The Embark Studios extraction shooter Arc Raiders has exceeded expectations for player counts. Media opinions are also positive, with an 84 Metacritic rating. However, one score sticks out like a sore thumb, as the only negative Arc Raiders review on the aggregator. Eurogamer awarded the game a 2/5 rating, primarily due to its use of generative AI.
Arc Raiders uses AI-generated text-to-speech (TTS) for some in-game voices, particularly for non-player character (NPC) call-outs and contextual lines.
Anything you PING on the map, any ITEM, the call out voice, "Hey! I found magnets!" that is a TEXT to SPEECH technology trained by a voice actor for a pinging system. They can add items in the future and use TTS to say the item.
Every other voice line is a real voice actor. All the cut scenes, the characters in Sparanza etc. Embark said they understand the importance of humans talking to each other for real, nothing beats it.
Eurogamer’s article focuses on how the ping system and call-outs employ TTS to replace voice recordings. Embark claims it has limited resources to hire a large number of human voice actors. Its CCO, Stefan Strandberg, has explained in interviews that AI voice generators only supplement recorded dialogue. Still, while he argues that this process doesn’t qualify as generative AI, some critics disagree.
The speech in question sounds unnatural compared to other lines, according to the reviewer. More troubling, he notes how in the extraction shooter’s world, robotic Arc machines overwhelm humans. Having traders and voiced by machine-generated dialogue demonstrates a “total lack of awareness, or worse, wilful ignorance of Arc Raiders' own semantics”.
Arc Raiders is a social game that’s casual enough for teammates to have conversations. The article highlights how the robotic TTS seems even more jarring in this environment. The title also employs AI to make enemies respond to human players more authentically. This application is not new to game development and is less contentious to the reviewer.
Rich combat and an unusually friendly community make Arc Raiders an cracking extraction shooter, but Embark Studios' continued use of AI voices is inexcusable.
www.eurogamer.net