I don't think it's as black and white as that. I'm not looking to take shortcuts, I'm looking to use the tools at my disposal to make a game that couldn't be otherwise possible.

On that note, the plan is to make certain icons & portraits on my own, in a consistent artstyle that's easy enough for me. Some assets will be purchased from traditional asset stores, while critical pieces of artwork such as the Steam capsule art will be commissioned. Chiefly I wanna use image generation for background images & pictures describing events - arguably not that important or up-front, so not a great use of artist time.