We were recently invited out to Paris, France to play three hours of Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse, and while we were there, we got to speak to the development team about how the game was made. In addition to behind-the-scenes details on the relationship between developers Evil Empire and Konami (which you can read more about here), we specifically wanted to know whether the game was made with any generative AI tools and whether the developers had any hard stances about its use. In short, it sounds like neither studio used it.
In Paris, I was able to interview three developers at once: producer Tsutomu Taniguchi from Konami as well as Evil Empire marketing director Bérenger Dupré and Evil Empire creative director Emmanuel Nouaille. After asking whether developers on Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse used AI, the question was translated for Taniguchi, who responded first.
“From Konami’s point, you know, we haven’t used AI. And we don’t know what’s going to happen next, but we don’t really have a stance on it,” Taniguchi told us through a translator.
Then, marketing director Dupré (who is French, for context) followed up with a joke, saying, “I must confess, I do use AI to correct my sentences in English.” After some laughter from the room, Nouaille gave the most in-depth response.
“To answer the question of the game, no AI,” Nouaille said. “It was very important to respect this direction for the team, for the fans, for the industry. For the moment, what is important is to have a real creation. To have our soul in the game. So, I don’t have any problem with AI, but in our job, in this game, there is no AI.”
We’ll have more details about Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse, including exclusive art and hands-on impressions from three hours of gameplay, in the next issue of Game Informer, which is set to launch Tuesday, July 21. Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse comes to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, and PC on October 15.