Anno 117: Pax Romana is the latest game from Ubisoft Blue Byte, the parent company of three major German developers: Ubisoft Düsseldorf, Ubisoft Mainz and Ubisoft Berlin. In that mix are the remnants of Related Designs, the studio Ubisoft acquired full control of in 2013, along with the full rights to the Anno series. Now rebranded as Ubisoft Mainz, this is the team behind the latest iteration in the series, Anno 117.
Despite the studio’s long history of game development, it appears they’ve cut corners with the background art in 117. Fans have noticed some egregious errors, while others have simply called the artwork “cheap.” The mistakes are obvious.
UPDATE: 2025/11/14 17:53 EST BY HARRY ALSTON
Ubisoft responded to our request for a statement:
“This image was a placeholder asset that unintentionally slipped through our review process. The final image is attached here and will replace the current version of this artwork with the upcoming 1.3 patch. With Anno 117: Pax Romana being our most ambitious Anno yet, we’ve assembled the largest team of artists ever for the franchise and to help meet the project’s unique scope, they use AI tools for iterations, prototyping, and exploration. Every element players will experience in the final game reflects the team’s craft, artistry, and creative vision.”
Here are the two images, one is the original, the first one is the ‘amended’ version that Ubisoft sent through. We will let you be the judge of the differences between these two images.
Low Quality, Cheap, And Full Of Mistakes
Take a look through these images and see if you can spot any mistakes. Even at a glance, these loading screen splash art images don’t look particularly high quality, and when you investigate closer, you start to see some of the classic errors typical of AI image generation. And in this case, it doesn’t even appear to be very good AI generation.
Out of all of these images, however, there’s one that sticks out the most. It’s the loading screen that shows the interior of a Roman palace. Multiple faces are completely off in a way that resembles some poor AI-generated image from software like Dall-E (if anyone remembers that progenitor of image generation). The offending image was highlighted in a thread by user MedicaeVal.
An image pulled from a loading screen from reddit user Odd_Hunter2289.
An image pulled by user DelightfulChapeau.
There are many, many more examples throughout the loading screens. This reddit thread highlights various mistakes and includes speculation from fans about how and why this could’ve happened to a studio with the heritage of Ubisoft Mainz. It seems almost certain that this one image, at the very least, is AI-generated.
Ubisoft Mainz is a triple-A German developer with almost 200 employees. It’s also a key studio in the governmental push to support video game development in Germany, seen as a cornerstone of the recent 100 million euro investment from Germany’s Ministry of Culture into game devs in the country. To see AI seemingly used in this way at such a large, well-funded studio is, as fans have expressed, incredibly disappointing.
Upon a little bit of investigation, it appears that at least some of the loading screens were designed by Karakter Design Studio. Here’s a link to its Art Station profile, where the Anno 117 concept art was recently posted. This studio has previously worked on games like Horizon Forbidden West, God Of War: Ragnarok, and Middle-earth: Shadow Of War. The style is consistent throughout. These are not AI-generated. So why are some of the loading screens in Anno 117 seemingly riddled with AI mistakes?
Some loading screens from Karakter’s Art Station page.
On the game’s Steam page – as Steam requires all games to disclose AI usage – Ubisoft stated: “AI tools were used to help create some in-game assets. In all such cases, the final product reflects our team’s craft and creative vision.” There is no mention of AI generation on Ubisoft Connect, Ubisoft’s dedicated launcher.
The issue with AI use in video games is that once it pops up in one place, you start looking for it everywhere. Once the trust is broken, you start to hear weird inflections in NPC voice acting, icons and images start to look “off”, and even the narrative itself might not feel right.
We have reached out to Ubisoft for comment.
Released
November 13, 2025
ESRB
Teen / Alcohol Reference, Language, Mild Violence, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact
