CD Projekt turned to AI technology to replicate a Cyberpunk 2077 Polish voice actor who passed away in 2021.
The late Miłogost Reczek's voice was reproduced by an AI algorithm for Phantom Liberty - the base game's recent expansion - for its Polish-language release.
In a statement shared with Bloomberg, CD Projekt said it had obtained permission from Reczek's family to recreate the actor's voice in this way for the expansion.
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CD Projekt localisation director Mikołaj Szwed told Bloomberg Reczek "was one of the best Polish voice talents", calling his Cyberpunk 2077 performance "stellar". At one point, the studio considered hiring a different actor to record the Polish lines for Reczek's character Viktor Vektor (pictured above), however it "didn't like this approach".
So, instead of replacing his voice in Phantom Liberty's Polish version altogether, the studio hired an actor to record the expansion's new lines, and then used voice-cloning software Respeecher to alter this dialogue to sound like Reczek's Viktor Vektor.
"This way we could keep his performance in the game and pay tribute to his wonderful performance as Viktor Vektor," Szwed told the publication, adding that Reczek's sons "were very supportive" of this decision.
Phantom Libery released last month, you can read our Tom Senior's thoughts here. Image credit: CD Projekt Red
AI has, of course, been a hot and somewhat controversial topic in the video game industry. Many voice actors have spoken out about its cloning capabilities, including Jennifer Hale, David Hayter, Jane Perry and Troy Baker.
Away from voice-cloning technology, Assassin's Creed developer Ubisoft announced its Ghostwriter AI tool. This technology, Ubisoft said, is designed to aid its writers create dialogue for in-game NPCs, however it sparked some debate among industry writers.
"As a writer, having to edit AI-generated scripts/dialogue sounds far more time consuming than just writing my own temp lines 🤷," Sony Santa Monica writer Alanah Pearce said at the time. "I would far prefer AAA studios use whatever budget it costs to make tools like this to instead hire more writers."
ShearAhr on October 14th, 2023 at 20:20 UTC »
I love how CDPR literally said that themselves like a week or so before Phantom Liberty came out and nobody even batted an eye and weeks after the launch it's making the rounds.
I'm kinda excited about this tech though. You can do some big actors for main characters in games but you literally can make tons of irrelevant NPCs never sound the same. Then AI text to speech and BOOM endless dialogue with NPC. This will wreck some people. Why go out and be social when you can just sit in front of the screen and be social?
Cley_Faye on October 14th, 2023 at 16:16 UTC »
They explored alternatives like redoing all the previous lines with a new VA so the game would be consistent, decided to keep the original, got permission from his family, and hired another VA to say the lines before fixing them to sound like the original VA.
That's how you use IA to do something nice.
MaZAKaR on October 14th, 2023 at 14:44 UTC »
“With family's permission.”