Created by an indie development team, Archangel, Bleak Faith: Forsaken didn’t get the attention the way the studio intended.

Here compares Bleak Faith’s claymore and Elden Ring’s uchigatana and straight sword attack animation. Here are more similarities. Among them is a character who seems to have some of Malenia’s moves and another who borrows some from Dark Souls III’s Abyss Watcher. If one game inspires another (e.g., Genshin Impact took cues from NieR: Automata), there’s nothing wrong with that, but it is on a higher level because here it’s as if Archangel used DSAnimStudio to reuse animations from FromSoftware, slightly modified.

Archangel Studios also responded on Bleak Faith: Forsaken Discord and Steam. As it turns out, some animations were purchased from Epic Marketplace, and even one user, PersiaNinja, was highlighted. It sells an asset called PN Axe Animations, and it looks pretty similar to the animations of the Hunter Axe weapon in Bloodborne… “The marketplace was used to fill in generic art and was still edited to fit the general needs of the art direction. About 10% of the total game art is from there,” wrote one of the developers, Roia.

On Discord, another developer, Ubermensch42, responded in more detail: “The only other things from the Epic Marketplace that I use is for generic VFX that was a waste of time to make since I’d make things that looked virtually the same anyway, and things that are so generic (like some rocks) that didn’t require artistic direction. I’ve submitted a ticket raising the community’s concerns to Epic Customer Service and outlining the animation accusations. We decided to be preemptive as a sign of good faith and a generally very pleased customer at the Epic Marketplace. We’ll let you know what they say about it and will respond accordingly. And a second point, we’re not judges or versed in what is and isn’t allowed or who owns the rights to any of these animations. This is why we reached out, to get confirmation about the person making these animations.”

And on Twitter, another issue was raised: the game’s perk illustrations are generated by artificial intelligence, so they look rather bland. The studio responded to it, “We hear you about it. We’re working on new icons currently. It was somewhat of an oversight but also a decision that came from an honest place. However, we value the feedback and will have redone perk icons today!”

Laziness or insincerity? It’s hard to decide yet.

Source: PCGamer