Arc Raiders has 160k Steam reviews (which is a lot) and 90% of them are positive. It also has an estimated >4M owners despite a high price tag and is currently the #4 most played game on Steam globally. The AI nay-sayers are a vocal minority - and likely just terminally online Twitter people that do not even play the game, the rest of the players are too busy enjoying the game regardless of whether it's made with AI or not.
I think it's more that the use of AI is in an unimportant part of the game. They could have zero AI voice overs without impacting the game in a meaningful manner. They're pretty bad though and I've definitely seen them getting mocked.
The only controversy was from the dying games journalism complex trying to manufacture the controversy to save their sinking ship of exploiting gamers and developers for their political activism. The sales figures herald their impending demise.
I haven't seem a game voice every fucking item pickup or mini location callout like arc raiders, so it's a quality win for me. I didn't care about the voice performance of "lets head to the olive grove" ever
I don't know if that's what you were already referring to, but for me, the shout-outs for "Double Kill, Multi Kill, Ultra Kill, MONSTER KILL!!!" account at this stage for probably a majority of the nostalgia for the original Unreal Tournament. Of course it didn't hurt that the game was phenomenal and a great fit for its time, but still, I think that the quality of voice lines can make or break a game.
I kinda see your point. The warm feeling of knowing a real human told me "die, bitch!" isn't a feeling I've ever taken away from playing UT.
On the other hand, lots of AI-generated VO is very easy to spot, and sounds awful. It stands to reason it could meaningfully take away from even a completely plot-free game. If I were a voice actor, I'd feel insulted that anyone would find it comparable to my work.
It really depends on the voice. For some reason, AI impersonations of Dagoth Ur are remarkably accurate even though Dagoth Ur has only a few sentences of dialogue. I've listened to several audiobooks made with his voice and they're very close to dead on, just with some cadence issues and occasional heterophone fumbling.
Other voices cloned with the same tech are usually much worse. There's something about the nature of Dagoth Ur's voice in particular that makes it work well.
> AI impersonations of Dagoth Ur are remarkably accurate even though Dagoth Ur has only a few sentences of dialogue
If there are only a few sentences of dialogue, how can you know it's "accurate?" "Plausible" is the more appropriate word here. The AI is filling in the blanks left by a limited sample set.
I'd imagine that's why it "works well" - you don't have a complete reference point to compare to. Ex: in your mind, what does Dagoth Ur sound like when he says "awww what a cute puppy!" Now, what does the AI sound like? Is there any reason to say one interpretation is more correct than the other?
No, if anyone is wrong it's me. I played Morrowind ages ago. I also have an OpenMW playthrough ongoing (for the last 4 years) but I haven't made it to Dagoth Ur yet :)
Oh come on, it took longer than that to set up openmw on mac, extract the game files from the steam windows distribution and doing various config/plugin tweaks.
Now I'm cleaning up the whole map as a leisurely pace. Now and then not every week. I might be done by 2028-29.
