Last week, System 3's upcoming James Bond Legacy: Ponds Are Not Enough compilation sparked controversy. The game's trailer featured cheap editing quality, resembling an electronic birthday card made for a grandmother's 94th birthday, and was filled with AI-generated artwork. Facing criticism, the publisher stubbornly insisted that no AI was used during development. To anyone with eyes, this claim was absurd, and Chris Sorel, co-creator of the series, offered sharp criticism of this remake.
"I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that I was never consulted and had absolutely no involvement in this project," Sorel told Damian McFerran of Time Extension. "If anyone involved in the project had even a shred of respect for James Bond, it wouldn't have come to this. But their every action clearly shows they couldn't care less about the series."
James Bond first launched on Amiga computers in 1990, spawning several sequels and spin-offs, with the most famous, Mechanical Codfish, being ported to nearly every console platform of that era. Like many creatively ambitious Amiga platformers, this title marked the starting point of Sorel's career. He later went on to contribute to more influential major titles such as Skeleton Knight and Prototype.
As backlash against AI-generated content grows across the industry, publishers are struggling to respond, but System 3 Software's reaction has been particularly outrageous. Instead of defending their use of AI, they outright denied it, despite the final product bearing clear signs of AI generation everywhere. The publisher even released what they claimed were original production artworks to convince netizens, but nobody bought it. Sorel found these so-called proofs especially laughable: "How could they possibly think any developer would waste time creating an Illustrator vector version of a character design that was already finalized?" "Why don't they just show us the wireframe models from the 3D software?"
In the interview, Sorel lamented how this classic series, which launched his career, had been so thoroughly mishandled. In contrast, teams like Digital Eclipse are carefully crafting well-researched compilations for Atari titles. In his view, this James Bond collection is a perfect example of the insincere, short-sighted practices currently rampant in the industry. Showing no mercy for such desecration of the original work, Sorel hoped that those responsible would "choke on an AI-generated fish bone."