‘The Finals’ “sloppy” AI voice acting criticised by voice actors

30 October, 2023

Voice actors have criticised Embark Studios‘ use of artificial intelligence “with a few exceptions” to generate voices in The Finals. 

The Finals is in an open beta for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S until November 5 and has seen significant success, reaching a peak player count of 268,000 on Steam alone.

Yet, voice actor Gianni Matragrano, who has worked on Gloomwood, Evil West, Selaco and more, thought that the announcers in the game sounded slightly strange.

In a compilation of callouts from the announcer characters, he questioned whether or not Embark Studios used AI to voice these two. Check it out below:

However, in an appearance in an episode of the podcast Meet The Makers, audio designers Andreas Glad and Carl Tamleht revealed that The Finals‘ announcers and contestants have been voiced by AI software.

“So here’s the kicker: what did the voice over? The thing is, we use AI with a few exceptions. All the contestant voices like the barks and both our commentators are AI text to speech,” said Andreas in July (via VG247).

“For things we call vocalisations like player breathing, vaulting, jumping, that’s something we use us in the studio to record, like, just grunting.

“We can’t really get the AI to perform those kinds of tasks yet, and since it’s only excortive [sic] sounds they will mix pretty well with all the AI text to speech voices.”

‘The Finals’ Credit: Embark Studios

This admission, in spite of the explanation that it “gets [the team] far enough in terms of quality”, has not been received well by voice actors and fans of The Finals.

“What really sticks with me is that they needed to bring in real actors to get the grunting, effort, and breathing sounds because the AI can’t do it,” said Kit Harrison, who has starred in Dying Light, Genshin Impact and Smite.

“It can’t replicate the noise that I make when I stand up from my chair, but it wants to take MY job?! Don’t make me laugh.”

“The kicker is, it STILL sounds like crap regardless of how ‘realistic’ they think it sounds,” replied Elsie Lovelock (Wargroove, Remothered: Broken Porcelain, Eastshade) to Matragano’s post to X.

‘The Finals’ Credit: Embark Studios

“Trying to imagine how an audio professional could possibly think this sounds good. I guess the only reasonable conclusion is they know it doesn’t, and are just so eager to get rid of the people who make the stuff, that they’ll ship this slop to a paying playerbase. Disappointing,” added Matragano to counter Glad and Tamleht’s arguments for AI.

In other gaming news, the developer of Cities: Skylines 2 has announced that the game’s technical performance is not the result of trying to render all of the citizens’ teeth.

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