If not for this, I would've chalked this up to the designs being abstract enough that it'd be feasible for two separate artists to have come up with them independently. The fact that he was following the artist is a bit damning.
It's a shame, because he's a fantastic artist, himself, but this is definitely going to soil his reputation, and probably calls into question some of his earlier pieces, as well.
Something that you may not be considering is that a big part of live service updates is stopping cheaters. Whether the game is balanced or not doesn't matter at all if other players are flying through the map and insta-killing everybody else.
Allowing the use of old versions of your game will consequentially allow cheaters to continue having access to known, exploitable files. Even if those files are no longer in use in the "live" version of the game, giving cheaters a sandbox to experiment in inevitably allows for further exploits to be discovered in the live version.
I also recommend The Finals! It's exclusively multiplayer, and the only "grind" one needs to worry about is unlocking all the weapons and gadgets; it doesn't take long to do, and you don't even need all of them if you aren't going to use them. But there's nothing to level up or upgrade, so once you buy an item, it's just a permanent part of your kit. There's no story or campaign that you have to progress, no cutscenes to sit through. You just launch the game, pick a mode, and queue for a match.
I have like 750+ in-match hours logged, and have no plans on stopping.
Honestly, I'd rather see another studio take a crack at the franchise. I don't know whether Gamefreak have lost a lot of important talent over the years or if they just got lazy because their games are guaranteed to sell no matter how poorly they're produced, but they do not know how to make games in the current era. Full stop. The last handful of mainline Pokemon titles have been unacceptably poor quality, and Nintendo won't light a fire under their ass because... why would they, when they're already printing money?
I think it would be wildly beneficial to the health of the franchise if a completely new studio took the wheel for a minute. They don't have to reinvent the game mechanics or take the story in some dark and gritty direction or anything like that, but if they just made it functional that'd already be a huge step up over Gamefreak's last few releases.
Personally, I'd love to see Retro Studios take a crack at a mainline Pokemon title. They've already got a very close relationship with Nintendo, and have released nothing but bangers.
The electric costs aren't nearly as high as people think. For huge datacenters, yes, but that's because they're processing requests for hundreds or thousands of users simultaneously. For a studio using it to translate lines for a single game, they could easily get away with doing it locally, and effectively for free. You can train your own local model on a consumer-grade PC without any issue, and it'll still run just as fast as the big server farm-powered models.
My roommate has been playing with a bunch of different local AI models on his own PC for a couple years now. There's been no discernable change to our electric bill. His PC draws more power playing an anime waifu gacha game than it does training/generating AI.
I think a big part of this sentiment has to do with Bungie burning a lot of bridges with their fan base in recent years. I'd played Destiny 2 for several years (from Shadowkeep through The Final Shape), and in that time Bungie had made a lot of very unpopular moves. From things like the "Destiny Content Vault" (where old content was removed from the game to make room for new content), expansions getting delayed by several months, massive studio layoffs, apparent mismanagement of an entire expansion (Lightfall), more studio layoffs... It's just really hard, as a player, to back a Bungie project right now. I no longer feel like their priorities line up with mine.
Meanwhile, I've also been a huge fan of Embark's previous game, The Finals. It's a totally different type of FPS compared to Destiny, yet they managed to capture my interest by doing correctly all the things Bungie did wrong. They nailed the monetization of the game and it doesn't feel predatory, they listen to their community, and they constantly show a commitment toward making The Finals into the best game it can be (and not necessarily the most profitable game it could be).
So while Marathon looks like it's got all the makings for an amazing game, I just don't feel like Bungie fans have enough faith left in Bungie anymore. For a lot of people, myself included, The Final Shape was the "end" of Destiny; not because Bungie stopped making it (they're still releasing content), but because we got the closure we wanted out of Destiny's story and we're just done with Bungie's antics.
That said, I just don't like extraction shooters. I played a bit of Arc Raiders to see how it is, and it's just not for me. Honestly, I hope both games do well, because it's clear that both studios put a lot of heart into these games and I'm interested in learning about both games' stories. But right now, Bungie has to overcome their reputation if they want Marathon to succeed.
I really don't think it was that secret. Every modern Ubisoft game I've played has had multiple unskippable TOS checkboxes that you had to agree to before you can even pass the title screen, which state in no uncertain terms that they're going to datamine the shit out of your entire play session.
It is still nice to see this stuff being challenged, though, even though I'm doubtful that it'll bring about any meaningful change.
Australia's usually really strict when it comes to violence in video games, but the Silent Hill series isn't really known for intense gore. Though, the trailer looked a bit like it was going to be a bit body horror-focused (I got lots of Junji Ito vibes from it), so maybe SH:F will actually be a bit bloodier than other SH games.