Opinion: One Of My Favourite Games Is Being Remade, So Why Do I Feel So Down About It?

No, I’m not talking about Ocarina of Time, have no fear.

I have never shied away from my love for the Professor Layton series. In the years since the catchily titled Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires’ Conspiracy – Deluxe Edition launched on Switch, I have longed for another mainline game, feeling the pang of a top hat-shaped hole in my heart whenever I look back at the bookended original and prequel trilogies, which take pride of place on my shelf.

With Level-5 announcing that it was shutting up shop overseas a few years back, I had resigned myself to the idea that another Layton was never going to happen. It was to forever be my nostalgic series. There was no chance we’d ever get, I don’t know, a continuation of the main story or an opportunity to revisit the game that started it all on modern hardware, was there?

All these years on, and we are mere months away from exactly that. Professor Layton and The New World of Steam finally has a release date (10th December, for those wondering), and Level-5 has announced that it’s working on a Curious Village remake, set to launch at some point next year.

Now, I played the Layton games in order at release, so The Curious Village holds a very special place in my heart. Not only was this the game that introduced me to one of my most beloved series, but it’s also perhaps the tightest of the bunch. It can’t quite match the emotional damage of The Lost Future in my personal ranking, but there isn’t an ounce of fat on that brilliant first game. Simply put, I love it.

In any other timeline, the release news would have me ecstatic; instead, I get an icky, sinking feeling whenever I think about the prospect of these upcoming projects, particularly the remake. Why? Because Level-5 isn’t what it used to be, and it’s putting me off playing its game in the process.

It all stems from every corporation’s favourite buzzword: AI. You don’t need me to tell you just how much the technology has already shaken the industry, but it is worth noting just how whole-hog Level-5 has gone for it.

There’s no doubt in my mind that a huge portion of big-budget modern games use AI somewhere in their development. Steam now has a disclaimer section where the dev is required to flag it, and we’ve seen several high-profile studios confess to using it somewhere along the line — Crazy Taxi: World Tour is an example that springs to mind.

But where all of these developers either attempt to brush their AI use under the rug, or shyly admit that they’re dipping their toe in the waters to see what it’s capable of, Level-5 is proudly diving in headfirst.

We’ve covered a good portion of pro-AI statements from Level-5 CEO Akihiro Hino on the site over the years — “A knife can be used for cooking or as a weapon,” “creators are now able to dedicate more time to the essence of creation,” yadda yadda — but the recent Vision 2026 showcase, the one where The Curious Village Remake was revealed, felt like a real tipping point.

The entire show seemed to utilise AI-generated assets at one point or another. If you didn’t catch it, seriously, no matter how bad you think it might have been, trust me, it was worse. From the second that the obviously AI-animated Hino walked onto an obviously AI-generated background, I knew we were in trouble, but then my paranoid brain started to clock it in the game trailers, too.

This isn’t the first time Level-5 has utilised or discussed AI in its yearly Vision showcases, but it all felt so very on the nose this time. So imagine my disappointment when The Curious Village Remake cropped up at the end, quite clearly artificially touched-up.

The reveal trailer showcased the game’s “Enhanced exploration” and “High-resolution, widescreen animations,” but just like the films shown in that nasty Las Vegas sphere, all of the extra content looks… off. Roof tiles look uncharacteristically wonky and lack detail, expanded rose bushes bloom with different-looking buds, and I’m curiously drawn to Gordon Reinhold’s fingers in one widescreen-ed cutscene, where one digit appears strangely longer than the others.

I’m sure that AI generation has been used in some form on this Remake — the company typically takes years to release a game, but this one is supposedly coming out in 2027? — but the promise that it could be there is almost worse than knowing. I’m pouring over every background detail and character model (upsettingly moved to the ugly 3D sprites of the last two mainline games) like a man possessed.

The studio has stated that The New World of Steam contains no AI, though no promises have been made about The Curious Village at the time of writing. Level-5 has damaged my trust, so how can I hope to play through one of my favourites again without that niggling feeling of doubt?

And it’s not just the AI threat putting me off the remake, either. There’s the very fact that this is arriving again when the HD mobile port is right there, the aforementioned ugly 3D figures, the prospect of re-releasing the original trilogy individually rather than a much more consumer-friendly bundle. This should have me more excited than most, but instead I’m 900 words into a feature about why I don’t like it. What?

Perhaps it’s foolish of me, but I still believe there’s some Level-5 heart behind all of this. AI isn’t the first fad that the company has gone all-in on (anyone remember the Wild West days of NFTs waaay back in…2022?) and those soon fell by the wayside. Indeed, in the very same Vision showcase where it announced its remake, the studio also dedicated a solid four minutes to celebrating the human creatives behind The New World of Steam’s theme song, legendary composer Joe Hisaishi and vocalist Lilas. Surely the irony of putting such a human focus in the middle of an AI-generated presentation isn’t lost on the studio, right?

The showcase resulted in a fair amount of fan backlash, so much so that the studio issued a full apology for “causing distrust due to the immaturity of our AI utilisation”.

“Going forward, we promise to limit our use of AI to efficiency improvements only, and to avoid using it directly in videos delivered directly to our users,” the apology continues. Whether this actually acts as a turning point remains to be seen, though somehow, I doubt it. When you’ve put all your eggs in the one AI-generated basket, you’re not going to pluck them all back out just like that.

But my fingers are crossed that the studio can scale back on this nonsense enough. All I want is to enjoy my beloved Curious Village in peace, but here I am, completely willing to walk away and make it the first game in the series that I don’t play.

For a game all about not knowing the difference between man and machine, and how the creativity of humans always wins, it sure is gutting to see how that message has changed in the ~20 years since its original release.