Procedural Generation and the Illusion of Scale

Design

Marketing materials often highlight "infinite" content. In practice, this usually means a limited set of assets shuffled by a seed. Once the player recognizes the underlying patterns, the environment stops feeling like a place and starts feeling like a math problem. The pacing is rarely as tight as a curated level. With GenAI now entering the pipeline, we might get more unique assets, but that does not solve the fundamental lack of intentionality. High variety is not the same as high quality design. Which games have successfully balanced procedural systems with actual design intent, and where did the automation break the experience for you?