Embark Studios' new arena-battle FPS The Finals has been getting a lot of attention recently, but it's not all good news.
During a recent podcast, the game's audio designers Carl Strandberg and Andreas Almström mentioned how AI and text-to-speech were used on commentary and other vocalisations in the game.
This discovery didn't go down so well within the game's community, and now Embark has provided an official statement to Eurogamer insisting its end goal isn't to make games "without actors":
"We use a combination of recorded voice audio and audio generated via TTS tools in our games, depending on the context. Sometimes, recording real scenes where actors get together - allowing character chemistry and conflict to shape the outcome - is something that adds depth to our game worlds that technology can't emulate. Other times, especially when it relates to contextual in-game action call-outs, TTS allows us to have tailored VO where we otherwise wouldn't e.g. due to speed of implementation.
"In the instances we use TTS in The Finals, it's always based on real voices. In the Open Beta, it is based on a mix of professional voice actors and temp voices from Embark employees. Making games without actors isn’t an end goal for Embark and TTS technology has introduced new ways for us to work together."
The Finals is currently running an open beta on all platforms including Xbox Series X|S from now until 5th November.