Why A Machine Can’t Break Molds.
The 21st century to date has been a procession of situations in which you’re forced to explain the readily explicable. Nothing is true, no lessons were learned, nothing can be taken for granted; thinking adults in 2025 are occasionally forced to argue with fellow travelers about such fundamentally obvious things as “you should have a baseline level of care for other people” and “bleach is not medicine.” Anyone who feels angry and insane right now is just paying sufficient attention.
That same disconnect lies at the heart of the furor over generative AI as a creative tool. On one side, an army of plagiarism robots that burn forests and drink the sea to create infinite pages from Thomas Kinkade’s How to Draw Manga; on the other, anyone who understands the value of human expression, emphasis on the human. Offshoring any part of your creative mind or soul to glorified autocorrect is an act of unsolicited surrender. You’ve volunteered for erosion. There’s less of you now, whether you acknowledge that or not.
If there’s one silver nugget in this septic tank, it’s the potential for a new appreciation of the elemental strangeness of being human. This is a messy, imprecise, unstable existence, and it’s the only game in town. In any form it takes, from disposable kitsch to a great national novel, art is a story we tell one another to try and make life make more sense.
This week, we’re celebrating that. These are games that we appreciate specifically because a large language model could never have produced them: they’re too weird, too horny, too specific. In an age where the entirety of pop culture is threatening to collapse into thin gruel, these are projects with a careful human touch. In 2025, that’s become more valuable than ever before, and worth celebration.
Definition of Hylics: 1. Of relating to matter or material. 2. The gnostic “third group” of man, focusing not on intelligence or the soul, but on the material.
AI content generation will never be punk rock. If there will ever be a soul in the machine, it cannot be achieved by stealing labor or making meaningless products. ChatGPT and its kin do not communicate ideas or feelings. They only make material. A statue of a man in marble, when it’s made by no one, is not a statue at all.
Hylics is a bizarre game series. A glance at the surreal multimedia approach to its aesthetic earns the distinction. The series is made up of photographed and dithered clay sculptures (Hylics 2 photographs Blender models), forming abstract shapes. It’s psychedelic and crunchy. Burritos are for healing and spells are made with the gestures of disembodied leather gloves.
The creator, Mason Lindroth, is an artist experienced in sculpting and stop motion filmmaking. Lindroth’s works are elevated by his personal love of making things. The craft is what shines. Functionally, Hylics 1 and 2 are typical RPGs, but there is an appeal to appreciating the nonsense surrounding them. A look at the battle screen and the creatures within may resemble the sort of monstrosities AI generation is famous for right now. Despite the similarities, it is in these grotesqueries that we can find the deeply human voice.
Hylics 1 and 2 are punk rock. They are about finding the soul and meaning within the discordant noise. The main character, Wayne, is a punk with a black leather jacket and a waning crescent moon for a head. The rest of the party are, to put it simply, losers. Dedusmuln is an archaeologist dedicated to preserving a ruined world and its little treasures (mostly, paper cups). Somsnosa is a couch potato that just wants to chill at her ranch. Pongorma is a recluse who craves violence. They all team up to fight the King of the Moon, Gibby. Gibby is a sedentary ruler with a giant gibbous moon for a head. The second game is about the same party attempting to stop the revival, before having to murder him once more.
Oh, and the party members form a celebratory rock band in both games. Fuck the establishment, let’s play a show while the world falls apart around us.
Before Gibby’s revival in Hylics 2, townsfolk reminisce about his reign. For them, Gibby represented a unified order. A normal citizen considers Wayne’s gang to be troublesome anarchists who ruined a good thing. When Gibby returns, those townsfolk are the ones that suffer from Gibby’s influence. That’s when the infamous randomly generated text dialogue in both games happen. This specific dialogue is called “Gibberish” in-game, named after the Moon King. It’s nonsensical dialogue, because the characters do not think for themselves. Mindless conformity has dulled language. Communication is the purpose of language. Gibby’s subjects and ChatGPT are similar in that without individuality, communication loses meaning. ChatGPT’s echo chamber may sound nice, but nice isn’t what matters. What matters is the communication of ideas and feelings from the speaker and how they resonate with the listener.
Hylics 2 reveals that Wayne is but a growing larva, of which there are many Waynes all living together under one roof. Old Wayne, a giant moon insect that’s likely the original game’s Wayne, leads the army as they practice combat and prepare for Gibby’s return. The brand of punk that Wayne represents is something that can be replicated and controlled. Old Wayne’s movement created unity beyond the individual. At the end of Hylics 2, the image of Wayne adorns everything. From tooth paste caps to airplanes. He becomes the symbol of popular culture within the world. His identity is bottled and sold. Wayne is no longer the counterculture. It’s ambiguous as to what that means, but this loss of individuality reminds me of Hylics’ core themes.
Humanity can be found anywhere, but it is easily found in the counterculture. The order of our world is nonsensical and at times inhumane, it is our responsibility to find ourselves within the nonsense and push back against the world, hopefully finding kindred spirits along the way. Maybe we can change the world, and maybe it will change us. Maybe we’ll enjoy the time we have. That is punk rock. AI cannot recognize or resemble counterculture. Dall-E cannot shape clay the way Lindroth has. It only provides what is asked, with no individuality involved. It does not spit in the face of the world, nor could it, because it is a captive speaker to a gluttonous and misguided audience. Everything it says will remain gibberish. Anything made will only ever be material, without reason or heart. AI will only ever be hylics, but it could never make Hylics.
