Horizon Forbidden West Composer Calls AI in Creative Art ‘Mind-Blowing’
A video game composer has voiced strong criticism of generative AI. 2K Games is set to remove its surprisingly enjoyable Lego racer from 2023. And Arc Raiders is shifting to larger, less frequent updates each year. This is the latest edition of Checkpoint for May 15, 2026, where I wish I could be living my best life like Food4Dogs.
We’re a bit short-staffed this week, which is why I missed several editions of our daily roundup recently, as well as our weekly list of new game releases. Things should be back to normal next week when both Carolyn Petit and Rebekah Valentine return from their vacations.
“The nerdy side of me goes: ‘Oh, wow, this is quite cool,’” Joris De Man, the composer for the first two entries in Sony’s sci-fi open-world RPG series, recently shared. “But the more creative and artistic side of me goes: ‘This is f*cking insane.’”
Sony has recently acknowledged the potential of generative AI during an earnings presentation, highlighting its ongoing use by first-party studios and its ability to transform everything from game purchasing to player experiences. While the company emphasized that human creativity remains central to this new technology, the gaming community has largely pushed back against generative AI.
De Man emphasized the value of human errors and unexpected moments in art creation, contrasting this with the perceived perfection of AI-generated content. He also criticized how AI companies have exploited existing works without proper compensation or credit before launching their technologies.
“AI companies—all the major ones, like OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, etc.—could have taken a different approach,” he stated. “They could have said, ‘OK, we need to license the stuff that we’ve used,’ but instead, they chose to train on everything they could find and deal with the legal issues later.”
Originally released in May 2023, the game is now set to be delisted from storefronts on May 19, 2026. As noted by MauroNL, its online features will be discontinued a year later, in May 2027. This has sparked discussions about the Stop Killing Games movement.
In other news, a new leak suggests that the brick toy company will release a space-themed set on July 1 for $200.
The extraction shooter is transitioning to larger, less frequent updates to support its ongoing development. This means players can expect two major updates each year instead of monthly content drops. “The intention was to keep you all engaged, to ensure the game always felt fresh, and to give you reasons to keep braving topside,” Embark Studios explained in a recent blog post. “However, once the game was in players’ hands, we realized that the long-term experience we want to create for ARC Raiders requires more transformative updates.”
They added, “Over time, we’ve found that the pressure of a monthly cycle limits how impactful these updates can be. You feel it, and we feel it too. Running at that pace isn’t sustainable or compatible with the bigger ambitions we have for this game.”
As for the timeline? FromSoftware’s parent company, Kadokawa Group, confirmed it in their latest earnings report, but we still lack details on whether updates will arrive in just a few months or later in the year.
Update 1.07 primarily addresses bugs but also increases the number of boss fights available for rematches and introduces new unarmed combat skills for Damiane. Players are also thrilled about the increase in the “number of animals in the world that can be used as mounts.”
Meanwhile, the Saudi Arabia-funded event is relocating from Riyadh to Paris amid the ongoing conflict with Iran in the Middle East. An estimated 2,500 esports players attended last year’s event, and organizers are reportedly concerned about potential travel disruptions depending on how the situation unfolds in the coming months.
