From my understanding, AI is the general field of automating logical (“intelligent”) tasks.

Within it, you will find Machine Learning algorithms, the ones that are trained on exemplar data, but also other methods, for instance old text generators based on syntactic rules.

Within Machine Learning, not all methods use Neural Networks, for instance if you have seen cool brake calipers and rocket nozzle designed with AI, I believe those were made with genetic algorithms.

For procedural generation, I assume there is a whole range of methods that can be used:

• Unreal Engine Megaplants seems to contain configurable tree generation algorithms, that’s mostly handcrafted algorithms with maybe some machine learning to find the parameters ranges.
• Motion capture and 3D reconstruction models can be used to build the assets. I don’t believe these rely on stolen artist data.
• Full on image generation models (sora, etc.) to produce assets and textures, these require training on stolen artist data AFAIK (some arrangements were made between some companies but I suspect it’s marginal).

Are you playing with gyro aiming? I also loved the gameplay of the first one and was disappointed by the second. My hypothesis is that aiming without gyro was too tedious so they updated the gameplay to require less aiming. Not that the game tries to be realistic anyway but the combo/special attacks and the time spent in the inventory/wheel kinda break the immersion/flow for me.

I felt dishonored offered many more options to move around, the level design had more surprises and verticality which multiplies options. Sneaking is a viable gameplay approach which I love (personal taste here). The characters and dialogs have a lot more depth and there is a lot more lore to discover along the way.

Also It might be my fault because I opted to avoid typhoon upgrades, but the mid game was really tedious due to ammo scarcity and the end game was too easy after that.

Prey. It’s inferior to the older Dishonored games in pretty much every aspect.