.
And if studios chase AI-driven systems as a selling point without doing the hard design work, you end up with novelty features that feel messy, uncanny, or shallow. AI can push games forward, but design still has to lead.
Collectively, Vávra’s position can be summarized as pragmatic rather than celebratory. He does not present AI as harmless or perfect, but as inevitable. The key question is not whether AI should exist in game development, but how creators choose to integrate it.
Ignoring it, he suggests, risks leaving studios and individuals behind as workflows change. Embracing it blindly, on the other hand, raises serious ethical and creative concerns.
The real battleground, then, is not AI versus no AI, but how much control humans retain over a tool that is rapidly becoming inseparable from modern production.
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