As an OG DW fan I hope this isn’t a repeat of 9, but I’m not optimistic. “1 v 1000” and “realism” are two completely different things.

I meant what you first thought, but your edit is a much better idea. It would also make sense for steam to keep AI generated content permanently tagged in case laws change and they have to purge games.

I really hope they add an “AI developed” tag that way I can filter out all of that slop without any hassle.

What do you mean? There’s like 10,000 (?) years of history between replicant and automata. There’s so much that could happen. They could lean hard into the cyclic timeline theme and have literally the same story set up as automata just have it play out completely differently. Maybe an origin story for the machine lifeforms. I don’t think a direct sequel will ever happen but there’s a lot in the nier universe to explore.

That was definitely my impression too. More like cycling executives through positions to build their resumes.