ARC Raiders Is Finally Replacing Its Awful AI Voices With Real Actors
Hopefully, all the AI voices will be replaced one day.
ARC Raiders is finally moving more of its characters away from the controversial AI voice work that has plagued the game since launch, and Embark is starting with one of Speranza’s most recognizable faces, Celeste.
In a new developer post, Chief Creative Officer Stefan Strandberg confirmed that Celeste is being rebuilt around actress Diana Gardner, who has voiced the character since the beginning of development. Going forward, Celeste will more closely resemble Gardner, use her real performance, and benefit from full motion capture rather than the more limited system used previously.
The change will first appear in the Frozen Trail trailer on October 6, before making its way into the game when the update launches on October 8.
Embark says Celeste’s previous facial animation could be “immersion-breaking,” with the character unable to properly communicate the emotion behind Gardner’s acting. The new setup captures both facial movement and voice together, meaning Celeste’s face and voice will finally match the Diana Gardner’s performance.
More importantly, Celeste apparently isn’t the only one slated for an overhaul.
“In future updates, we plan to bring more characters in line with their real-world actors,” Strandberg wrote, adding that Embark wants to integrate “real human performances” more heavily into ARC Raiders.
That is a pretty big shift for a game that took plenty of criticism for its use of AI-generated text-to-speech. Despite its massive and successful launch, it has taken them quite a while to even begin removing the AI voices. It was controversial enough for a lot of people I knew to not even give ARC Raiders the chance, which was a shame.
Embark previously licensed actors’ voices for synthetic lines, particularly for less prominent dialogue and ping-system audio. Earlier this year, CEO Patrick Söderlund confirmed that the studio had already started replacing some of those lines with new recordings from human actors.
His reasoning was simple: “A real professional actor is better than AI; that’s just how it is.”
Players have generally welcomed the new direction, even if Celeste’s redesigned appearance has already divided people. One Reddit commenter summed up the more positive response neatly: “I applaud all efforts to make the game more human.”
ARC Raiders has always been exceptionally good at selling its world through atmosphere, sound, and environmental detail. The care put into their sound design system makes the stiff and obviously synthetic AI performances stick out even more.
Embark still hasn’t said every AI-generated voice line is disappearing, so this isn’t a total reversal just yet. Whether this is a new stance due to the loss of goodwill from its dwindling playerbase or a genuine commitment to the artistic and atmospheric integrity of Arc Raiders, only time will tell. Regardless, it’s an overall positive step that should be praised and we can only hope to see more.
